Synchronized Lighting for your corporate video or trade show event Starmark Innovation Lab

Playing with synchronized lighting proved to be a fun project for the Starmark Innovation Lab. Our experiment was to reproduce the types of expensive synchronized lighting systems you see at corporate events and shrink it using a smart phone as the controller and off-the-shelf internet of things light bulbs.

The idea here is not just flashing colored lights to draw attention to your trade show booth, but to synchronize the lighting directly with the video in an effort to immerse visitors into an environment with video and light as the star performers.

To get started we purchased several types of Philips Hue lights, a “standard bulb” that is typically used to replace a normal light bulb; a “bloom” wall washer; and a “strip,” used to encircle TVs or run along edges. These are all available on Amazon and at places like Home Depot so acquiring them was rather simple.

Instead of the expensive hardware controllers you need for large corporate events, we built an iOS app as a controller making it readily accessible to virtually everyone on their phone. The phone is able to “listen” to the audio and send commands to the lights to keep them in sync. Think of this as a unique audio fingerprint that’s smart enough to recognize what is being displayed on the screen.

When it comes to apps, as we have mentioned in the past when developing apps, to be successful an app has to be useful, compelling and attractive enough that people want to download it. Our lighting experiment was conceived as a marketing application and this success factor presented a challenge for us. After a quick brainstorm for a “must have” feature, we decided the best way to demonstrate our app would be to let anyone use it with their favorite movie!

We also believe that real world demonstrations make it easier to grasp new marketing concepts, and creating a platform that lets users play and experiment can lead to new thinking for these exciting technologies. You can download the Sync My Lights app for iOs and Android. Will someone please pass the popcorn?