Official: I'm a sad geek who likes pretty lights

[Urgentemente]

Not that it's any suprise to me , something I've been meaning to / wanting to do for ages is look at DMX controlled lighting and hopefully get hold of a few old bits just to play with. Not for any other reason than I think I'd enjoy it (bit late for a change of career I think,but hey, who knows seeing as I'm still jobhunting!).

Now and again I trawl ebay for anything local that's still working (or mostly working), doesn't matter if it's old kit as I just want to play & learn for fun. Well ages ago when I first started browsing on the net I came across a few free and/or demo versions of control software, one of which had a 3D virtual stage to reflect the effects being programmed, but I never got around to downloading and playing with it (and typically I can't find that particular site at the moment,nor remember the name of the brand,tho it might have been Chauvet, I seem to remember the site & sofware looked quite good).
Anyway, long story short, I had another browse tonight, and downloaded a couple of the freebie/demo ones around, and have just spent 20 mins playing with SweetLight's software (http://www.sweetlight-controller.com/), just with the 3D stage - it's fun and I haven't even figured out how to do pan's etc yet (haven't bothered reading any manuals yet of course, just learning by doing as I normally have done throughout my IT career).

Anyone out there ever played with any of this stuff , either for laughs, or gigs/professionaly etc?
Wouldn't be suprised seeing how many times similar professions seem to also be gamers.

For now I'll have to settle for the 3 AMBX kits I've got (2 hooked up to the PC at the moment) for anything 'interactive' - I've got a laserpod, Morpheus LED mood lamp and about 6 Mathmos lava lamps as well.
I started looking at the SDK last year with a view to maybe coding something to mimic the lights on ChaseHQ for a laff, but only got as far as a standalone app, then I rebuilt the PC and haven't picked up on it again yet.

Urgentemente2013-10-02 03:54:25

 

[IDCHAPPY]

I thought Colin D was quite into this stuff too?

 

[Mitchell Gant]

Hi,

I've played with lighting on almost a semi professional basis since about 1998. I've collected quite literally a shed load of old school lighting, mostly projection based stuff, video projectors, but also plenty of newer DMX stuff like scanners/moving heads and plenty of strobes.

I last looked at PC software DMX control a few years ago, when there was a lot less than there is to choose from now. I downloaded Chamsys MagicQ that appeared to be powerful but I really struggled with it's non-Windows format, plus the fact that I was learning about lighting control generally at the same time. I persevered though and eventually bought a PC Wing which unlocked the software fully (though the free version does an awful lot).

Currently MagicQ is the darling of the lighting industry and has evolved a lot with it's own simulator that I've not had chance to play much with yet. If you can get your head around MagicQ then you'll be in a good position to walk into a venue and operate their lighting rig. I'm not so sure you could say the same for something like Sweetlight, but I think that is aimed more at sequenced control rather than live events. Depends what you want to do really. My interest is live 'busking' to a band in real time, so I have very little in the way of preprogrammed stuff.

It's a complicated subject for sure, and I'm certainly no expert. I've spent a LOT of time fixing lights too, they do break a lot in gigging situations! I'd say I've spent more time fixing than operating them in fact.

Regards,

Neil

 

[Urgentemente]

Cheers for the info Major Gant ,hehe. Just downloaded MagicQ and their standalone "Capture" visualiser, certainly a lot different interface to Sweetlight from the brief looks I've had, LOL. Capture just hung first time I tried it so I'll have a browse later on to see if there's any config needed to run it under Win7 (compat mode etc etc).

EDIT: Just spotted "MagicVis" under the programs windows menu as well.

Thanks IDChappy as well, will have to have a word with ColinD, wish I'd posted this ages ago when I was first thinking about it, I could have chatted to him at RGP's a few times by now!

Urgentemente2013-10-02 15:26:49

 

[Urgentemente]

Woo, just had a play and got the MagicQ Visualiser working and managed to turn some of the lights on, change colours and gobo's on those that have them ,but only by using the groups in the demo show so far. Have to sit down and do some stuff scratch (patching?)

Talk about step back in time with the interface, it's like something from the early 90's!

 

[RGP]

I've never found one yet that works the way "I" want it to work. I too like to busk it on the desk to a band or a DJ but at the same time have some very precise patterns you can trigger easily.

I find that doing follow spot work at the same time as other things is very cumbersome, the tradition until recently has been to use MIDI keyboards as control surfaces but you end up holding down several keys to get the combinations you want.

I've worked with Martin on elements of their original 3032 software but the goal there was always to upsell you to the grid controller. Then they went to LightJokey and USB-DMX as their own protocol which ultimately was better was the betamax of the lighting industry.

For show based lighting i've leaned towards WholeHog - it works well for stage shows where you want to trigger a specific lighting cue which runs through several scenes and while it definitely can be used live you still feel like you're asking the system to do something rather than commanding it.

As cash is the essence in a lot of situations, most clubs can't afford the controllers they really want to pull off the effects for the setup they've invested in the hardware for and the basic models which are out of the grasps of mobile DJ's and just inside the realms of club installs soon run into their limitations.

In a lot of cases you get the software for free and it talks to the hardware to figure out what it can and can't do, running it without the hardware is great until you need to do 4 or 5 things at once.

Lighting for stage, clubs etc has always seemed a bit of a scaredy-ass closed shop, nobody will tell you much because they fear someone taking their job. Theatre lighting is where the money is on big productions, bands pay pennies compared to what they make and you're not guaranteed an AAA pass either as some of my friends have discovered (your job is front of house, you don't need to come back stage).

The consoles have line faders which implies you can fade things in and out, however, intelligent lighting is based on step-time sequencing and is quite precise in values sent to the fixtures so fading down something doesn't always fade the lights down. Each channel has to be assigned something and depending if you're in fixture mode or group mode that can be different.

I always wanted a sequencer that could do proper multi-track timeline based editing so that on one track your movement of the mirror/head was done and on another you could control focus, colour etc etc so that you could for example, fade the colour between two specific points on a CMYK based fixture while moving the light across the air and maintaining focus on the gobo/iris.

On a budget scale i've used FreestylerDMX, totally free and comes with the visualiser software as standard. I bought Daslight's software and hardware once for a place and it uses the exact same visualiser.

You will need a basic USB-DMX dongle from eBay, plenty of them around for about £15-£20.

As for basic fixtures, depends what you fancy playing about with, you can find Roboscan 812's cheap enough but in various bits of condition, these are 5 channel fixtures and give you control over pan,tilt, colour, gobo and strobe - there's no shutter on them, you set the gobo or colour to black.

For basic moving heads look for iMove 5s/iMove 7s or its former version the Knight Spot, again, 5 channel effects.

It's all about dip switch settings on these units. Everything starts at 1 and then everything is based from that starting number.

Eg 1 - Pan, 2- Tilt, 3 - Colour, 4 - Gobo, 5 - Strobe

So, if you have 4 x 5 channel fixtures and want to control them all independently, first will be address 1, second address 6, then 11, then 16 so if you then added a 7 channel effect at 21 then the one after would be 28 and so on.

You can also double up on ID numbers and control all fixtures from the same address so you could have a bank of 4 scanners that are all address 1 - this works well on setups where you want say 4 scans one side of a stage, 4 the other and you can easily control their patterns, however, you lose the niceness of a light show by the fact that the 4 on the left will do exactly the same thing - sometimes its nicer to program them all individually but most of the time in the modern software you can group them together so you can write a sequence that has all 4 move independently so you edit the 4 separately then another where you group all 4 together and write one program for them.

Hope this helps.

 

[Urgentemente]

Superb info thanks mate!

I'd read a tiny bit about the ID's already and it sounded fairly logical , but I imagine it could get a bit 'fun' when there's a horde of different fixtures keeping track of it !

Will add those names to when I'm searching ebay, sure I've got a couple of iMove's on watch at the moment. Hoping to get a/some cheapie LED based fixture(s) so that I don't have to worry about lamps getting broken in transit and having to fork out for expensive replacements..

Really wish I'd asked about this ages ago!

 

[Urgentemente]

Just in case anyone's remotely interested, or for some future random search on DMX..

Well, after buying a 3 different fixtures el-cheapo on ebay (usual spares or repair..). I ended up with:

i) Showtec 56LED Parcan : Listed as working standalone but not responding to DMX,and some blue LED's out.

ii) KAM LED Quadtrix : sometimes lights up.

iii) Martin EGO 6 : Dead

Had a look over the last week or so.
Martin EGO 6 doesn't power up, checked unit fuse and tests OK,plus you can hear the telltale 'crack' when you plug the kettle lead in. Opened it up and probed the PSU board - I believe it's a switched mode supply from what I've read,took some pics so will upload later, maybe some of you repair gurus can offer pointers. Mains voltage is getting into it, and there's 'some' voltage on connector pins to drive the various gobo wheels etc, but wasn't showing anything at the lamp connectors (didn't have a spare lamp to try just in case).

The Quadtrix... powers up, and lights 'random' banks/lines/sets of LED's. I say random because there does seem to be 'some' order to it. Each time the powers cycles it changes the pattern, sometimes lighthing all 4 sets of LED boards. Gently nudging the connection cable from the control board to the 1st LED board (they're daisy chained using seperate IN & OUT sockets for the data and for power) does cause one or two lines of LED's to go off/on, so possibly dodgy connection as well. Took the main board out and under the main chip there's a 24MHz clock chip, tested the resistors and transistorsetc, 2 or 3 seem to be open circuit (tho one of the resistors then reads 2 volts when it's powered up!) . I'm wondering if maybe there's no clock pulse for some reason so the chip isn't going through it's steps (there are various auto programs builtin to it before I even start looking at DMX on it).
The original kettle lead I was using wasn't a good contact and you could interrupt the power by moving the plug in the unit, thought initially it was a bad socket in the unit itself until I changed the lead!

Now to my first success.. the Showtec LED ParCan
It was working OK in standlone mode (either static or sound to light), aside from a few missing blue LED's. Started looking at the LED's problem first, and there's one or two of the blue ones that are dead/dodgy, following the lines of them , when I reach one that's failed nothing after it in that row lights up (would have thought parallel would have been better, but it's only a cheapo unit, think they're about £40-£50 new). Bridged one of the dead ones with bent bit of solder wire and the remainder of the row comes on, so I'll either just bridge it permanently, or replace the dead LED's, but then I need to figure out suitable replacements. Looks like someones already bridged a couple of times as there are 2 wire links on other blue LED's,maybe that person took it apart and didn't put it back together properly because...

the connector from the DMX sockets/board wasn't plugged into the main board!! Put it back in, all back together, and yippee! I've just had my first (albeit very basic!) play with controlling it via DMX (got a JMS USB2DMX adapter on ebay), fired up Freestyler as it was quickest to test with.

 

[trm]

Last weekend I rigged (for a mate) a Halloween show. I also designed and fired a fireworks show for ~800 people but we won't talk about that cos we had no insurance.

It was the first time I used DMX in anger and I've got to say it was ace! I tied the foggers into the DMX bus and used channel queues to fire them matched to the lightning and it was excellent. I'm never going back to a fader lighting board!

 

[trm]

But f**k daisy-chained LED RGB lights

 

[Urgentemente]

Sounds cool trm, do you work 'in the industry' so to speak, or just a hobby?
Funnily enough I usually enjoy a good firework show, but this year I've only seen whatever was going off around the neighbourhood. Was watching "Pyros" on TV the other night when they showed the Blackpool competition (2012 I think), when the timing got messed up at the start due to the CD/soundmixing guy etc , it must be absolutely infuriating! (tho I'm sure it's "edited for dramatic effect" as most are, so I take things with a pinch of salt).

Did you/anyone take video of your Halloween and fireworks ? Would love to see them. Which software did you use?

I'm keeping trawling ebay for more bits to play with, but until I get a new job I shouldn't really spend anymore (and as I'm sure you're well aware, the more fun stuff with moving heads etc is a pretty penny, even 2nd hand). Last week I won 2 older Martin Roboscan 218's pretty cheap on ebay,1 apparently working standalone but they guy didn't know about DMX - hmm, but it's the MK2 10 DIP switch version,I did a bit of homework first and I think the MK1 only responds to Martin's own protocol , other one "makes a noise but doesn't light up".... so could be as simple as replacement lamp, could be "spares" (they sure make a bit of noise when starting up, seen a few vids on youtube...don't think I'll be restarting them at this time of the morning while the g/f is asleep in the next room.!)

Urgentemente2013-11-07 03:21:22

 

[ColinD]

I thought Colin D was quite into this stuff too?

I've only had a quick play with DMX control (via a cheap usb interface to dmx), DMX Freestyler.... I did a driver for one of the led projector lamps I've got and its up there on the forum.... Revo 3 or 4 ??

The lights I've got have light shows built in (you chain up with dmx) and I used a martin controller for the roboscans....

All the stuff is packed away at the moment.

Cheers, Col

 

[bbz149]

I just love these

 

[Mitchell Gant]

I've been swapping some of the tungsten flashlamps with forward facing LED flashers behind my pinball backglass. These are much brighter and faster flashes than the original lamps.

I found that with the backglass out and at night they gave a nice bright white strobe like flash, enough to project my shadow onto the wall about 20ft behind.

Bright... but not THAT bright...

Hmmm those flashers run from 20V pulses from what I can tell with the schematic. And I have a 1500W strobe kicking about (Anytronics Megastar) with an analogue pulse trigger input.

Although it's rated at 10V for the trigger, I'm fairly sure the circuit is an AC coupled signal into a pulse transformer to fire the stobe. I probably wouldn't that much damage to the Megastar circuit if it couldn't handle it. So I wired the trigger input across one of those flashlamps.

Well it can handle it, in fact it's too sensitive and triggers flashes from not only the flashlamp it's wired to flashing, but also from the electrical noise of operating the flippers!

I'd got the strobe balanced on top of a box that was under some open step stairs pointing outwards. For me playing the pinball, the flashes from the strobe were to the side and almost behind me lighting up the room rather well.

I was showing a mate the pinball and "forgot" to mention the strobe... so when I started a game he got the strobe full in the face. He was wobbling on his feet after that. Result!!!

So next I'd like to wire in more strobes to more flashlamps I reckon... I do like pretty lights.

I've got a 3000W Anytronics Deathstar strobe that a mate found in a graveyard! (there was a pub/club over the wall he said, probably came from there rather than a gift from the dead) I think I should wire that one into the Elvira Scared Stiff pinball though, it seems only fitting.