Cost
An honest answer with ranges instead of false precision. What a control system costs, where the money actually goes, and why the software rarely matters in the budget.
An escape room or a single themed space usually starts around 8,000 euro in equipment and work. A dark ride or a room with machinery runs into the hundreds of thousands. Almost every project we do sits somewhere in between.
That is a wide range, and that is honest. Anyone quoting you an exact figure without a floor plan is selling you an assumption. After one conversation and a floor plan we give you a range, not three weeks later.
The number of driven components. Not the square metres and not the visitor numbers, but the number of things that have to switch, dim or move independently. Twenty lights on one group is one output. Twenty lights that need to act separately are twenty outputs, twenty cores and twenty lines in the cue list.
The safety requirements. A cabinet that only switches light is a different thing from an installation with a safety chain, emergency stops and an inspector coming to look at it. That difference sits in components, in documentation and above all in time.
The state of what is already installed. An existing installation that is properly documented saves days. A ceiling full of unlabelled cores from three renovations ago costs those days anyway.
And the machinery. The moment something moves, an entire discipline joins the project: drive, end positions, feedback and the question of what happens if someone stands in the middle of it.
Broadly into three things: hardware, engineering and days on site. Hardware is usually the smallest of the three, and that surprises people.
Hardware is the cabinet, the power supply, the relays and I/O, the network equipment and the cabling. For a single space you are looking at a few thousand euro in parts, unless machinery or a safety chain joins in.
Engineering is drawing the schematic, building the cabinet, programming the logic and testing the whole thing on the bench before it goes anywhere near the site. That is the largest block, and it is also the block that decides whether you are still happy with it in five years.
Days on site are installing, connecting, commissioning and briefing the crew. We deliberately keep that block small by building and testing as much as possible here. We would rather not lose days on site to searching.
Because most of it already exists. The cue engine, the state machine, the web interface and the connections to DMX, OSC and Modbus are building blocks we use in every project. What is new per project is the cue list and the logic of your space, and that is days of work, not months.
That is exactly why the difference between 8,000 euro and several hundred thousand is rarely in the software. Adding a second zone costs an output, a core and a line. Adding a second driven set piece costs a drive, a feedback device, a safety assessment and a test day.
On a well-built system: very little. We design for ten years with industrial components on DIN rail and parts you can still order in five years. No subscription is required to open a door.
What is sensible is an agreement on response time if you have fixed opening hours. Not because the system breaks, but because an evening without revenue costs more than the agreement.
Beyond that, expect the ordinary things: a lamp, a sensor that needs replacing after some years, an expansion because another space is being added. We allow for that in the design with spare outputs on the cabinet and room in the cue list.
The cabinet and the cabling. That is the part nobody sees and the part that decides, five years from now, whether an engineer we have never met can work with it. An unlabelled cabinet is cheap on handover day and expensive every day after that.
The safety chain. That is not negotiable and you should not want to strip it back to make a quote work.
And the documentation. Schematics that match what is actually installed are the difference between an hour of downtime and a week of it.
We start with the moment, not the equipment list: what should the audience feel? Only then the question of which technology makes that possible affordably.
Then comes a cue list you can read out loud and a schematic your electrician understands. The budget follows from those, and it is built from items you can recognise one by one. No line called miscellaneous.
If it turns out during the build that the assumptions were wrong, for instance because the space differs from the drawing, we tell you before we carry on working.
Frequently asked
An escape room or a single themed space usually starts around 8,000 euro in equipment and work. A dark ride or a room with machinery runs into the hundreds of thousands. The difference is rarely in the software and almost always in the number of driven components and the safety requirements.
Expect six to twelve weeks between go-ahead and handover for an average space: two weeks of design, three to six weeks of building and bench testing, and one to two weeks on site. If we are waiting on set construction or machinery delivery, that sets the schedule.
No. The system runs independently, including without internet. Schematics, source code and credentials are yours the moment the invoice is paid. For venues with fixed opening hours we are happy to agree a response time, but that is a choice and not a condition.
Further reading
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