UPCS:
Universal Parade Control Systems
UPCS is our flagship product, a world leading control system for scripting audio with a heavy lean towards parade systems.
Designed with scalability in mind, the software is able to control as many Q-sys cores as there are in a system.Its location-based audio scripting allows audio control granularity at an unparalleled level.
Control of individual speakers on the parade route along with control of the audio on the floats allows for a customer experience like no other parade system in the world.
It is able, through the Q-SYS cores, to instigate and trigger show controllers on board the floats, allowing for a change in show motion based on audio media sets.
Through custom interfaces it is capable of supplying information for 3rd party system to consume allowing for the synchronised control of house lighting or projection mapping systems based on the location of the floats.
The user interface has been designed through consultation with park show operators and is intuitive in its use, it offers feedback on the whole parade and its current state allowing for the operator to intervene should anything go wrong.
The actual show engine along with the odometry systems and data system run independently of the client interface within Virtual machines running on two VM servers locked to give fault tolerance. This gives a completely fault tolerant system and the operators the security that the show will go on in the event of a server failure.
Float location is achieved through the use of a Vehicle Tracking System (VTS). This uses a combination of a 5th wheel on the floats along with RFID readers that read tag along the route path to correct any wheel drift caused by the drivers taking large or small radius turns as well as compensating for wheel slippage that may happen in the wet. The combination of these two systems offers a location acracy of less than one meter through the whole of the route.
UPCS has float odometry breakdown systems in software that allow for the virtualising of a float in the event of its odometry system failing, this same mechanism also allows for a parade to be run with a float absent but for the route audio to still be played for that float.
Scripting for the parade is done through an independent interface and can be tested using the showrunner in an offline mode allowing the designer and operators to test any changes using a float odometry emulator.