A lighthouse as an icon of Ocean Cay on the Bahamas
WHAT WE DID
CATEGORY
CLIENT
The Department
Technical engineering
Assembly work
Installation assistance
Testing & Commissioning
About the Project
The story
Think of white beaches, palm trees and a turquoise sea. That's what you will find on Ocean Cay, a beautiful island of The Bahamas. In the 60's and 70's, this artificial island was created for mineral extraction purposes. MCS Cruises has been leasing the island for over 100 years now and has completely converted it into a resort for the guests of their cruises. To turn this lighthouse into real entertainment, OneEightyOne designed and installed pixel-controlled LED lighting for it, which now displays amazing lightshows.
THE
PROCESS
Dazzling lightshows
The lighthouse is visible from the beaches and from the hotels, restaurants and bars and is therefore an important place on the island. That is why it also serves as a landmark and icon of the island. The lighthouse displays complex lightshows that amaze the tourist. One of the lightshows is about the flora and fauna of the island, and the other is about life in the surrounding ocean. The impressive shows were conceived and developed by our client, The Department. In the evening, the lighthouse lights up so everyone can enjoy the beautiful shows.
A custom design
The lighthouse had already been built with perforations in it. In order to be able to attach our LED modules perfectly to the perforated steel, we had a piece of steel come to the Netherlands to design a 3D prototype. When we were sure that the LED modules would certainly fit, we started the production. We always cover all risks in advance and check every small detail before shipping, but because of the distance to the Bahamas, we checked it one more time to really be 1000% sure.
OneEightyOne on the Bahama's
With 6 staff members, we flew to Ocean Cay and stayed a week to manually click all 14,000 modules into the perforations. Despite we delivered everything plug & play, we were still working on this installation for more than 575 hours. Because the lighthouse is very big and high, we installed everything while hanging in harnesses. For the lighthouse we used a pixel pitch of 140mm horizontally and vertically. The LED modules are powered by sources that were divided across the floors. All controllers were installed in the bottom layer of the lighthouse. In total we used 36 DiGidot C4 Live controllers.
The most unique project I ever worked on. The final result was awesome: with bare feet in the sand and a drink in our hands we could admire the light shows when we were done!
Robin Sluis
Account Manager
