Pharos Goes West

Lightmoves controls Sydney’s WestConnex

Part of Sydney’s huge transport expansion plan, Transurban’s WestConnex will provide drivers with a 33km road network once completed. Officially opened on the 4th of July 2020, the WestConnex M8, part of the WestConnex project, sees 9km of tunnel in each direction from St Peters Interchange to Kingsgrove.

In a joint venture with Samsung, the project called for a phenomenal scale of decorative lighting. This included lighting the 9km of tunnel in each direction, as well as the entryway, exits, and surrounding landscape.

Lightmoves were the clear choice for CPB Contractors, the Head Contractor on the project.

With over 30 years’ experience in LED Feature Lighting and Lighting Control, Lightmoves were able to design custom solutions to each of the architectural lighting installations that not only exceeded specifications, but also saved time and money during installation thanks to some ingenious engineering.

The WestConnex M8 saw five separate lighting installations to be completed, on a scale that only Lightmoves could manage.

Originally conceived by Hassel Studio in conjunction with lighting designers Lighting Art + Science, the project consisted of some 2700 LED lighting fixtures to be installed, controlled and commissioned across four separate areas over the 10 kilometres of the project.

Lightmoves has been working on the WestConnex M8 project for nearly four years. From the initial design concepts by Lighting Art + Science, and through a Design and Construct process with CPB, the Lightmoves team have been there.

This continued through the documentation and manufacture stages, followed by delivery, commissioning and programming. The project involved a serious investment for the Lightmoves team, who helped to deliver the ultimate result for the project.

The architectural feature lighting system was delivered on time, on budget, and fully functional on opening night.

Kingsgrove Dives

Kingsgrove Dives is the western end of the M8 tunnels in Kingsgrove. Along both walls of the entry and exit over 500 units of Space Cannon’s CD Linear S RGBW’s linear LED fittings were supplied.

Various lengths of the Linear S have been installed inside the 140 alcoves, decorating both sides of the entry and exit. This simple design creates colour-changing pillars of light as drivers transition into and out of the tunnel.

Tunnel
Throughout the 9km of tunnel in each direction, decorative direct-view LED lighting is scattered at various lengths to break up the monotony of the tunnels for drivers.

A customised version of Space Cannon’s Glowline Pixel Bar was the perfect choice for fixture.

With over 1500 fixtures supplied, there was no room to have issues with installation on site. As part of the service Lightmoves assembled, fitted-off, tested, and programmed every fixture before it arrived on site, including the custom mounting brackets.

This saved the installation contractors countless hours as once the fixture arrived on site it was as simple as plug-and-play.

Portal Veil

A stunning piece of architecture, the Portal Veil is the entry and exit to the tunnels at the St Peters end of the WestConnex M8. The striking veil of hundreds of linear panels have been lit with Space Cannon’s CD Linea Ms.

Working closely with Space Cannon, each CD Linear has been mounted in a custom-designed extrusion, providing consistent angles when the light strikes the linear panels.

St Peters Interchange
The bridges throughout the St Peters Interchange are adorned with Space Cannon’s Pixel 8 RGBW direct-view fixtures. Each of these is mounted in a custom channel specifically designed for ease of installation and maintenance, as some of the luminaires are 25 metres above ground level.

These Pixel 8 fixtures are perfect for outdoor use, and were specifically developed for the WestConnex project. Each pixel can be individually controlled, spreading patterns of light across the overpass.

In addition to the Pixel 8 fixtures, eighteen of the support columns under the bridge are grazed with light from over 360 WE-EF fixtures, creating a beautiful wash of light perfectly covering the entirety of each pillar.

The combination of these fixtures results in a beautiful transition for drivers in the St Peters Interchange.

Lighting Control System
Such a large project of this scale, footprint, and sheer number of fixtures required the best-of-the-best control systems. As each luminaire is uniquely addressed for individual control, the project called for a lighting control system with some serious power behind it.

The Pharos LPC 30 was the obvious choice for the project after a vigorous testing process.

CONTROL
In only a 1RU form factor, the Pharos LPC 30 delivers DMX over Ethernet via the highly secure Tunnel fibre backbone.

This fibre network also transports data for vision cameras, evacuation, tunnel audio, speed and time interval cameras and signage systems to name just a few of the parallel services.

The complex network infrastructure required VLAN routing of unicast Art-Net data originating from the LPC 30, delivered to 47 physically separate four universe DMX512 decoders.

A second redundant LPC 30 was supplied as a fail-over to keep the architectural feature lighting system running no matter what else happens along the way. The redundant unit is located in a totally separate location with active monitoring of the main unit, and is coded for seamless transfer if required.

As well as the lighting control data systems all of the luminaires (except for the Bridge Pier floods) required Extra Low Voltage (ELV) feeds.

Lightmoves fabricated and supplied enclosures to provide all the ELV power supplies and their terminations with high quality protection in both the tunnel and near marine environments in which that they are working.

COMMISSIONING
Commissioning for the project had to be completed in a very tight window. By the time the construction and civil works were completed, there was only a day or two before the project opened to traffic. Needless to say, Lightmoves were able to complete all programming before the deadline.

The commissioning process was rapidly completed thanks to Pharos and the network structure. The commissioning engineers could remotely access, test and control the system whilst inside the tunnel or out in the acreage of the St Peters Interchange.

CABLING
Cabling systems are usually considered dull and boring, and just a necessary expense.

For this project however the plug-and-play cabling system was the unsung hero. It delivered a control network of nearly 30 DMX universes in underground and high-level bridge environments by installation and cabling contractors who had never heard of DMX.

With the plug-and-play cabling system and the long DMX cable feeds there was not a single solder joint or field termination.

Every cable was pre-terminated, specially manufactured as Low Smoke Zero Halogen in line with their operating environments. All that was required were the usual mains power terminations at the ELV power supplies.

This solution was designed and developed by Lightmoves and Space Cannon with their unrivalled experience in DMX, LED and ELV installations.

It delivered the architectural feature lighting system with the minimum of field work and the minimum points of failure, in what would otherwise have been a very long winded, painful and labour-intensive installation and commissioning process right at the very busy end of the project.

After many years of work and countless hours of time invested in the project, it’s been a momentous project for the Lightmoves team to be a part of. The WestConnex M8 is another spectacular architectural lighting installation completed by Lightmoves that drivers can enjoy for years to come.

Light Application – Controlling The West

Light Application – Controlling The West

Perth’s Light Application is providing their customers with superb project monitoring and remote access to lighting control thanks to Pharos Cloud.

Matthew Bancroft, Technical Sales Support at Light Application had this to say about the benefits of Pharos Cloud for his customers:

“Pharos Cloud is the perfect value-add service for providing remote monitoring, maintenance and scheduling of existing or new projects with Pharos Controllers.”

“By simply adding a 4G modem or connecting the controller to the client’s broadband internet connection, the secure cloud service integrated into the Pharos controller’s firmware allows for high level online diagnostics and a simple end user interface for triggering and scheduling.”

“The ability to add multiple controllers running different projects to the cloud dashboard and have them simultaneously triggered ensures that no matter the complexity of the project, it can be interfaced for control in a simple format for the client.”

“So simple in fact, we are no longer providing industrial PCs for sites with Pharos controllers and a client requirement to remotely connect and control their sites!”

“With Pharos Cloud being so easy to commission and the simple web based portal for clients who can use a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer from any internet connected location in the world, it was an obvious choice for us to provide Pharos Cloud as a viable solution for our existing and future clients.”

Subiaco Oval Heritage Gates
The Subiaco Oval gates are usually unmanned, so 3E Consulting Engineers specified a Pharos LPC with Pharos Cloud for remote monitoring, as well as an onsite 4G modem.

Now it can be fully managed remotely, with a custom dashboard for changing the display.

Pinjarra Road Bridge
The lights on the Pinjarra Road Traffic Bridge have proved a hit since they were first turned on. The City of Mandurah now allows charitable and not-for-profit organisations to book the lights for a day to help promote their special events or appeals.

The Precinct, Mount Pleasant
Being located on a major intersection, it was essential to be able to remotely control the lighting on The Precinct façade. Easy overrides mean that if there was ever an incident at the junction or a complaint of a distraction to road users, changes can be made immediately.

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Lightmoves
www.lightmoves.com.au

Light Application
www.lightapplication.com.au

CX Magazine – February 2021   

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