Performance alone isn't enough. What people seek is connection. Connection is born from emotion. When technology disappears and only your intention remains, something extraordinary happens.
Rotating three-ring sphere.
In brief: : a complete custom-built lighting ecosystem · real-time audio analysis broadcast wirelessly to every module · a control case designed to remain fully readable in the dark · an AI mode capable of learning and reproducing a lighting operator’s style · used live at around ten events in front of several thousand people.
Portal Light is a complete system I developed to create, drive and automate lighting effects for events. The project isn't limited to LED decoration or a control case: it's an infrastructure made up of several home-built lighting modules, real-time audio analysis, a dedicated physical interface, radio communication and DMX.
The whole thing rests on a simple philosophy: on most stages, the lights are driven by hand and follow the music roughly. With Portal Light, it's the opposite — the effects respond perfectly to the sound, and the controller is there to shape that response live, not to trigger each effect manually. The integrated AI works in a similar way: it learns by observing human actions alongside the music, then reproduces those combinations when the audio conditions are similar.
A dedicated module plugs directly into the event's audio, analyzes the signal continuously and broadcasts the sound's characteristics by radio, at high frequency, to every lighting module.
As a result, every device on stage reacts to the same music at the same time, with a level of synchronisation that would be impossible to achieve through manual control.
Rather than piling up separate systems that are hard to synchronize, Portal Light rests on a common foundation: specialized modules linked by radio, each responsible for one type of equipment — LED structures, 12 V strips, LED wall, neons, DMX module, remote and audio-analysis module.
The case serves as the main control point, but the architecture stays distributed: you can add a lighting structure, connect a new piece of equipment or adapt the setup to a different stage without rebuilding everything. The DMX module also lets you drive standard stage equipment, not only my home-built elements.
While using existing control gear, one usability problem struck me: most interfaces meant for the stage become unreadable in the dark — potentiometers, buttons and markings disappear precisely when you need to act fast.
So I designed a control case that's fully visible in the dark: backlit potentiometers, illuminated buttons, direct LED feedback and a status screen. Since synchronization with the music is handled by the system, the case isn't there to keep the beat: it's there to choose and adjust live how the stage reacts — modes, intensity, colors, universe behavior — with reliable long-range radio communication, in the middle of a crowd.
The firmware controls several lighting universes — LEDs, neon lights, moving heads, lasers and more — with customisable modes and parameters adjustable in real time: effects, speed, intensity and colours. Colours can be linked across universes to create a coordinated atmosphere or left under automatic control.
The AI simultaneously records the music and the actions performed from the control case: effect selection, colours and potentiometer movements.
After training, it generates a new live show based on the music, while reproducing the learned behaviour as closely as possible and respecting the constraints of each type of equipment. The model runs locally on a PC or Raspberry Pi, without an Internet connection.