The design and construction project of the screen, which has dimensions of 6.16 meters in diameter and 4.8 meters in height, took about two weeks.
Germán Robles*
LED screens can be used for various purposes: whether for decoration, advertising or an impactful way to communicate. There are also different types of technologies: some for outdoors, others used in different events and screens for interiors, such as the one found in Paseo Interlomas in Mexico City.
The screen offers visitors a unique experience for its Full HD definition that allows to show high impact content created specifically taking care of every detail to obtain a WOW effect.
The installation was carried out in the recently opened Paseo Interlomas shopping center, a place that offers a new concept in shopping centers: avant-garde, with style and glamour, with spaces for family entertainment and technology integrated into the enclosure.
It is the union of a park and shopping center that creatively merges the open and closed areas while meeting the highest standards of planning, safety and innovation.
Under the slogan "The place you always dreamed of", Kolo and Paseo Interlomas surprised visitors at the end of 2011 with the installation of the circular LED screen that arrived just in time for the promotion of the last Christmas season.
The screen has a total video area of 98 square meters, making it the screen installed in a shopping plaza.
Composed of two rings separated by five meters from each other, the screen offers visitors incredible video playback in high definition (1,920 pixels) at 360 degrees).
The technological and logistics solution was provided by Kolo, a digital signage & displays integration company, which with its product line managed to manufacture a 10 mm screen with dimensions of 6.16 meters in diameter and 4.8 meters in height and deliver with a unique installation of its kind. Kolo continues the spectacular and high-quality installations that add up to more than 3,000 square meters of LED screens installed in Latin America.
Made in record time
Thanks to Kolo's work team, it was possible to carry out this work in a record time of four weeks of production and installation.
The screen is suspended by steel cables that support the seven tons of the screen; with this type of structural solution, a minimalist design was achieved that surprises visitors and has all the technology that this prestigious shopping center deserves.
For the connection of the screen required more than a kilometer of wiring and the arduous installation work that took a week. It is currently in operation.
Technologies
By using 3-in-1 SMD RGB LED technology with 10 mm of seoaracñib ebtre LED, a resolution of 1920 pixels of base (Full HD) was achieved in the circumference of the screen.
It has a high frequency control electronics that allows the visualization of the contents at more than 1000Hz (the image on the screen is updated 1000 times per second) with which a sharp and well-defined image is obtained in high resolution.
Thanks to the power of the new second-generation Intel Core i5 processors, it is possible to play Full HD videos on the screen or section the contents in six simultaneous video windows on the entire surface of the screen.
Utilizing Intel's vPRO technology included in the second generation of Core i5 processors makes it possible to remotely control and monitor CPU resources at the BIOS level, as well as perform remote maintenance.
To control the contents and programming of the screen, a CMS software (Content Management System) based on a web interface is used where users can remotely control and program spaces for the different types of media, based on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule depending on the requirements.
The same system allows us to know the status of the CPU and deliver reports on the contents that were played in a period of time. With all these technologies they are part of Kolo's solutions.
Challenges and challenges
The main structural challenge was to support the screen with as few elements as possible to obtain a clean line of sight between both sections and to take advantage of the light captured by the dome from which the screen is held.
As many may know, Mexico is terrain subject to seismic movements, so it was necessary to calculate all the components to guarantee the correct fastening of the screen, ensuring its stability in the face of a seismic movement.
For the structural solution to these requirements, steel cables (12 in total) of 5/8 were used to fasten the seven-ton screen to the base of the dome, and another 12 steel cables that keep the lower section suspended, thus guaranteeing that in case of an earthquake the equipment and the property will be safe.
The circular shape of the screen, unique in this size, was achieved thanks to the creativity of the manufacturing engineers, with a modulation of 96 centimeters by 96 centimeters of each LED cabinet, with a pitch (distance between LEDs) of 10 real millimeters, which allowed us to obtain the perfect circular shape in the diameter of 6.16.
Mounting the screen was one of the additional challenges. Its size and shape increased the difficulty of the installation maneuvers that if not carried out correctly would cause the union between modules and the unified display of the screen to be lost.
*Germán Robles is the director of Kolo.
