ADVERT I SEMENT FE ATURE . LITEPANELS
BRIDGING THE DIVIDE As a new dawn of connectivity rises, the Litepanels Apollo Bridge is combining Wi-Fi bands, housing a host of industry-standard tech, bringing you closer than ever before to your on-set network
What’s more, a unique frequency-hopping algorithm will weave between the two, depending on what’s offering the best results at any given moment. “The benefit,” Duff continues, “is that it allows you to work more easily in RF-heavy production environments. There are plenty of other wireless tools that need to be navigated around for optimal performance. Equally, you don’t want to interfere with those, either.” The results speak for themselves. Expect zero latency, 300m of DMX coverage and 100m of Wi-Fi transmission. While it’s hard to quantify the extent to which frequency hopping benefits reliability, extensive usage has been very promising. “The Apollo Bridge has been on every type and level of production, pitted against the toughest RF environments in the world. Crews have said what would have otherwise been chaos, went smoothly.” There’s no one-size-fits-all tool within any area of production. Thankfully, there’s an answer to that. “Frequency hopping is best in most cases and works right out of the box, but you’ll always encounter unique demands. On top of a wireless DMX bridge node, the Apollo is an enterprise-grade router. It lets you fully customise a network on an IP level. If you decide it’s better to stay off one frequency altogether, you can,” says Duff. Therein lies the Apollo Bridge’s secret. While it performs exceptionally as a DMX, its potential is far more expansive.
LIGHTING HAS FACILITATED production since its very inception. And, more recently, has shaped the industry in increasingly innovative ways. We’ve welcomed game- changing fixtures and sought ever-more efficient means of controlling them. That process will likely never stop, but it does appear to have reached new heights – in the form of the Litepanels Apollo Bridge. It’s a wireless DMX system, but not as we know it. Timothy Duff, technical sales specialist for Litepanels, explains. “On the Wi-Fi network side, the Apollo Bridge’s biggest advantage is reliability, range and latency – it’s the only dual-band bridge available on the market. It transmits both 2.4GHz and 5GHz at the same time.
HOP ON THE BANDWAGON The Apollo Bridge makes use of frequency hopping, to switch between 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi
“A binary DMX network is becoming insufficient to market demands, with today’s advanced fixtures. So, the Apollo Bridge goes further, allowing you to create a full local area network and manage devices beyond just lights. “Connecting to a wide area network is possible, spurred on by remote working and the rise of virtual production. For the latter, every device will one day connect back to a gaming engine. Creation, customisation and management of networking are all essential, and this is the device to do that. For lighting, it still outputs DMX – the ultimate requirement for the fixtures.”
“A binary DMX network is becoming insufficient to market demands... the Apollo Bridge goes further”
SAFE HANDS No matter the environment or type of production, the Apollo Bridge is built to deliver
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