Automatisations - Alden Biesen

   Bokrijk
   Beringen
   Rijkel
   Gallo Roman
> Alden Biesen
   Miat Ghent

    Alden Biesen

    Alden Biesen is situated in the town of Bilzen, the Province of Limburg Belgium and the Euregio, the international area between Meuse and Rhine. The surrounding cities are Hasselt, Tongeren, Ličge, Maastricht and Aachen. A museum is located in one of the houses in Alden Biesen.

    The "Apostel house" is located in the center of 7 little villages. Now it's re-build into an "interactive" museum. It became a very modern museum, equipped with the most sofisticated audio-visual equippement which introduces you to the region where the museum is located. Here you learn about different aspects: the legends of the 7 different villages, the local birds and the behaviour of nature through the seasons.

Wheel chamber

In the wheel chamber a big wheel is installed in the ceiling. The wheel is divided in to 7 parts, each part representing a village. The visitor chooses a language and rotates the big wheel with the little handle.

The electronics is reading the buttons for the language selection and it measures the positioning of the wheel. During rotating, the lights are chasing the position. After the wheel has stopped the corresponding TL-lights go on, and the visitor can hear the legend of that village.

A special wheel is installed in the "seasons" chamber. The wheel is divided in to twelve pieces, each piece representing one of the twelve months of the year.

By rotating the wheel, the visitor can see (displayed with LEDs) the flowering time of the local flowers and herbs. It's a stand-alone unit, that uses electronics to measure the position of the wheel and to drive the LEDs for the corresponding flowers and herbs of that month.

Seasons chamber

Birds chamber

    In the "bird" chamber a wall is installed with 25 birds. Every time that you hear a bird, the corresponding bird on the wall is highlighted with a DMX-fixture.

    A Case-interface is used to trigger the DMX-fixture synchronized with the sound.

    With binoculars the visitors can take a closer look of the birds that are displayed.

    There are two PCs installed in the computer chamber. They are controlling the "bird" chamber and the "wheel" chamber. All the functions of the chambers are graphically displayed on the monitors, to have a quick overview of the status of each chamber and to adjust parameters if needed.

    The two computers are remotely triggered each morning and evening to power on and off. Each PC has a Case interface build-in for all the I/O like: buttons, encoders, DMX-512.

    The automatization project for the Alden Biesen was realized in collaboration with the company WhiteLight:www.whitelight.be

    The Alden Biesen automatization project has a website where you can find more pictures and informations:www.alden-biesen.be