Could anyone here explain what happened? Didn't see it and tried to find it on Google/Youtube, but only this thread shows up. What effect are we talking about?
Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
41–48 of 48 posts
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#42Is this honestly not trivial in 2017??? Given this didn't have to be perfect, there are 3-5+ ways to do this.
Don't be shy, what are the 3-5+ ways? Some of us aren't even familiar with the superbowl LED torches never mind the tech behind them.
Try to avoid faking surprise to make yourself sound smarter too, it doesn't work.
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#43Didn't see the Super Bowl, and can't comment on the technology used, but I've been looking into Xylobands, http://xylobands.com/, that have been used by Coldplay in some of their concerts.
Technically, that's a LED (monochrone, later they used multicolor LEDS) with a radio receiver. Radio transmitters were installed throughout the stadium, controlling specific LEDs to go one or off.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JficYgaK8j8 for some background video and the use in the song Charlie Brown in the Mylo Xyloto tour.
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#44This is done by shining bright Infra Red lights high in the stadium down onto the crowd. We cannot see Infra Red light ourselves, but the lights/torches the crowd holds can detect the infra red light and respond when they see it by switching on and showing visible light we can see. Thus all the lights the crowd have can be commanded to light up at the same time, or turn off at the same time. In advanced situations th…
There's got to be more to it than that. Even with a really tight beam you'd run into all sorts of "Am I in the spotlight or not" problems, especially with the torch flailing around while someone dances (illuminance detected would be all over the place).
Looking at this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYDSguhC4FQ
It seems advanced patterns only turn up when people are in a roughly grid arrangement, and no one moves out of their spot except at predetermined times (obviously everyone is in on the choreography here). There are also dark periods after people finish moving around and "get in place". It looks like they are doing some degree of calibration. The torches my well have IR lights on them too that can be individually addressed to quickly calibrate every torches position, sorta like marco polo. Break it into quadrants and you could do it even quicker.
It could be simply overhead IR lights, but gah, they are doing something really special to get those well defined sharp edges.
Besides all that, everyone could just have assigned spots that they memorized. It's obvious they practiced, and arranging a bunch of people on a field quickly and fluidly is nothing new.
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#45Was wondering the same thing. Either each volunteer was in a predetermined location with specific uuid'd torches or there some newfangled rfid/bluetooth location tracking to within one foot or so that I want to know about. My money's on the later, can't trust 100s of people to be where you told them to be during a live performance who aren't professionals.
Why do you say that they weren't professional dancers?
No Spandex
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#46Was wondering the same thing. Either each volunteer was in a predetermined location with specific uuid'd torches or there some newfangled rfid/bluetooth location tracking to within one foot or so that I want to know about. My money's on the later, can't trust 100s of people to be where you told them to be during a live performance who aren't professionals.
Why do you say that they weren't professional dancers?
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#47I don't know exactly how the torches look, but I can imagine they have an indoor GPS setup in the stadium. Couple that with a position-dependent program that each torch has. The actual program can be started, paused or stopped using an RF signal of some sort - so the torch actually knows its position and just sets itself to what should be running on the virtual, stadium sized display.
Re: Ask HN: How were the super bowl led torches synced?
#48The company that makes the torches is Glow Motion. It's RF tech, but they're not super-specific about how it works. They do say it only requires one antenna, so it's doubtful they were triangulating the location of each device.
http://www.glowmotiontechnologies.com/how-it-works
It's the same company that did the illuminated kinetic beach balls in Drake's recent tour.
Source: http://livedesignonline.com/super-bowl-li-2017-halftime-show...