timsabre

Not as an end-to-end one, no, as it only has one XLR connector. I would not find that a particularly useful feature on stage to find a DMX fault though, I'd be looking for a valid DMX signal coming out of the end of the cable, which it can test for.

Also in terms of foldback monitors for displaying song words at a church, I don't agree with you. HIgh resolution is not necessary and just causes restrictions with cable lengths.

James is right though, it depends what you want it for. I have been using the DMXCat in the workshop and for testing the RDM functionality of firmware I am working on and it's great for that, but it takes a couple of minutes to set up and get the app running and phone connected to it. In a rushed on stage problem finding situation something self contained would probably be better.

I would also suggest looking at DMXcat if you're happy to operate via a bluetoothed phone.

Use high temp silicone to attach (you may already know that but just saying)

They can get really stuck on, it's the heat inside the fixture. Also make sure you have definitely found and loosened all the grub screws on the gobo wheel. There might be 2 or 3. Try putting it gobo wheel upwards with the motor on a firm surface, put something over the central boss (e.g. an opened pair of pliers so the shaft goes up the middle but the face of the pliers rests on the central boss) and tap it with a hammer to break the bond. Once you have got it moving on the shaft you can prise it off from behind using a lever on each side as suggested by DrV above.

The shaft is part of the motor, you cannot separate those. I haven't been inside a mac 250 for a while but I assume from your description the colour wheel is free running on the gobo motor shaft, driven by a belt? In which case yes you need to get the gobo wheel off. Why do you need to remove it, there is some difficult alignment to do when you reassemble.

You are doing it right but they tend to stick on the motor shaft. You need to persuade it to unstick by putting something down between the wheel and the motor and carefully levering it away.

You shouldn't need to go to the extent of individually delayed sockets. Splitting them into 4's would probably work fine.

Those figures by Philips have to be wrong. Inrush is measured in hundreds of amps, it is only for milliseconds but enough to cause a trip. They have either misunderstood the question and given you the wrong figure, or their testing is incorrect. Basically inside the fixture there is a bridge rectifier making the mains into dc, which then charges a large capacitor. It is the current to charge this cap on first switch on which causes the inrush.

Carriage key or carriage lock key is what I know it as

I would too. I've got some little LEDJ 7Q5 fixtures and 8 of them will sometimes take out a 16A C type trip if all connected on one circuit.

You just need to split them down further. The switch mode power supplies in LED fixtures can have an enormous inrush current if you power up a lot of them together - you're basically charging up a big capacitor off the rectified mains in each one, if you happen to hit the peak of the mains cycle when you turn on then it's at its worst. SMPSU will have a thermistor on it to help limit the inrush but it can still add up to a lot if you have a number of fixtures.

How do you find the Colorsource engine for doing whites or pale shades? I used some in a venue a couple of months ago and I struggled to get a nice looking tungsten equivalent light out of them that didn't look "led". Whereas the Chauvet Ovation FC ones can be made to look much more tungsteny and I think are cheaper.

Prolights StudioCOB FC is very good. I think they are about in the middle of the price range given though I can't find an actual price quoted online. They do reasonable pastel shades as well as saturated colours. https://www.ac-et.com/product/prolights-studio-cob-led-par-range/

Indeed but the fact they even mention fan noise is a good sign...

Well, with a budget of 2000 euro and limited power supply I would say LED is a better answer. Permanent power + DMX to everything is arguably easier to set up than a dimmer pack with separate mains feed to each light. I would suggest 4 or 6 of something like this on a couple of T bar stands: https://www.thomann....t_100_3000k.htm This is pretty close to a standard 650W tungsten theatre fresnel - Varytec is a cheap brand but I have some of their stuff and it works fine. I have not seen these particular fixtures in person, they say "low noise operation". As for a control desk, that is harder. Personally I would get the £70 full Chamsys dongle and use a programmed cue stack on a laptop. But it is quite hard to set up for a newbie and physical faders you can push might be better. Possibly the venerable Behringer LC2412 would be a good match to this situation https://www.thomann....2_eurolight.htm

If the show is completely pre-programmed, I am not sure I agree with that - a go button is just as easy to press on a laptop and there is a lot more flexibility in what you can do - the OP mentions soundtracks, it would be simple to automatically play soundtracks from the lighting cues or vice versa on a laptop system.

There's also a demo version of Capture which is free to try - I don't know what MagicVis is like but capture is pretty realistic with a reasonable spec computer including showing gobo/colour wheels rotating into position etc. As with all renders it does slow down as the resolution goes up so you'd probably not want to use the full resolution of the cinema projector. Capture demo has full features but you can't save and it only runs for an hour (I think).

There are some cheap (£33) headsets on ebay pre-wired for tecpro / clearcom. No personal experience of this particular one, but I have done a lot of bodgery with comms and they tend to work with most things. e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Headset-mic-for-Tecpro-Altair-comms-systems-Theatre-and-Stage-Audio-/121995132902 Is it actually clearcom or are you just using that as a generic term? We used to have some Metro Audio (now Stonewood) comms packs which did feed power down the mic line, seemed to work with either electret or dynamic mics. Also, if you have never cut and resoldered headphone wires before, beware because they tend to be "tinsel" flex which is enamelled and really hard to solder. So adding those XLR4's may not be as easy as you think.

I've used both ETC Lustr and ColorSource fixtures for face lighting, and I'm not convinced about the ColorSource if you want white or pale tints. People's faces don't look quite right to me. (Lustr has 7 colours of LED emitter, Colorsource has 4). With the Lustr units on white or colours like straw, steel etc I could not really tell the difference from a tungsten fixture. I have also used the Chauvet Ovation FC fixtures, which have 5 colours (RGBAL) and they looked quite a bit better than the Colorsource to me. Of course lots of manufacturers do LED white fixtures which are a much cheaper option than colour mix and give a good imitation of tungsten. It depends what you want.

It's not worth the trouble in my opinion, it makes very little difference to the performance of the fixture. You get very slight hazing on gobo edges as you dim out due to internal reflections.

What was it dimming, just tungsten? Have seen latching like this with funny loads like LED drivers

Or google for desktop IP camera viewer, there's a standard called ONVIF which most of them support.

Try using Internet Explorer (not edge) with it. A lot of them will work on IE.