Live streaming straight from the desert
The Bridgestone World Solar Challenge took place at the beginning of October 2017, and the achieved result for the Belgian Team has been outstanding. Not only due to the fantastic 3rd place of the Punch Powertrain Solar Team in the Challenges class, but also due to the very successful daily live talk-show that was jointly produced in the absolute middle of nowhere.
As the sun set in Adelaide (Australia) on 12 October 2017, the Punch Powertrain Solar Team celebrated its well-deserved 3rd place in the Challenges Class of the 2017 Bridgestone World Solar Challenge. For more than five days the carefully built Belgian solar car made its way through 3,021 kilometres of Australian outback, passing traffic lights, road trains and enduring challenging temperatures and wind gusts, while successfully harnessing solar energy to maintain an impressive average speed of 76.2 km/h throughout the race.
FROM KANGAROOS TO CONNECTIVITY
The singletrack between Darwin and Adelaide was once only traversed by kangaroos - hardly the crowd the Belgian Solar Team was aiming for. Nevertheless, thanks to an innovative collaboration with VRT and its project partners Newtec - Network Innovations - Pacific Live Media - and Agoria, this year's challenge took on a whole new dimension. For the first time ever, the Punch Powertrain Solar Team was able to provide daily live updates on the course of the race, directly from the Australian outback.
Each day when the sun went down, the solar-powered car was forced to stop and that’s where the Solar team would make camp. A dedicated group inside the team of students would manage the production of the talk-show, set to go live at 19h30 local time or lunchtime in Belgium. Through this live daily talk-show, with multicam video and beautiful drone footage shot during the race, the team could share in real-time their adventure with fans on the other side of the world. This live talk-show was completely produced by the students of the Solar team themselves, with no prior TV production experience and broadcasted on Facebook Live, thanks to an Internet over Satellite solution provided by the technological partners in this collaboration.
INTERNET OVER SATELLITE FOR THE WIN
The power of the Internet over Satellite combined with the use of compact and comprehensive Multicam production tools allowed the Punch Powertrain Solar Team to stream updates to the world stage in a way that had not been possible previously. By using Facebook as a medium, this impressive feat of engineering has been revealed to the world in an exciting and engaging way, bringing science, technology, sustainability, and co-creation to a whole new group of people on a global level.
Take a look at the live talk-shows from the absolute middle of nowhere:
- https://www.facebook.com/solarteam.be/videos/901625469986347/
- https://www.facebook.com/solarteam.be/videos/902101149938779/
- https://www.facebook.com/solarteam.be/videos/902538313228396/
- https://www.facebook.com/solarteam.be/videos/901625469986347/
