Travel up the Jutland peninsula to Denmark's northwest coast and you find one of the country's largest and most popular amusement parks, Fårup Sommerland. The park showcases a popular light festival each fall, Lysfald, which this year ran for 16 days in October and attracted over 12,500 guests per day. Pivotal in ensuring that the lighting installation ran smoothly were NETRON EN6 IP nodes, award-winning data distribution devices by Obsidian Control Systems that played a critical role in managing the large-scale, synchronized lighting display.

Lysfald
Fårup Sommerland is home to seven roller coasters and the country's largest amusement park water park. Four years ago, in collaboration with AV solutions provider Profox, the park sought to extend its season into the fall by creating a new attraction-an immersive, park-wide light show. The result was Lysfald, a three-hour spectacle featuring an ambient lighting environment synced to music representing the four seasons of the year.

"We wanted to do something unique, and the idea emerged of turning the entire amusement park into a light show," explains Jonas Storgaard Johannesen, technician at Profox. "There aren't a lot of light festivals on this scale in Denmark and the challenge of covering such a large area-equivalent to 28 football fields-was daunting. We were looking for new nodes with more ports because it's a vast area and we have everything spread out across the site. We talked to LiteNordic about a solution and were introduced to the NETRON EN6 IP node. With its six ports and IP66 protection, it made the task simpler and gave us a robust, flexible lighting network."

Lysfald is an enchanting experience where light, sound, and landscape merge to transform the park into a sensory adventure, using intelligent and static lighting to create dynamic effects that adapt to the seasonal narrative. Every area of the park offers a new experience.

The first year with Lysfald was a challenge, says Jonas, but a challenge they embraced. "It is a big area, so we divided it up into smaller sections, each section a part of one large show. Then after year one, to make it more interesting, we started creating smaller light shows within the main show."

Stable signal distribution
With such a large scale, Lysfald requires a high caliber technical setup. The EN6 IP nodes, with their rugged IP66 rating, were crucial to the lighting system. The six RDM-compatible ports on each unit enabled Profox to easily distribute DMX signals across the expansive park, all while withstanding Denmark's often harsh autumn weather.

"Having IP-rated devices was key," says Jonas. "We didn't have to worry about protecting the nodes from rain. We could place them exactly where they were needed and didn't have to deal with long cable runs or protective dry boxes. That saved us time and resources. It also made everything more stable because we didn't have to run DMX cable for 100 meters before we started to plug in the lamps, so the signal stayed strong."

Quick and easy setup
Throughout the festival, 12 EN6 IP nodes were used to control around 500 lights, providing stable and efficient distribution of DMX data. "The ability to configure the EN6 IP nodes directly on the device, without needing a web interface, made setup incredibly quick and easy," adds Jonas. "We were able to set the IP address, Universes, and protocols right on the node, which saved us significant time compared to previous devices we have used."

Used for the main show and the smaller shows, Profox employed the NETRON CLU software to streamline the configuration and monitoring of the entire system, ensuring seamless operation throughout the festival. The NETRON CLU is an easy-to-navigate central utility interface useful in discovering and managing NETRON data distribution devices across a lighting network. Especially helpful when deploying networks that use multiple nodes, or when working with nodes that lack integrated screens, the NETRON CLU makes NETRON data signal devices even easier to configure, eliminating the need to physically access the devices themselves.

Roller Coasters
The EN6 IP nodes were also used to help take Fårup Sommerland's popular roller coasters to the next level. Profox was tasked with making Fønix (Phoenix), Denmark's tallest and fastest roller coaster, more entertaining after dark. Enhanced with a dynamic light show synchronized to the ride's movements using sensors and time-coded lighting, the ride features a blinding burst of light followed by a 45-meter drop in total darkness. Encouraged by its success, Profox added lighting effects to the Lynet (Lightning) roller coaster, creating an electrifying experience for riders with strobe lighting simulating lightning as the ride accelerates from 0 to 80 km in two seconds.

Profox's collaboration with LiteNordic, Obsidian Control Systems' Danish distributor, has been instrumental in securing the right equipment for concerts, music festivals, and large-scale projects like Lysfald. The success of guest experiences like Lysfald has helped establish Fårup Sommerland as one of Denmark's most innovative and fun amusement parks.

"Our client was happy with the results," Jonas remarks. "The Lysfald light show has become a major attraction, drawing visitors not just from Denmark but from across the region. It's not every day you get to ride a roller coaster in the dark surrounded by a mesmerizing light show."

Photos courtesy of Profox