“The Boardwalk”, a new development in a 90-acre multi-use commercial complex in Granite Park, Plano, Texas, adds 8839 square metres of restaurant, patio, and office space, with dramatic decorative lighting featuring nearly 305 metres of FloppyFlex LED neon.

FloppyFlex is a winner in our book; it’s extremely bright, versatile, and reliable,” says Jeff Mabray of Hossley Lighting. “We’re using the large dome, 4000 Kelvin white, with four distinct programs on an automated time clock. The looks include centre-out sweeps and streams, black-on-white effects, and more, all auto-selected randomly. The FloppyFlex was easy to install and is performing well.

Mabray continues, This project was new construction with the lighting designed from the outset, making installation a little easier than with most retrofits. The terrific design is by Erin Moody of Studio e Lighting Design. We provided the electrical contractor with five reels of FloppyFlex, which was easily cut and mounted. They terminated the segments and then we programmed. We chose FloppyFlex not only for its performance and ease of use but also because of TMB’s service and their understanding of DMX and the vagaries which often accompany a major installation. In short, they made our job easier.

Hossley Lighting Associates is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, specializing in lighting and control solutions for 40 years. Studio e Lighting Design is also located in Dallas.

WrestleMania 33 set a record last month as the most-watched WrestleMania ever. Dubbed an “ultimate thrill ride for the ages,” WWE’s signature event at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida featured 13 matches, including two world championships. A larger-than-life ring atop the massive truss centrepiece was designed and installed by All Access Staging & Productions. Resembling something out of Gulliver’s Travels, the giant ring was a befitting symbol for the wrestling giants competing in this epic showdown. Around the perimeter of the giant ring were oversized red, white, and blue ultra-bright ring “ropes” illuminated by 609 metres of Firefly FloppyFlex LED neon.

The glowing ropes around the 24 x 24 metre ‘ring’ crowning the real ring were dramatic eye-catchers,” says Erik Eastland of All Access. Using the structure’s rooftop as the ‘mat’, we built the giant ‘ropes’ out of 30cm frosted PVC ducting hose, each illuminated with double-runs of FloppyFlex RGB. The FloppyFlex is easy to cut and install and, most important, it’s much brighter than conventional LED tapes. The vivid colours could be clearly seen from the farthest seat in the stadium, even against a fireworks backdrop!

Production Designer for WrestleMania is Jason Robinson and Production Manager is Jeremy Shand.

A memorial to World War II submariners is the centre-piece of the 300-metre Submariners’ Walk Heritage Trail on the Brisbane River boardwalk in Tenerrife, Queensland, Australia. The walk features a series of plaques and submarine-shaped seats commemorating the sailors and their service. The memorial itself comprises a landmark sign illuminated by Firefly’s Digital FloppyFlex RGBW LED neon.

The hollow steel sign, by Street + Garden, is painted navy grey with letters perforated in the steel, spelling out “Submariners’ Heritage Trail” in classic naval stencil font. Pixel-controlled Digital FloppyFlex inside the sign illuminates the letters, giving a stunning, colour-changing glow effect that seems to move inside the monument.

The installation was up and running in time for the Teneriffe / New Farm Anzac Day dawn service, the memorial’s unofficial opening day. In the pre-dawn darkness, all the nearby street lights were turned off, with the memorial’s lettering and the sub-seats along the trail glowing a deep red, simulating the interior of a submerged sub. Once the service started, the sign glowed and gently scrolled through the Australian flag colours of blue, red, and white.

My father was a submariner and involved with the Submarine Association before he passed, and had actually worked on the project at its outset with OAM medal recipient Don Currell, commented Heath Williamson, Firefly’s Managing Director, a descendant of the Greatest Generation. I hope the Captain’s looking down and likes it! This one is for you Dad.

Every night the sign and the submarine seats along the Heritage Trail will light up red or blue and they will also be adapted to mark special occasions. For example, on Australia Day the sign will light up in green and gold; it will scroll through red, white, and blue on July Fourth; or red and green at Christmas, and so forth.

Firefly FloppyFlex LED Neon is the perfect and professional replacement for glass neon: Super-bright, easy to use, long-lasting, durable, and at 24VDC, safe. Perfect for use indoors and outdoors, FloppyFlex is available in a large dome (270° view angle), small dome (160° view angle), and flat versions, including the new ultra-slim SkinnyFlex.

FloppyFlex comes in various colour options including RGB, Digital RGBWW (pixel controlled), standard single-colours including Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, and a wide selection of single-colour whites ranging from 2100 to 5700 Kelvin. The Firefly range of decorative, outdoor-rated lighting systems also includes Festoon with shatterproof, outdoor-rated LED lamps, Fairy Lights long-life, heavy-duty LED Strings and Icicles, and new Bud Lights thimble LED strings

Find out more about Submariners’ Walk Heritage Trail at www.communityheritage.net.au/submariners-walk-heritage-trail-teneriffe.

This summer Muse continued their Simulation Theory world tour through the UK and Europe. The extremely successful North American leg of the visually rich stadium tour put crew and equipment to the test in 23 cities!

Flares

Jesse Lee Stout, the creative director for the tour, wanted the entire lighting rig and stage to feel like a spaceship straight out of the ‘80s/’90s sci-fi movies we all know and love,” explains Tour Lighting Designer and Programmer, Sooner Routhier. “Making that all-encompassing vision brighter are 176 Solaris Flare® LR and 51 Solaris Flare Q+ fixtures. First, neon outlines, comprised of Upstaging Sabers, outline the sides of the truss to help turn the rig into a giant space invader. The Flare LRs provide a thicker, brighter line of light to accentuate the lines of trusses. At the tips of each truss, the structure flips up 45 degrees with three LRs sitting side by side. They represent the thrusters of the spaceship. The Flare Q+ fixtures sit inside ramps inside the stage, functioning as metal gratings/vents in the spaceship floors. The Flare Q+ light them as if they are glowing with futuristic energy.

Sooner adds, “Brightness is the biggest factor in specifying Flares. We are competing with a very large video wall upstage. It was important for the lines of the structure to stand out when needed. We also really love the clean, smooth surface of the lights.”

Lighting Director, Aaron Luke adds, “From my side of things, I find both the Q+ and the LRs to be performing quite well. The fixtures serve a few different purposes on this tour, acting as crowd blinders, eye candy, in addition to lighting the set and the band. Their brightness and consistency are definitely major assets, especially in a stadium situation.

I cannot speak highly enough of the crew from Upstaging, led by Crew Chief, Seth Conlin. Given the rigours of outdoor shows in a European summer, the crew do an incredible job of keeping the system going despite often getting drenched.

FloppyFlex

An audience-pleasing highlight of the show is the song “Dig Down”, for which the band’s three members cluster closely together downstage, at an upright piano. The piano is tastefully outlined on all four sides with bright, glowing, rounded oblongs of FloppyFlex RGB LED Neon by Firefly. Designed and installed by Upstaging, the bright, flexible FloppyFlex accents turn the instrument into an elegant set piece, perfect for the intimate number, night after night.

For me the key is reliable equipment in all conditions, says Muse Production Manager, George Reeves, and we’ve had no issues since receiving the piano prop from Upstaging. What I care about most is consistency in shows that the band demands and rightly expects. Everything we have from TMB just works and that’s what we need.

Every year in New Zealand, Wellington’s Botanic Gardens is transformed into Gardens Magic featuring a free concert series with an eclectic mix of music from over 100 performers during 18 nights.

As the sun goes down, the Botanic Gardens transform into a wonderland of lights, with colourful installations and displays created by MJF Lighting Limited.

This year, MJF Lighting had heaps of Firefly LED Festoon Lighting to add extra sparkle to the popular event. Designed for permanent outdoor use, Firefly LED Festoon Lighting can more than handle New Zealand’s temperamental weather!

We did have some festoon lighting but it was the old school version so it was definitely time for an upgrade,” commented Blair McLaren, MJF’s Wellington Operations Manager. “Having festoon lighting with an outdoor rating plus LED technology makes all the difference!

Blair added that an important factor when choosing Firefly LED Festooning was the fact that they didn’t have to lamp or de-lamp the strings of festoon which massively sped up install and bump out times.

The lighting designer for the event was Will Smith who describes the Firefly LED Festooning as simply brilliant.

The versatility it offers is amazing,” he continued. “I can easily string it between two points knowing I won’t need to get a ladder to add bulbs, so you can add it to so many more places previously inaccessible. We had it set up with some splitters off the connectors we have which makes it a lot more versatile in terms of feeding power to the strings. We can send three strings off one centre point on the one power supply. That’s great for when you have limited power locations.

For Gardens Magic, the Firefly LED Festooning was used in an area where many young families congregate creating a nice, warm canopy over the lawn area. More Festooning was used to tie in the rest of the event to this area.

Firefly LED Festoon strings are made to order so you can have anything you like from 1m to 40m in one continuous string. The LED bulbs are designed to survive harsh as the shell is made from a smash proof polycarbonate material which comes in colours and a clear option which looks just like glass.

This winter, Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Ghost of Christmas Eve tour celebrated 20 years on the road. Described by the Washington Post as “an arena-rock juggernaut,” the path-breaking band’s blitz tour included 33 states and 106 shows in just 46 days, an achievement by any measure for musicians, machines, and mankind!

The band “churns out a maelstrom of sound every bit as visceral and dazzling as the accompanying light show,” said the Daily Times of Knoxville. The Daily Herald of Salt Lake City, extols the “jaw-dropping display . . . constantly something captivating to watch.”

Credit for such praise goes to Production/Lighting Designer Bryan Hartley, Director of Touring and Production Elliot Saltzman, and the entire TSO production team. The production incorporated 140 total meters of FloppyFlex Digital® RGBW LED neon encircling seven, three-meter diameter, moving trusses.

FloppyFlex was the perfect solution, says Bryan Hartley. “I was looking for a product I could wrap around my seven circular trusses over the stage; I needed a super-bright, neon-looking product that was flexible and reliable. FloppyFlex gave me the precise look I needed for my design. I was very happy with FloppyFlex and received many compliments on the overall look as well as the product.

Two complete sets of the ‘pixelated’ digital FloppyFlex were provided,” adds Rusty Wingfield of PRG, “one each for the East and West Coast legs of the tour. That’s 280 meters total, all of which we received with connectors pre-installed by TMB, all driven by FloppyDrive Digital™ portable DMX control drivers.

Sydney-based 32 Hundred Lighting was established in 1988 by Iain Reed and over the years the company has gained a reputation for creating magic with creative and cutting edge lighting, as well as sound and audiovisuals.

Their extensive portfolio includes corporate, community, fashion, social events, and government work but it was their work with outdoor Night Food Markets that led them to Firefly Lighting.

We needed Fairy Lights and Festoon Lighting but it needed to be weatherproof, very robust and simple to set up, commented Iain Reed, Managing Director of 32 Hundred. When Heath showed us the Firefly product we knew straight away that it was the ideal solution. As well as being very well constructed the colour rendering is great.

Today 32 Hundred Lighting owns approximately 20 kilometres of Firefly LED Fairy Lights and over one kilometre of LED Festooning – enough to Firefly large swathes of Sydney!!

Firefly LED Festoon lighting faithfully recreates a traditional look without the headache of constantly changing bulbs or the need to worry about broken glass or risk using high voltage. Let’s face it, no one at a Night Food Market wants to find broken pieces of glass in their street food.

32 Hundred Lighting has used their Firefly product on many events over the last few years and what has stood out is the longevity and reliability of the product. However, on one project that involved thousands of LED Fairy Lights decorating the façade of the main David Jones Sydney department store, they kept failing – something that is unheard of with Firefly LED Fairy Lights!

The LED Fairy Lights kept failing in certain sections and as this was so unusual, we had to investigate further,” explained Iain. “Let’s just say it was some local wildlife turned vandals and all we could do was replace the damaged lights. Fortunately, that was a breeze thanks to Firefly’s Quick Connect System.

Of course, Firefly LED Fairy Lights and LED Festooning are a massive hit at weddings and corporate events, especially when combined with 32 Hundred’s fabulous outdoor chandeliers. It’s a winning combination!

Made stronger and more robust for Australia’s extreme weather conditions, the Firefly Lighting system is designed to provide you with greater creative flexibility while significantly reducing the time and labour required to install.

When a client reaches out and tells you that they are tired of going to the club and they want the club to come to them, you obviously drop everything that can be dropped and create an in-home party room the likes of which have never been seen! “The client had a secondary guest-house on his property, and he wanted to turn the single room into a miniature bar/nightclub so he reached out to us at Blue Haze Entertainment with this idea, and we immediately got started on putting together a design concept,” explained Nikolai Beyla, designer and manager of the installation for Blue Haze Entertainment.

The club has a video wall 8 meters wide covering two of the walls, composed of Chauvet Video F3 panels, as well as mirrors everywhere and large glass patio doors that open to a view of the mountains. The video wall and the various lighting fixtures reflect off all the mirrored and glass surfaces, giving the feeling of being in a much larger space with even more lighting. Fifteen wood panels are attached to the ceiling, each containing a section of Firefly® FloppyFlex LED Neon, a truly gorgeous product according to Nikolai. These panels create a massive, 91-metre long geometric pattern on the ceiling, scattered through which are dozens of recessed Gantom RGBW wash fixtures. Firefly FloppyFlex LED Neon comprises a range of green-friendly, safe, low voltage, DIY, easy to install, lineal long-life lighting systems that can be simply bent and cut to whatever your design requires, for both indoors and out.

We utilized just over 91 meters (300 ft) of the RGBW FloppyFlex on the ceiling, arranged into a large geometric pattern, driven by 12 ProPlex™ Din Rail FloppyDrives.” said Nikolai. “Each section of the FloppyFlex is mounted onto stained plywood panels that were attached to the ceiling on-site at various heights, giving the entire geometric pattern a three-dimensional feeling. I have to say I love the Firefly FloppyFlex, it’s an AMAZING looking product and the connections we selected, with the help of our friends at Firefly’s distributor TMB, allowed the final installation of the product to look very clean, as if pre-manufactured, but of course, the product was cut to length and then wired together on-site.

The entire system is controlled by an Avolites Titan Net Processor and AI video server. The AI specifically controls both the FloppyFlex and the video wall by sending matching or correlating video content pixel-mapped to the fixtures. The control network is also integrated with a custom IPad-based API programmed by BHE, allowing the client to control all aspects of the club’s lighting from a simple touch-screen interface without having to learn console syntax or complicated lighting or video controls. In addition to the video wall and FloppyFlex, the club also features almost a hundred recessed Gantom floodlights that are all individually pixel-mapped, providing colour throughout the space. BHE also added a few moving lights: Martin RUSH MH10 Beam FX and Martin RUSH Scanner 1 LED, both chosen for their low profiles in consideration of the low-ceiling height in the space.

FloppyFlex highest-quality, professional-grade, flexible LED neon is the perfect and professional replacement for glass neon: Super-bright, easy to use, long-lasting, durable, and at 24VDC, safe. Perfect for use indoors and outdoors, FloppyFlex is available in three sizes, in single-colour, RGB, and Digital RGB and RGBW with DMX multi-pixel control. FloppyFlex White colour temperatures range from 2100 to 5700K and standard colours include Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Amber, Pink and Purple. Side-to-Side and Front-to-Back bend options are available, and accessories include a wide range of mounting profiles. New silicone versions provide even greater flexibility and long-term reliability.

Blue Haze Entertainment Crew
Design: Nikolai Beyla
Programming: James Sidler
API-Integration: Andrew Sommervile

The classic arched front-entry sign of Southgate Shopping Center in Lakeland, Florida, is now shining brightly again, thanks to Firefly FloppyFlex™, the high quality, professional LED neon replacement. After being dark for decades, property managers Crossman & Company decided it was time to bring this beloved sign back to life. Retrofitting it with the latest technology, delivering a variety of bright colours and animated looks, promised to re-energize this historic commercial area.

The main motivation behind the project to revive the Southgate sign was the love the local community has for it,” said Stephanie Carten, marketing manager for Crossman & Company. “We purposely kept the iconic look and stylized script, taking the sign back to its former glory but with a technical edge.

The famous 26-meter tall and 42-meter-wide Arch has been a pop-culture icon since it was built in 1957. It has appeared in several Hollywood movies, perhaps most famously Tim Burton’s 1990 hit Edward Scissorhands, featuring actor Johnny Depp. Disney used the shopping centre to shoot scenes for The One and Only Ivan, an adaptation of the Newberry-medal winning novel by Katherine Applegate, released in August 2020, listing actress Angelina Jolie as a producer.

Looking for the best replacement for the old glass neon, Crossman & Company contacted lighting distributors Lamp Sales, who knew exactly who to call. Shortly thereafter, Kyle Ledford, SESCO’s Regional Product Specialist, and TMB’s Chris Curran travelled to Lakeland to assess the task. After a brief review of the project, they had no doubt that FloppyFlex™ was the right product for the job.

FloppyFlex bends easily and can be supplied cut precisely to spec, in this case fluently following the bends of the legacy sign’s cursive writing. FloppyFlex is a green-friendly, multi-colour, low voltage, easy to install, long-life, decorative lighting system, and is void of the issues usually associated with neon, such as breakage and fire risk. It is also weatherproof, IP rated, and designed for permanent outdoor installation – ideal for Florida’s extreme weather.

Given the age of the sign, there were no CAD files, or even drawings available, so the team carefully measured the entire span of the structure to design the FloppyFlex “cuts” and the installation control inputs/outputs using TMB’s RGB FloppyDrives™. A total of 343 meters of FloppyFlex was used, precisely IP68 factory-moulded for each individual run length. The first 174 meters were used on the SOUTHGATE letters, at two runs per letter. The SHOPPING CENTER letters were based on one run per letter. A further 169 meters of RGB FloppyFlex LED Neon serviced the top and bottom architectural details. A system of 39 TMB ProPlex FloppyDrive DIN Rail 4×2’s drives were installed to control the FloppyFlex, with full, remote, web-based access. The project was successfully completed earlier this year.

Holiday season visitors to Southgate will experience the landmark arch with a new nightly light-show series. Going forward, the Center will have almost unlimited options to (remotely) customize their sign for different seasons, holidays and special events, making it once again a must-see attraction in Lakeland.

FloppyFlex™ is super-bright, long-lasting, durable and easy to install with simple training. Perfect for use indoors and outdoors, FloppyFlex is available in three sizes, in Side-to-Side and Front-to-Back bend options, with a variety of single-colours, RGB, RGBW, plus Digital RGB and RGBW with DMX multi-pixel control. Pure white colour temperatures range from 2100 to 5700K and standard single colour versions include red, green, blue, yellow, orange, amber, plus new pink, and purple. Accessories include a truly comprehensive range of mounting profiles. New silicone versions introduced this year provide even greater flexibility and long-term outdoor reliability.