In 2019 Bay Tek built a sizable addition to their building. We wanted to dedicate an area to show off our company’s 40 year history. At first we were going to simply hang static graphics in a hallway, but I pushed to create a huge animated timeline displayed on four separate projectors.

Before I mention anything else I should say that I had a ton of help from several programmers and engineers up to their necks in other projects!

After measuring the area I determined that three projectors would need to work in unison to create a seamless timeline. Then we added a fourth projector to display a list of all our products. This was no simple task. We could either try to sync four separate videos, or try to split one very large video between four displays. Either way, it would take a ton of computing power and after sourcing long-life, short-throw projectors, I didn’t have a lot of budget left for the computer.

Sometimes the answer is right under your nose. We decided to use Unity (a video game editor) to run the project because this would tax the system less than a video.

We wanted to put company awards on the other side of the wall. I designed a set of glowing LED shelves for the. Unfortunately, fire codes forced us to have an extinguisher in the middle of the awards. No problem. I just made the extinguisher into an award too!

Between the ceiling constantly flexing and a slight bow in the wall, it was impossible to align all the projectors perfectly. I had to add subtle breaks in the design where one projector bled into the next.

In the end, the display wasn’t just cool, it was practical. A dynamic display like this allows us to add content whenever we like.