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ELECTRONICS
Digilin Technologies – A shining example of Australian innovation With four decades in business, Queensland electronics manufacturer Digilin Technologies successfully diversified into lighting, and went on to change the shape of the industry in Australia. Brisbane-based Digilin designs, engineers and manufactures LED, lighting control and fibre optic products for commercial and architectural projects. Digilin has provided solutions for some of Australia’s most iconic buildings and landmarks, such as the Melbourne Arts Centre, the Adelaide Convention Centre and Brisbane’s Kingsford Smith Drive. Surprisingly, and despite its success in the industry, Digilin didn’t even start out as a lighting company. The story of how Digilin got to where it is today is really a story of electrical engineers who never stopped looking for the next big challenge. Founded just over 40 years ago in a small workshop in Brisbane’s West End, Digilin first operated as an electronics service and repair centre before developing its own electronic devices. The first Digilin-branded product was actually a high-end audio processing device designed for recording studios. During the 1980s, the company developed a variety of other electronic devices for many different industries, such as scoring systems for bowling alleys, and seismic survey equipment for mining and geological exploration projects. The company’s first foray into lighting was in the mid-1980s, when the company was contracted to build a signalling system for Queensland Rail (QR). Digilin designed and assembled a combination of custom electronics, fibre optic cables, halogen lightsources and specialised lensing for the sophisticated system, which delivered critical signals to train drivers along the entire QR network. This successful deployment was the catalyst for working in an industry that would define its future. Digilin went on to employ fibre optic lighting technology on various other projects throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, such as designing decorative lighting for displays and public spaces for Brisbane’s Expo’ 88. One of the most challenging projects that the company was involved in during this period was the illumination of the 166m-tall Melbourne Arts Centre Spire. Digilin custom-manufactured specialised lightsources and supplied over 6kms of fibre optic cables for the project. Seeing the performing arts icon lit up after its completion will always be one of the company’s proudest moments. During the mid-1990s, LED technology began to take monumental strides in performance
AMT JUN/JUL 2021
Digilin has provided lighting solutions for iconic Australian buildings such as the Melbourne Arts Centre.
capability, delivering substantially more light than their predecessors and using less power than ever before. LED, which had been used almost exclusively as indicator lights for decades, was suddenly becoming a viable alternative to traditional light sources. As Digilin had been designing electronic controls for years and already had expertise with LED, it found itself uniquely positioned at the leading edge of a technological revolution. In 1997, Digilin was contracted to the Mall Music project in Sydney, where they manufactured LED luminaires for what would become both the company’s and Australia’s first commercial LED luminaire installation. Impressed with the results and recognising the immense opportunity that existed, Digilin pivoted its attention to focus exclusively on LED, fibre optic lighting and lighting controls. In the years that followed, the global lighting industry flipped on its head as lighting became electronic and traditional light sources quickly began to disappear.
Digilin’s proven success in LED and fibre optics, and its ability to manufacture the electronic controls they need to achieve optimal performance, took the company around the world to work on some of most ambitious architectural projects of the era, such as the Sheik Hazza Palace in Abu Dhabi, The Petronas Towers in Malaysia and many of Australia’s new Casinos. Another pioneering project was a facade for Century Tower in Dubai, at the time the tallest residential tower in the world. Digilin custom-designed and manufactured a set of colour-change luminaires, which could be controlled by a remote DMX system to generate dynamic colour sequences. These types of decorative facade installations have since become ubiquitous, but back then it was a truly ground-breaking engineering achievement.
A hands-on approach Two decades and hundreds of projects later, Digilin is still at it. Today the company is run by Tremaine Wrigley, who formed a
