Assistance Needed For Interactive Lighting Display

[jamieandthemagictorch]

Assistance needed for interactive Lighting display.

Basicly we are a company that carrys out illumination of buildings, using colour changing LED lights.

We are illuminating 2 tower blocks in Govan (an area of Glasgow). these will have lighting that is connected to the temp & wind speed, thus changing the colour of the building at night according to the local weather conditions.

Tower 1 will react to temperature, eg

Temperature (Degrees Celsius)

From To Colour

-15 -5 Blue

-5 0 Cyan

0 10 Green

10 15 Yellow

15 25 Orange

25 50 Red

n/a n/a Magenta

n/a n/a White

Tower 2 will use wind speed, eg;

Wind Speed (Knots)

Colour From To

Blue n/a n/a

Cyan n/a n/a

Green 0 10

Yellow 10 15

Orange 15 20

Red 25 100

Magenta n/a n/a

White n/a n/a

Our concern is that with Red (a potentially scary colour for Joe Public) it might be set too low at 25 knots for the local area of Glasgow.

Does anybody know anyone in the local Glasgow area, who may have an annual record of wind & gust speeds. We would like to ensure that red does not show on the building any more than 5% of the time, to prevent the public from being overly worried. So need to find out if 25knot winds occur more than 5% of the time.

Can anyone help ?

We have contacted the Met office, but they have said that they cant even come back to us with an answer for another 10 days, & we need to let our lighting programmers know the wind speeds before this.

contact me on yates@publicscreen.co.uk, or in this forum.

cheers.

Edited January 30, 2006 by jamieandthemagictorch

[Paul]

Hi, good question - I'm sure someone we'll be able to help, but need to clarify if the windspeeds you're talking about will be gusts or sustained for a period of time before the colour changes?

[jamieandthemagictorch]

gusts will be part of the lighting show, ie; as soon as the wind blows a gust into the range of another colour, the lighting will act instantly & change colour accrodingly.

eg; if the wind is a sustained 12knots, but with occasional gusts upto 18 knots, then the lighting display will be prodominantly yellow, with occasional flashes of orange.

its consistent wind speeds that are in the red that we are most concerned about. so that red is not displayed on the building for prolonged periods of time, unless conditions are really adverse.

Edited January 30, 2006 by jamieandthemagictorch

[Paul]

Hi again, I think 25 knots should be ok based on the last 3 months wind speeds at Glasgow airport, mean winds haven't touched 25 knots (note these graphs are in km/h).

Max measured mean speed:

Ave meaured mean speed:

Hope that helps

[Stoxs]

what an impressive project like to see that when completed

good luck with it all

keep us posted on how it goes

thanks colin

[Cloudburst]

(Just to add what Paul has said) I wouldnt have thought that you would get 25 knot wind for a long period other than gusts in low pressure systems on occasions, so i would say that it should be O.k, sounds like an interesting project, keep us posted.

[jamieandthemagictorch]

those graphs are spot on Paul. Its actually just made us realise that the parameters that are applied to Green, yellow & orange were to high, so we have now shifted them lower;

Colour Wind Speed (Knots)

From To

Blue n/a n/a

Cyan n/a n/a

Green 0 5

Yellow 5 10

Orange 10 25

Red 25 100

Magenta n/a n/a

White n/a n/a

[Paul]

Sound's excellent, I hope it all works properly for you. Just one thing to bear in mind - the last 3 months have been pretty flat in terms of wind - it's quite possible that there will be more windy periods than anything seen in the last 3 months.

Another thing to bear in mind is the position of the instruments measuring the wind speed - if they're at the top of the buildings that is probably going to mean higher wind speeds than those measured at a few metres at the airport.

Are you going to have a webcam or anything to show the buildings when the lighting is running?

[jamieandthemagictorch]

Another thing to bear in mind is the position of the instruments measuring the wind speed - if they're at the top of the buildings that is probably going to mean higher wind speeds than those measured at a few metres at the airport.

Although high up, The suspicion is that the wind will probably be lower than that at ground level, as the area is much like Canary wharf, in that the extreme height & regularity of the towers creates its own little micro climate (with regards to wind speeds anyway)........................although this is made by me................some one not experienced in understanding weather, unlike you guys.

[jamieandthemagictorch]

I'ts all up & running now guys - thankyou very much for the help.

hopefully get some video footage soon for you to see it running on each of the towers.

[Rustynailer]

i can't wait to see the results of this unusual project, feedback from the locals would be interesting too

Found another Russell who takes photos, lovely shots of Glasgow, probably including the towers concerned aswell. http://skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=241078

Russ.

[I can't believe it's not better]

Looking forward to seeing some video of it in action, must have been pretty red yesterday.

[i luv snow]

Yes would be very interesting to see a video clip! =)