Enlighten Digital

Enlighten Digital scales immersive experiences with Stage Precision and SP Grid

Specialist integrator and reseller for the immersive entertainment sector, Enlighten Digital has successfully expanded its scope and capabilities over the last couple of years with the help of Stage Precision’s evolving suite of control and management platform. From sensor integration to full control, calibration and tracking, Stage Precision has become the dependable technological backbone enabling Enlighten Digital to deliver complex installations with greater accuracy and speed. 

“Customers call us with an opportunity, and we make it happen,” explains Brian Ross, owner at Enlighten Digital. “We turn creative briefs into fully realised technical systems, many of which include interactive elements.”

Brian and the Enlighten Digital team first encountered Stage Precision whilst collaborating with Phoenix Immersive and Evoke on the Da Vinci Genius art experience. This touring exhibition features interactive reproductions of over 50 creations from the Renaissance polymath. Ensuring consistency and stable performance across multi-national deployments required a control platform capable of handling complex tracking, interactive scenes and sensor integration.  Stage Precision proved to be the ideal match, with Evoke Co-Founder and Technical Director, Kristaps Liseks, commissioning the initial system, introducing Englighten Digital to the platform and its capabilities. 

“At this stage, we were using SP to integrate data from sensors and floor tracking with the content coming from Unreal, triggering real-time events as visitors engage with the projected artworks,” explains Ross. “Our first impression of SP was very positive, and we quickly worked on developing a deep knowledge of the platform to be able to build similar workflows back home on this and other immersive experience projects.” 

Since then, the Enlighten Digital team have been focused on a series of installations at South Florida PBS, including The Da Vinci Immersive Experience, Egyptian Pharaohs: From Cheops to Ramses II, and an upcoming Titanic experience. Throughout each project, SP quickly became the foundation on which to build scalable workflows across the development of these experiences, paving the way for the adoption of SP Grid as the core workflow tool following its Beta release in 2025. 

“SP Grid offers so many benefits,” remarks Ross. “We can easily copy over project files and repurpose them on similar installations and it gives us centralised control of all devices and data streams, providing us with a visual representation of what’s happening on the ground. Plus, the SP Grid Viewer app is a real game-changer for operators. The logical next step for us was to invest in Grid Engine.”

Enlighten Digital upgraded its third-party servers by replacing them with Grid Engine’s 1U rack-mounted units, designed specifically for the high-performance control and data processing demands of SP Grid. “We wanted a single source of truth and reliability. Switching over to Grid Engine gave us that, along with more processing power, which unlocks new capabilities such as spatial intelligence in the 3D visualised environment.”

Across all interactive experience projects, Enlighten Digital uses SP Grid to manage a wide range of technologies. Media, lighting and control are streamlined with the ability to build, duplicate and scale custom logics. Sophisticated sensor integration, including inputs from a network of wall and floor sensors, can be visualised in the 3D environment using SP Grid, allowing for more accurate, pixel-perfect projection mapping, resulting in a more responsive and engaging immersive environment.

The Grid Viewer app is another standout feature. “Staff can load the project UI up on an iPad and walk around the venue adjusting video, lighting and volume,” explains Ross. “We can build these custom UIs to provide users with intuitive, simplified controls, and operators can manage the shows themselves with minimal training.”

With the powerful capabilities to build complex immersive environments within a single, intuitive and open platform, Enlighten Digital have significantly reduced the time it takes them to build experiences. What would have once taken up to two or three months to design, build, and test can now be set up in just a few days. 

Beyond technical features, Enlighten Digital highlights the support they’ve received from Stage Precision as a real driver behind the evolution of their projects and the decision to invest in SP Grid and Grid Engine for the long term. “The support is wonderful. The team is great, and I always know I have backend help,” confirms Ross. “There’s also a strong user community, and that’s incredibly valuable.”

From sensor integration to full hardware-backed control, Stage Precision has helped Enlighten Digital to deliver sophisticated experiences faster, more reliably and with greater creative freedom. “Since SP can control pretty much all technologies, we have ultimate flexibility in how we design, build and manage the spaces we create,” says Ross. “Nowadays, we’re solely using SP Grid for show control, and we plan on continuing to do so on all of our future projects.”