This project was a technical challenge. We are always excited by unusual requests and attack them head-on. This time we committed to tinkering with a 2021 Chevy Tahoe, a task that's not for the faint of heart.
As an International Partner of the IIHF World Juniors tournament, part of the Chevrolet commitment was to be rinkside to facilitate tournament goal-scoring celebrations, and we expected it to be well used! So, the request seemed simple.
Create two custom extra-large strobe lights to be visible throughout an NHL arena. Mount them to the Chevy Tahoe and wire and program them so that they could be remotely triggered to celebrate tournament goals - without damaging or scratching the vehicle.
The truck was beautiful and brand new. It hadn't been driven when it showed up on the back of a flatbed truck. The timelines were tight. The truck needed to be loaded up within days and taken for final detailing before assuming its position rinkside in the Edmonton Rogers Place World Juniors bubble. We couldn't spend much time checking out this fantastic vehicle.
To make this happen, we had to wire into the Tahoe's existing lighting system. The hood went up, and the discovery process began. We needed to determine which wires we required to make this work, and they weren't easy to access.
Part of the challenge was to wire the lights by separating our system from the vehicle's intricate internal electrical system keeping everything intact to prevent damaging the Tahoe so that we would be able to reverse everything after its twelve days in the spotlight. Once the wiring was complete, we programmed an Arduino board to trigger the goal lights and the vehicle's head and tail lights to flash simultaneously.
What the audience wouldn't see was when the players would score a goal, Rogers Place would send a signal to our system in the Tahoe, and it would light up and flash for ten seconds and then stop. Configuring everything here in Calgary, so it was ready to set up when it got to Edmonton, was imperative.
Not only did we met the tight deadline and pull-off this techy project, but the lights got to see 41 Canadian goals scored and 176 total throughout the tournament!
