The Ocean Cay Lighthouse

A lighthouse as an icon of Ocean Cay on the Bahamas

project credits

Design: The Department

Supplying, engineering & assembly: OneEightyOne

Control: DiGidot

location

Ocean Cay, The Bahamas

Entertainment & Sports

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 light shows.

The lighthouse is visible from the beaches and from the hotels, restaurants and bars and is therefore an important place on the island. "The combination of engineering and creativity came together to create something truly magnificent", says our client design agency The Department.

THE
PROCESS

Dazzling lightshows

The lighthouse displays complex light shows that amaze the tourist. One of them 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.

OneEightyOne on the Bahamas

With 6 staff members, we flew to Ocean Cay and stayed a week to manually click all 14,000 modules into the perforations. Because the lighthouse is high up, we installed everything while hanging in harnesses. For smooth graphics, we used a pixel pitch grid of 140mm horizontally and vertically. The LED modules are powered by sources that were divided across the floors. In total, we used 36 DiGidot C4 Live controllers to light up the structure.