Giant LED Banner Starts Revolving In Famed Kuala Lumpur Mall

January 25, 2019 by Dave Haynes

This is what’s touted to be the world’s largest double-sided LED display, a revolving ad banner in a six-storey shopping mall at the base of the famous Petronas twin skyscrapers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The banner is a 4.7mm pixel pitch, 19-foot wide by 33.5-foot high NanoLumens screen that rotates 359 degrees (I’m guessing it rotates almost completely clockwise, then counter-clockwise, and so on.

The screens went into the Suria KLCC Shopping Mall via local integrator EWSB in a matter of days. “The Centre Court area of the Suria KLCC mall is booked for brand demonstrations and events almost 365 days a year,” explains Dave Merlino, VP Sales for NanoLumens. “So EWSB was given only a 10-day window to complete this installation.”

From the press release:

That included the double-sided display and the rotation system equipment, along with the aforementioned hoist system to move the display up and down, not only for maintenance purposes, but also for those popular product demonstrations on the mall’s Centre Court floor from time to time.

“We not only delivered a unique and high-quality double-sided display, but we delivered a turnkey solution for the Suria KLCC mall, and we did it all in ten days,” Merlino said. “All of these upscale brands are engaging with hundreds of thousands of visitors to this iconic location every day with a very unique, versatile and safe display solution from NanoLumens.”

One of the keys to this sort of thing – which gives Nano a leg up over most LED manufacturers – is its patents for super-skinny, lightweight LED carpets like this, that can suspend pretty easily in an open atrium. Most LED product is thicker and much heavier – meaning it wouldn’t look like a suspended tapestry, like this, and suspending the two-sided sign would be a much more involved engineering job, to ensure all that weight could be handled.

One interesting wrinkle to this job is that the specialty leasing people at the mall can sell the screen as a backdrop for things like product demos, launches and special events. The hoist system allows the display to be lowered to the floor for product demonstrations and branding events.

Update: I got an interesting note from John Margetts, who runs the Salt Lake City company, Dynapac, that makes the rotator device.

Dynapac was contracted by Nanolumens to supply a rotating motor and hoist system and to travel on-site to assist EWSB in the installation as described in your article.  Dynapac and Nanolumens have partnered together in past projects including the large rotating LED board at the Newcastle Mall, just north of Sydney, Australia.

The Dynapac Rotator has a special computer control system that allows the sign to slowly spin back/forth 359 degrees. The control system has redundant features built in that will not allow the rotator to ever over-rotate and twist up the power and data cables that pass through the center.  Likewise, there is a patented safety clutch system that will allow the LED board to stall during rotation if it ever runs into an obstacle (like a service lift or kiosk on the ground when the sign is in the lowered position). 

A wireless remote control is used to set the rotation speed, park the LED board facing a certain way for special events, and turning the rotation on/off. The 360 degree rotation capability of the LED board is highly desired in large mall spaces for two reasons:  1) to allow a full view of the video content from any location within the atrium; 2) to not obstruct retail signage line of sight restrictions imposed on the mall owner (at any given time, the rotating LED board is edge-on and would allow a person standing on one side of the atrium to see a store sign on the opposite side of the atrium).  

Most people in the mall don’t even notice that the LED board spins as it rotates very slowly (about 9 minutes for one 360 degree rotation).

Our hoist system incorporates two hoist units, each one capable of carrying the entire load of the sign below on its own.  The hoists are tied together with a custom-built control system that keeps everything level as it raises and lowers.  When in the full-top position, a motorized “park” feature allows the sign to dead hang itself without putting pressure on the hoist units.<

The hoist units were actually installed and used to construct the LED sign on-site, enabling Nanolumens to accomplish such a quick 10-day build/install time for the LED board.  A pantograph was also designed and built by Dynapac to manage the numerous cables that run from the ceiling down to the LED board and rotator motor.  The pantograph allows the LED to be maneuvered up and down to any position for special events without breaking or pinching the wires and cables.

Dynapac Rotating Company has been in business since 1959 providing motion and visibility solutions to the sign and advertising industry.