About a year and a half ago, Peter de Jong introduced Dahua to Fred Koks, General Manager of KITT Engineering. Since then, Dahua, KITT Engineering and Ocean Outdoor have completed five joint projects together. Follow-up appointments for the next two projects are already scheduled.
Looking back
"Let's see what happens" was Fred's reaction when introduced to Dahua. ''We evaluate our portfolio with suppliers every year,'' he explained. "We have to. So much is changing and new technology is developing incredibly fast. You have to keep up." He knows better than anyone how mobile the market is. "Among suppliers of LED screens, there is a constant battle for market position and new technology. We all know the big providers and the market leaders. But it is not necessarily that they are also at the forefront of technology."
Collaborating together
Erwin van Domselaar, Operations & Project Manager at Ocean Outdoor, says his company dares to blindly trust the expertise of Koks and his people when choosing a particular type of LED screen. "KITT Engineering is our technical supplier. They are very good at distinguishing good products from bad products, and we trust them completely on this. When they have a product they see a future in, they discuss it with us to see if we can take on a project together with it."
In Dahua's case, that first project is a screen in a shopping center called Koperwiek – an indoor shopping center with more than a hundred fashion-related shops – located in Capelle aan den Ijssel. "That was a relatively small project," Erwin recalls. "The screen was not too big. But the initial learnings and experience with the screen were very good before we started. And the installation itself went off without a hitch. Exactly what we expected from this product."
Soon, a second project was launched. This time in a shopping center called Sterrenburg in Dordrecht. "Here, not everything went smoothly right away. Not regarding the screen, but its coincidence with the renovation of the shopping center. They had actually just finished. All the walls had been neatly plastered and at that moment we asked if a new cable could be drawn. Fortunately, all this was eventually dealt with and solved in a very pleasant cooperation with the project developer, but it took some time."
Pure craftsmanship
The third and fourth projects are true masterpieces. In Hoofddorp, KITT Engineering installed a corner screen. "A unique screen for us," says Erwin. "It is the first screen that goes around a corner. It is half a meter that goes around the corner, fitting in super nicely with the surroundings. On paper, a huge screen of forty square meters, but when you stand there, you don't notice it because it blends in so well with the surroundings. We are always looking for something new and surprising. And a screen that turns around the corner offers a lot of new possibilities. For example, in terms of 3D content." Fred adds: "The screen doesn't just go around the corner, it goes around the corner seamlessly. KITT is always trying to bring novelties forward so we've had corner screens before. But that was in art projects and things like that where requirements are a lot lower. In the process, we were able to try out various techniques and we also found out that the products we had at our disposal at that time were not one hundred percent ready. Then Dahua came up with a prototype, we were very pleased with the 'cold corner' as we call it. It is really LED on LED, without a seam."
To understand how clever this feat of engineering is, it's worth realizing that the margin you have to make the image seamless is the space between two LEDs. Millimeter work, on a length of ten by five meters.
"The fourth project was placing a screen in the atrium of Zuidplein shopping center in RoFerdam," Peter says. "The screen was placed against a glass elevator. When you see that, [it is] not normal the way it came together. You don't see a cable or anything. Really fantastic."
The fifth project collaboration between Dahua, KITT Engineering and Ocean Outdoor is a LED display screen in Westfield Mall of the Netherlands.
24/7 remote system monitoring
In addition to the regular LED screen and the driving system, a screen control and monitoring system was also developed to monitor the primary system at every point. “We want to see remotely how our assets in the country are doing," Fred explains. From the video player to dysfunctional LEDs, everything can be monitored remotely. For instance, it prevents the light intensity from being too high. Something that can have major consequences in outdoor advertising.
