4D Insights

Based in Nantes, France, Ledixis designs DMX controllers for lighting control on TV and cinema sets for its brand Exalux which targets commercial customers. It is a balancing act to cost effectively develop new product lines & revenue sources. It requires assessing the overall sales potential of a new product against the development cost to bring that product into the market. Rapid prototyping and the ability to turn an idea into a final product quickly are necessary to keep development costs low. Ledixis was presented with this challenge when they were required to develop a custom DMX controller for a customer, while having to avoid using costly hardware & software.

Técnico Solar Boat are a competitive team of 33 university students from a range of engineering disciplines based at Instituto Superior Técnico from Lisbon, Portugal. With a mission to promote the use of renewable energy and electric mobility, they develop vessels from scratch, compete internationally at competitions held in Netherlands & Monaco each year and contribute to the broader industry’s knowledge by sharing their work as an open-source project. With two prototypes & 2 years of competing under their belt, the team wanted to build a new boat – the São Rafael 02. The objective was to be lighter, faster & more efficient than its predecessor, the São Rafael 01. Being a manned vessel, they knew they needed a custom display in the cockpit for the pilot to use to drive the boat in a safe manner.

Based in New York, USA, Carl Darby set out to create a scale model of the EVA Pod from the Movie 2001: A Space Odyssey – a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Not content with simply backlighting the panels, he wanted the panels to be animated just as they did in the film. Using the 1:8 scale model kit from Moebius, Darby needed to find small enough LCD screens that he could program and add into his model to replicate exactly the video screens seen in the movie.