The Client

Sigma Services is a full-service production and special effects company that’s worked on everything from high-octane sports events to immersive theme park experiences. Known for their large-scale effects and creative problem-solving, their work blends engineering precision with theatrical flair—often involving fire, fog, and a whole lot of spectacle.

The Challenge

Sigma Services came to LeafLabs with a blazing problem: unpredictable bugs in their flame cannon firmware were causing unreliable behavior and safety concerns. The mix of aging hardware and cryptic code made the issues tough to pin down—but too risky to ignore.

LeafLabs identified that two critical issues were holding back performance and scalability:

• Erratic behavior under faster refresh rates: As the time between control packets decreased, the system began misfiring unpredictably, causing safety concerns and limiting responsiveness.

• RS485 bus instability: Despite the protocol’s spec allowing up to 32 devices per leg, adding more than ~20 salvo controllers led to communication breakdowns, likely due to unintended bus loading.

Combined, these bugs made the system fragile and hard to scale—an unacceptable risk when working with live fire effects.

Our Approach

LeafLabs started with an architecture review and deep dive into Sigma Services’ existing firmware and hardware setup to diagnose the root causes of both the refresh rate instability and RS485 bus limitations. We identified the critical timing mismatches and bus-loading inefficiencies that were baked into the legacy code.

We delivered a fully refactored, reliable firmware build that was designed to handle higher refresh rates without glitching. We provided detailed recommendations for ensuring long-term hardware and software compatibility. Our solution not only resolved the immediate issues but also set Sigma Services up for safer, more scalable flame effects going forward.

Why It Was Fun

The joy of seeing code go boom (safely). What could be better?! The super cool application aside, this is a high-reliability product that was not performing as such. Being able to give Sigma Services the peace of mind that the issues that were plaguing them were resolved, was extremely satisfying.

Capabilities

• Embedded Firmware

• PCB Design

• Program Recovery

• Hardware Testing

• Collaborative Engineering Process