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Chess board flooring

Ynot

By Ynot
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Ynot Production Manager

Ynot

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I'm designing/managing a production of Chess in November and one aspect we're looking at is the build of a custom 8 x 8 chess board LED floor. We've been looking at the available options from the wedding dance floor community but to be honest the scope there is limited, as is the control of individual squares, which is something we want to capitalise on ideally.

Hence why we're looking at a custom build.

 

What may sway the decision to move on this is the potential for hire to other companies looking forward, which can compensate the expense involved in creating such a beastie. So what I'm looking for here is the potential for hires to other companies in the future.

 

The plan will be to construct an 8 x 8 tile floor setup with 450mm/500mm squares on a timber frame and aluminium separators for the squares. I'd say we would build it in four sections at 4x4 panels each making it more transportable. We've not yet settled on a suitable control option, but are looking at either standard DMX to LED off the shelf boxes or a bespoke Pi/Arduino solution. One of the calculations we're looking at will be the size and thickness of the tiles to cope with chorus dancing about on them.

 

As I see it the floor would be viable for Chess, or (if we invested in a full set of white perspex/acrylic tiles) potentially the likes of Saturday Night Fever for example.

 

So - the question is whether there might be a market for the floor if we go ahead and build?

 

UNLESS of course someone has already done this and has a suitable floor in stock somewhere (that I've not yet managed to find...)

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Anothertom Climbing the roster

Anothertom

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It may be out of budget, and you didn't mention the scale of the production, but have you considered using video floor for this? You mention wedding flooring but not video floor specifically.

It would reduce effort, would obviously have a built and fit for purpose structure, and be rated for the amount of weight that would be on it. You probably wouldn't need a particularly narrow pixel pitch if you're going for full colour panels (and there's the required distance between subject and audience) and you may be able to use a second diffusion layer on top of the shader (as it may not have the required off axis visibility). You'd probably want to do some small scale proof of concept tests.

Obviously costs will vary with quality, and would be a lot more than that of building some boxes out of ali and timber and chucking some led tape in it, and if you've not already got video aspects to the show then it's a whole extra dept of planning and expertise, but just a thought.

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kerry davies Production Manager

kerry davies

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Have you spoken to Grumpy Joe's, Tony? I am sure when he was alive he had something like Chroma-deck though their current range of sparkling floors probably doesn't suit.

 

Just learned that the original SNF dancefloor was auctioned in 2017 for $1.2M so that's out of your league. It cost $15K way back when.

 

Have you thought of using clear topped Litedeck and subdividing to suit? The load bearing problems are then pre-arranged.

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gyro_gearloose Mentor

gyro_gearloose

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How steep is your stage, and does the auditorium have a balcony? The reason I'm asking is that theres no point putting a lot of time and money into the dance floor if no one can see it that well. For example, our stage is slightly raked so anyone sat in the stalls would be able to see that something was happening with a lit dance floor, but they wouldn't be able to see any kind of video display that well.
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Jivemaster Production Manager

Jivemaster

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Hotel/venue/disco dance floors come in about 2ft squares only 2" thick, solid wood base and mini parquet top, with an alloy frame and interlocking "hooks" They are heavey. Full illuminated floors are thick and need steps and maybe rails. Hotel portable floors can likely move as one on carpet or move in several parts while breaking apart. They need the alloy extrusion edge ramps.

 

DO consider the amount of DMX that you may need at 64 tiles you soon run out of universes and maybe controllers.

Edited by Jivemaster
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themadhippy Production Manager

themadhippy

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64 tiles would be 192 channels so easily fits in one universe?

fine if each tile is going to be a single colour,start getting into pixel mapping or wanting to run funky patterns on each tile and a lowly 13 x 13 led matrix of 3 colour leds per tile may require a universe per tile

Edited by themadhippy
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Ynot Production Manager

Ynot

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It may be out of budget, and you didn't mention the scale of the production, but have you considered using video floor for this? You mention wedding flooring but not video floor specifically.

 

It would reduce effort, would obviously have a built and fit for purpose structure, and be rated for the amount of weight that would be on it. You probably wouldn't need a particularly narrow pixel pitch if you're going for full colour panels (and there's the required distance between subject and audience) and you may be able to use a second diffusion layer on top of the shader (as it may not have the required off axis visibility). You'd probably want to do some small scale proof of concept tests.

 

Obviously costs will vary with quality, and would be a lot more than that of building some boxes out of ali and timber and chucking some led tape in it, and if you've not already got video aspects to the show then it's a whole extra dept of planning and expertise, but just a thought.

It's an am-dram production, but a company I've worked with a few years now and they're not shy of spending some budget in the right places.

I've not yet looked at video flooring but it can be added to the list depending on costs - anyone any idea on the cost of a square floor around 3.6m a side?

 

 

 

 

The first thing that came to mind was Pulsar ChromaDeck:

 

http://www.ls-live.c...deck-dancefloor

Just looked at that, and the tile size there is 610x610 - I have limited space on the floor as we have side builds and a couple of small revolves which reduce the space available - from memory I think we only have room for 450mm plus change per square.

 

Oh - and update - LSI-Live no longer has the Chroma Deck anyway - they've sold up and been absorbed by another company :)

 

 

 

 

Have you spoken to Grumpy Joe's, Tony? I am sure when he was alive he had something like Chroma-deck though their current range of sparkling floors probably doesn't suit.

 

Just learned that the original SNF dancefloor was auctioned in 2017 for $1.2M so that's out of your league. It cost $15K way back when.

 

Have you thought of using clear topped Litedeck and subdividing to suit? The load bearing problems are then pre-arranged.

I've spoken to a few dance floor suppliers, and joined a FB group for sparkly floor peeps but from what I can establish the trad disco dave floors are NOT very versatile when wanting to address each one as a specific square - they tend to be either random on/off or all on/all off type of thing.

 

We did talk about clear topped deck, but not sure the squares aspect would be right when going between decks. And I think based on the above, would be slightly too large at 2 foor centres.

 

 

 

 

 

How steep is your stage, and does the auditorium have a balcony? The reason I'm asking is that theres no point putting a lot of time and money into the dance floor if no one can see it that well. For example, our stage is slightly raked so anyone sat in the stalls would be able to see that something was happening with a lit dance floor, but they wouldn't be able to see any kind of video display that well.

There's no rake on the stage, and yes, the front row or 2 wouldn't see much at all, but the aud is quite a decent rake and so MOST of the punters would get the gist - just not the 'cheap seats'... :)

 

DO consider the amount of DMX that you may need at 64 tiles you soon run out of universes and maybe controllers.

Believe me, that's one of the other things being looked at as well as the physical side - control.

We have a couple of the guys who are far more savvy than me on things like Arduino and Pi etc who are playing with ideas at the moment - makes for some interesting looks from the punters when we're playing with LEDs and bread boards etc over a post rehearsal pint :)

 

But we have an ETC Gio with 8 universes available overall, and if necessary we could pull the old Ion out as well to support, but I don't think we'll need to

:)

 

 

 

 

With just white LEDs in white tiles that's only 32 channels, if you want four colours in each of 64 tiles that's one universe. How many spare universes does Ynot's rather nice hall have?

 

Ynot, How do you plan to get power into the unit?

Hmmm...

64 tiles x 4 colours plus master level, 5 channels = 320 channels, unless I'm missing something. On the very basicest of setups...

 

Power shouldn't be a big issue - if it does end up a self-build I'd probably fill in around the tiles with a custom deck to the same height so that the grid floor doesn't sit above the main stage, which will leave us plenty of options to lay power under that floor from one of the multitude of 16A/32A/63A options dotted around stage.

Until we know exactly what we're doing and how many LEDs/controllers are involved we won't know what we need to supply but that will come.

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xllx Chief

xllx

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LED celing tiles in a wood or aluminium grid might work, but I'm pretty sure you will only find 600mm x 600mm, and you get the grid lines...

 

I was peripherally involved in a floor made with RGB ceiling tiles, using aluminiulm extrusions as the supporting grid and a thick (8mm? 10mm?) perspex or similar sheet screwed down over the top. I'll see if I can dig out some pictures...

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indyld Technical Manager

indyld

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Old tech I know, but I once toured with a light up dance floor style stage that was nothing more than 4ft sq Steeldeck that had been re-decked with a coloured polymer and on 2ft legs. At the time, a cyc flood on its back under each deck and a load of chase programming was the order of the day. Edited by indyld
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