Casinos in Macau SAR, China, are known for dazzling lights and extravagant structures, and Daktronics Inc of Brookings, SD is in the middle of the action. Daktronics has taken lighting to the extremes by designing, manufacturing, and installing a ProPixel® intelligent lighting system for The Grand Lisboa Hotel that combines typical outdoor lighting effects with the ability to create and display custom text messages, graphics, animations, and video images.

The Grand Lisboa’s exterior was inspired by the yellow lotus flower, which is regarded as an official emblem of the Macao Special Administrative Region, and enhanced by an egg podium base, giving an elegant impression of a Faberge egg. The egg podium, which measure 56m (184’) high and 189m (620’) wide with an area of approximately 10,609-sq-m, is completely lit up using over 59,000 ProPixel light-emitting diode (LED) lighting elements. The podium is made up of 12,000 triangles of different colored triangle-shaped glass with ProPixel elements engineered to custom fit the spaces between the pieces of glass.

“We reviewed the proposals from many companies worldwide before choosing Daktronics’ ProPixel to light up our property. We have been pleased with the results,” says Alan R. J. Ho, Management Committee of Sociedade de Jogos de Macau (SJM), owner of The Grand Lisboa.

Daktronics Keyframe® creative group was also instrumental in the project success. Keyframe, a division of Daktronics, delivers the creative vision and technical expertise to help customers maximize the impact of spectacular display systems. Keyframe creative services was responsible for building all creative content for the initial project opening ceremony and building a creative content foundation. This foundation enabled the customer to open the property with a full menu of display content that created an immediate impact in the market.

“The project was a unique challenge. We put together a strong technical team to design and install the system that met the architect’s and the customer’s expectations. From product engineering and system design, to project management, content creation, and support from Daktronics technical service office in Macau; each was required to create a truly spectacular display unlike anything else in the world,” says Peter Dunkle, Asia Pacific Business Development for Daktronics.

ProPixel lighting elements will also accentuate the facility’s marquee entrance display, using a total of 2,543 elements for the veins on the leaf-like structure and the channel letters that spell “Grand Lisboa” in both English and Cantonese Chinese.

Daktronics ProPixel LED elements offer the ability to design and build freeform, video-capable architectural elements and channel letters with out the constraints of traditional square LED modules. This ultra-sophisticated technology is essentially a video display system with true video processing in 100% digital, 19-bit processing and is capable of displaying more than 4.3 trillion colors.