Project Quick Facts
Do you like cars? Electric cars — and Audi in particular? We do. And when the agency Make Sense Creative, working with the Slovak Audi Club, reached out about building a light track for the premiere of the new Audi e-Tron GT, we said yes without hesitation.
Watching that car run in near-total silence — no engine roar, just speed — was something else. It deserved a proper stage.
How It Started #
The team at the agency had spotted our ProfiLED bars on YouTube. A conversation started, and then came the questions: “Can you trigger the animation with a sensor when the car crosses the start line?” Yes. “Can you make the track over 100 meters long?” Yes.
Little did we know the installation day would involve frozen ground, a snowstorm, and a hammer that would give most people a workout.
What We Packed #
Before any event installation, you count everything twice. Here’s what went into the van:
- 100 ProfiLED RGBW LED bars, each 1.5 m long
- 85 reinforcing steel bars, 1.5 m × 16 mm diameter — total weight: 250 kg
- 100 insulating tubes (large diameter) for visual finish
- 8 powered digital LED controllers — built-in power supply, no separate PSU needed
- 400 m of Ethernet cable for the controller network
- 400 m of power cable
- 200+ m of extension cables for the bars
- Plus clamps, tools, and the usual assortment of things you’re glad you brought
The powered LEC3 controllers were a key choice here. Because each unit has a built-in power supply, you eliminate a significant chunk of cable runs and hardware compared to running separate power sources for every zone. For an outdoor LED pixel installation stretched over 150 meters, that matters.
Installation Day: Snow, Frozen Ground, and a Very Large Drill #
We arrived the day before the event to survey the site. The report:
- Soil: frozen solid
- Road surface: slight slope
- Weather: snow
Excellent.
The plan was to drive the steel bars 50 cm into the ground as anchors, then clamp the ProfiLED LED bars to them with the insulating tubes over the top for a clean finish. In theory, straightforward. In practice, frozen ground requires an electric drill with an oversized bit, and a hammer that you have to argue with to go where it needs to go.
The most time-consuming task? Getting 42 bars per side to form a reasonably straight line. By noon the temperature was just above 0°C. Small clamps with gloves on are not fun. By 5 pm, both lines were in — 42 LED bars on each side of the road, fully cabled, forming a symmetrical 150-meter corridor of light.
Two lines. Each with 42 bars. A total of 100 RGB LED bars across the full installation (including staging and test positions).
The Infrared Trigger #
The animation you see in the video doesn’t start on a cue from an operator. It starts the moment the car crosses the start line.
We used an infrared beam detector connected to the LEC3 controller. When the Audi breaks the IR beam, LEC3 immediately fires the pre-programmed animation — a wave of light that races down the full length of the track ahead of the car. The effect is instant, autonomous, and repeatable. No one has to press anything. The car does it.
LEC was not designed exactly for this kind of use. But using some tweaks we were able to use external sensors — IR beams, motion detectors, physical buttons — that trigger specific animations on addressable LED strips without needing a live operator. Standalone, reliable, fast.
The Race #
The sun was long gone by the time the cars arrived. Two of the three you could hear coming from a distance. The third one — the Audi e-Tron GT — arrived in almost complete silence. That contrast alone made an impression on the journalists gathered for the test drive session.
The fixed 150-meter track ran for about an hour of test drives. Speed measurement was handled by a professional timing crew. The LED corridor lit up every single run.
Watch the video and see if you can pick out which car is the e-Tron GT just from the sound — or the lack of it.
Frequently Asked Questions #
What is REACTIVO and how does it trigger LED animations from a sensor?
REACTIVO is a standalone LED pixel controller that connects to external trigger inputs — infrared beam detectors, motion sensors, push buttons, or relay contacts. When a trigger fires, REACTIVO immediately launches a pre-programmed animation stored in its memory, without needing a connected computer. For the Audi track, an IR beam at the start line sent the signal; REACTIVO fired a light-wave animation down the full 150-meter corridor the instant the car broke the beam. Response time is near-instantaneous.
For this installation, we used the LEC3 controller. The Reactivo was still in an early phase of development.
What are ProfiLED bars and why are they good for outdoor events?
ProfiLED bars are self-contained RGB LED pixel bars with built-in aluminum profiles and diffusion covers. Each bar is a fixed length (1.5 m in this project), weather-resistant, and designed for easy mechanical mounting — in this case, clamped onto steel ground anchors. The RGB configuration gives clean white output as well as full color. For temporary outdoor LED pixel installations that need to go up fast and come down clean, bars are far more practical than raw strip-in-profile builds.
How do you power 100 LED bars over a 150-meter outdoor run?
The key is using powered LED controllers — units with a built-in power supply rather than requiring a separate PSU per zone. In this installation, 8 powered digital controllers were distributed along the track. Each controller powered and drove a section of the bars over short cable runs, keeping voltage drop negligible. The controllers were networked via Ethernet back to the main control point. This approach avoids running heavy power cables the full length of the track from a single source.
What is the difference between RGB and RGBW LED strips for events?
RGB strips mix red, green, and blue to produce color — including white, which is a mix of all three channels. RGBW strips add a dedicated white LED element. The dedicated white produces much cleaner, higher-CRI white light than RGB mixing can achieve. For events like automotive presentations where you need both dynamic color effects and a clean white light mode (for media photography, for example), RGBW is the better choice. The Audi track used RGBW bars for exactly that flexibility.
How do you install LED bars into frozen outdoor ground?
In this project: steel reinforcing bars (16 mm diameter, 1.5 m long) were driven 50 cm into frozen ground using an electric drill with an oversized core bit to pre-bore the hole, followed by a hammer to seat the bar. The ProfiLED bars were then clamped to the steel bars at surface level, with insulating tubes over the steel for a clean visual finish. It’s physical work in cold conditions — the real constraint is getting 84 ground anchors in a straight line while wearing gloves at 0°C.
Can LED bars be used for rental events and removed afterward?
Yes — this is one of the core use cases for modular LED bar systems. The bars clamp onto mounting structures without adhesive or permanent fixings, cable connections are standardized, and the controllers are standalone units that configure quickly. The Audi track was fully installed by a small crew in one day and could be removed just as fast. For rental event companies, a bar-based system is significantly faster to deploy and pack down than custom strip installations built on-site.