PIR Activated Soundscape – Caerphilly Castle

The largest castle in Wales, Caerphilly Castle is indeed a sight to behold. Built in the 13th century it introduced the concept of concentric castle defence to Britain. Occupying 30 acres in total, the castle itself is surrounded by lakes and moats. Seeing action in the 13th and 14th century the Castle is now a popular tourist attraction managed by Cadw.

We were commissioned as part of a larger project to bring improved interpretation to the site, for our part we provided and installed a bespoke movement activated soundscape along one battlement of the castle wall, recreating the sound of a castle under siege and in particular archers locked in a frenzied battle against attacking hordes. This was to coincide with already installed mannequins dressed and positioned as such to look like castle defenders. Below is a sample of the background track and speaker 1;

Activated by a PIR, visitors trigger the soundscape as they walk into the area and are then treated to a surround sound experience as each speaker outputs a different track at various points along the wall.

The 5 track soundscape outputs to 4 high quality speakers, each playing an individual track coupled with a single background track. Each audio file is added to the soundscape on a separate SD card and has an individual volume control, making the system highly flexible and easy to use.

Although the battlement is partly protected by a wooden structure it’s still somewhat open to the elements, so each piece of hardware used had to be rated weatherproof.