Take this in for a moment: before Keith built our Lightshow Editor, he built the lightshows IN CODE using colors and time codification.

Our first “Lightshow Editor”

I am not an engineer, but it definitely doesn’t seem like the easiest way to build a lightshow.

Keith quickly realized that people would need a way to build the lightshows on the web if we were going to have customers. Desiring to build something user-friendly, he drew influences from familiar user interfaces like Adobe Premier and Final Cut Pro. Building a lightshow is a lot like building a movie file, or a song, so why not start there?

It took a couple months to complete, but it was an exciting time because a lot of the technology at his disposal was new (i.e. HTML5 Media API’s).

We are constantly refining and building on the editor, but what you have now is a great tool that allows you to build lightshows in time with a song. You can add effects, snap to a time signature and even augment your effects across a wide spectrum of color.

One of our favorite users, Kristian Ponsford (@iam_KP) recently filmed a demonstration of our Lighshow Editor, without any prompting from us. It is reassuring that someone could intuitively understand the software well enough to feel comfortable teaching it to other people.

Thank you Kristian for the demo!

It’s happened. I’ve suddenly become the guy that Louie warned about.  Connecting computers to different networks used to involve a wealth of cables and boxes, and usually a headache, but now (through what seems like magic) I can connect my computer to the Internet from almost anywhere. And it’s been a quick turn around. I expect my Internet to do so many things- lock my doors, find the nearest taco truck, make friends for me, even keep track of my dog’s hydration. Pet wearables! Anyways, I digress. Up until recently, I thought that the world ran on wifi, but boy was I wrong. Consider this your primer to ultrasonic technology.

A misconception that people have about our technology is that our app reacts to music, and another misconception is that the app needs wifi to recognize the music (through technology akin to Shazam). Our app doesn’t REALLY react to music, and it doesn’t need wifi to work.

Wham City Lights does not need wireless internet to work. It doesn’t even need a cellular data network.  Our lightshows are transmitted via ultrasonic frequencies. Sound. It’s a technology similar to wifi, but less complex. Liken it to morse code. Our lightshows are turned into teeny-tiny data files that get broadcast as ultrasonic sound. Phone microphones have a fairly sophisticated hearing range, and when they hear these high pitches noises, they convert them into the lightshows that display on your phone. You probably couldn’t hear it, but a dog might be able to.

Come on… that rules, right? In these instances where thousands and thousands of people are trying to use their phones to access information on cellular networks, networks get packed with people. We don’t use a network. We just send out a bunch of squeaks and if everyones phone’s ears (microphones) work, they access a complex and beautiful display without needing to talk to LTE or 4G or a wifi network.

Another technology that uses ultrasonic frequencies is Googles Chromecast. It pairs computers and mobile devices with TVs so that you don’t have to go through the trouble or expense of buying an HDMI cable. It’s a little bit of a mystery, but you can read more about that here. 

It seems like more and more things are possible with this technology. We’re working hard everyday to test it’s limits because we think this tech will have longevity. We promise to only use it for good. With great power comes great responsibility…