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LEDs with ETC Element


mk_193

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Hi,

 

We are trying to get some LEDs working with an Element console which we are still getting to grips with having not had it long!

I am not sure how to patch in an LED, I have gone to the patch display, selected the channel it is in (103) and addressed it to 101. Also not sure what to select for 'type'. We went for 'custom' and then tried 'RGB 8B'. We also tried to assign a colour to each channel but so far we have only managed to just turn the lamp on and not control colour.

Can someone please explain step by step how to get an LED working correctly with this desk? That would be fab!

Thank you

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Hi,

 

We are trying to get some LEDs working with an Element console which we are still getting to grips with having not had it long!

I am not sure how to patch in an LED, I have gone to the patch display, selected the channel it is in (103) and addressed it to 101. Also not sure what to select for 'type'. We went for 'custom' and then tried 'RGB 8B'. We also tried to assign a colour to each channel but so far we have only managed to just turn the lamp on and not control colour.

Can someone please explain step by step how to get an LED working correctly with this desk? That would be fab!

Thank you

 

Not sure what you mean by "selected the channel it is in (103) and addressed it to 101." Seems to imply that you have the LED plugged into a dimmer channel

 

Exactly how you patch your LEDS will depend to a certain extent on how many you have and what you wish do do with them. If you only have a few and want to control them as one group then it can be as simple as addressing the units to channel one and then using the first three faders on the desk to manually mix the red, green and blue values. More traditionally you can patch them as fixtures and then control the colour by using the virtual moving light controls that will open on your screen when you press the ML button.

 

However, exactly how you need to patch them will depend on their make and the number of control channels they require. If you can provide us with a bit more information we can probably work something out

 

 

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It is plugged into a dimmer channel, which is 103. That works fine just turning it on and off from the desk and comes out as white light. We plan to use only about 4 or so, wanting to control them individually and to have them each red blue or green. The make of them is Pulse I think, but we could not find that on the list hence why we selected Custom then RGB 8B.
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It is plugged into a dimmer channel, which is 103. That works fine just turning it on and off from the desk and comes out as white light. We plan to use only about 4 or so, wanting to control them individually and to have them each red blue or green. The make of them is Pulse I think, but we could not find that on the list hence why we selected Custom then RGB 8B.

 

You should not be plugging the unit into a dimmer. In order to control the RGB leds seperately, the unit should be hard powered and then connected to the Element using the DMX inputs on the unit. It could be that connecting it to a dimmer is allowing you to power it in some kind of stand alone mode, but you will not be able to get control of the colour channels via this method.

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Ah ok yes that makes sense, thank you. So if it is plugged into a 13amp can I then just address it to whatever channel number I want and it will then take up the next two channels as well, for each colour?
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Ah ok yes that makes sense, thank you. So if it is plugged into a 13amp can I then just address it to whatever channel number I want and it will then take up the next two channels as well, for each colour?

 

Basically yes. However It will depend on the exact unit you have. Sometimes each unit will take up more than the 3 RGB channels and also give you an overall master intensity control and a strobe channel for example. ie:- a total of 5 channels per unit. I think some of the Pulse units allow you to switch between 3 and 5 channel mode. Personally, given that you are only using 4 units, if you have enough spare actual faders on your desk I would run them this way rather than patching them as fixtures. However, if you feel you need to run them as fixtures then let me know and I'll do my best to explain how to patch them

 

 

 

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Ah ok yes that makes sense, thank you. So if it is plugged into a 13amp can I then just address it to whatever channel number I want and it will then take up the next two channels as well, for each colour?

Sort of. You need to be really careful with your terminology here. You need to understand that there is a difference between channels, which the desk uses to identify dimmers and fixtures, and addresses, which are the portions of a DMX packet that will control the dimmers and fixtures. For example, at the moment we've got 6 moving heads in our rig which are addressed starting from 200 and going up in steps of 16, so their addresses are 200, 216, 232, 248, 264, and 280. However, on the desk I have the them patched to channels 201 to 206. This is the fundamental difference between channels and addresses: one channel can represent one fixture which may take many DMX addresses.

 

So your LED might be set to DMX address 200, for example, therefore it will use addresses 200, 201, and 202 for red, green, and blue. You could then patch this to wherever you want on the desk, but lets say its patched to channel 200. You could then patch another LED unit to channel 201, provided it uses a different portion of the DMX packet i.e. has it DMX address set to something other than 200. 203, for example, although there is no requirement that your DMX addressing is consistent, or that fixtures are patched consecutively, it just makes things easier to patch if they are :D

 

Hope this makes sense.

 

Edit to ad: Just realised that if your Element has the old software on it, then, just to confuse things even more for you, the Patch display defaults to sorting by address and not channel.

 

Here's a screen grab of a patch showing what I mean:

 

http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t41/gyro_gearloose/Picture1.png

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