Bahrain’s Tribute to Key Workers: How we delivered a project from our sofa, 3,000 miles away

Bahrain's Tribute to Key Workers: How we projection-mapped a landmark from our sofas 3000 miles away.

Pico Bahrain & Black Engineering reached out to us with a problem to solve; how to get our operators working on a road-side projection mapping installation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Of course, our team have been working from home since the Covid-19 outbreak became wide-spread and have continued to work on projects in a pre-production state, but contributing to an install remotely is inherently more difficult and a challenge that we are well-equipped to take on.

The Goal.

The Show.

The install is a projection onto the Sail Monument in Manama, Bahrain which is dedicated to the country’s Perl Mining industry. The Sails are surrounded by hotels, offices and diplomatic buildings, the monument is made of two huge Dhow Sails which resemble two shells around a Perl.  The install ran for 7 nights between the 25th of April and the 2nd of May 2020 and is a well-deserved tribute to Bahrain’s key workers who are providing a heroic service to the Kingdom.

How we did it.

The goal sounds simple; connect the UK & Italian teams with the production crew on-site in Bahrain while maintaining communication & system functionality. Lucid’s team of system engineers designed a specification that was not only simple to deploy but also provided the crucial remote access required for the operators & projectionists. The fully functional remote connection used a secure internet protocol giving the UK & Italian teams full access to the equipment & network on site via 4G LTE as if they were physically there.

The projector alignment was completed remotely by projectionists in Italy and our UK team of operators overnight. Utilizing remote PTZ cameras both teams could effectively configure and align the system ready for the opening night.

Our zero compromises attitude towards system functionality meant our remote connection allowed the operators who worked from home to do anything they’d normally do on-site. This included things such as managing network devices, configuring projector & media server redundancy, access to live camera feeds, managing the content library and all media server functionality. The reliability of the connection allowed our team to tweak projector alignment on a nightly basis to counteract external conditions such as wind and changes in humidity.

“Firstly I want to thank Pico Bahrain and Black Engineering for allowing us the opportunity to say a huge thanks to all the key workers who are keeping us safe, we appreciate all of their hard work!” Said Ashley Ball, Lucid’s Projects Director. He continued “We are extremely pleased with how successful this test case was. Our team jumped headfirst into this technology and we are going to continue developing our in-house remote access infrastructure enabling us and others to work on shows & installations like this from the safety or convenience of their own home or office. The opportunity for reliable, zero compromises remote access is huge & we have already made significant improvements to our system since this project was completed.”

More details on Lucid Technologies’ remote access system will be available in the coming weeks.

A huge thanks to all of the key workers around the world who are keeping us all safe during this strange time. We hope everyone is well, and remember… Stay home, Stay Safe. – Klean, Ashley & the team at Lucid Technologies.

How we did it.