gyro_gearloose

Just find a normal fixture that does what you want, and then put it in a dome. One of these should do the job.

I had a similar problem with some Mac 250s. One motor loom ran close to the reflector, and was fried to a crisp on several heads. When I rebuilt them I ran the wires down some silicone covered fibreglass sleeve I had left over from another job. I don’t have the 250s anymore so I can’t tell you how effective this was, but silicone and glass should resist the heat fairly well. You could also try finding some fans which move more air. This should help keep things cool, but might make a bit more noise.

BETE is a beam temperature sensor error. There is a separate error message for an LED temperature sensor error, so you shouldnt’t need to do anything to the LED PCB since you aren’t getting that error. I do not know the fixtures in question, but the beam temperature sensor is probably on its own separate PCB, so should be easy to identify and test. If there is nothing wrong with the sensor, then have a look at why your fixtures are getting too hot. You are cleaning the filters, but do the fans actually work correctly? Are the fixtures positioned somewhere that gets too hot?

I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I’d be looking at shifting some of your network over to a cabled setup. WiFi is convenient for mobile devices such as lighting remotes, but if you’ve got things like consoles, QLab systems, and projectors then surely running a bit of Ethernet cable between these fixed positions will reduce the amount of data sent wirelessly?

Do you really need 100MB of data per second? Thats several hundred universes of DMX. Having a 'slower' wireless connection should be more achievable/reliable, and still give you tens of Megabytes per second of data.

Its a shame that you don't have a working unit to compare your to. At a guess, the air pump is meant to do exactly what the air pump in a Unique does: keep a constant flow of air through the heater block to stop it getting blocked. Since your heater block did become blocked then I'd guess that your air pump is, as you suspect, worn out. If I were you, I'd try and find out the specs. (voltage, air flow, etc) of your air pump and see if I could find a suitable replacement. Something else to try, and something that our Unique had, was a one-way valve in the air line between the air pump, and where it merged with the pipe from the fluid pump. This should prevent any back pressure from either the fluid pump or the heater block from pushing fluid back toward the air pump. Something else to note is that the air pumps from Look Solutions are no longer the aquarium pumps of old. Maybe because they weren't powerful enough? We had to replace an old aquarium pump, and the replacement supplied was a big metal-bodied pump, attached to some rubber isolation blocks.

Just to avoid confusion I’m guessing that you meant Main Circuit Board, rather than the more usual Miniature Circuit Breaker? To check the internal voltages, there should be three LEDs near the bottom left of the circuit board in the yoke arm. If they aren’t lit then you’ve got power problems. I can’t remember off the top of my head if the LEDs will light even if the fuse has popped.

On our Element you have to come out of the console software and go into a hardware setup menu to turn RDM on or off.

I've gott all the parts together now and I'll be posting them to you tomorrow (26/3/2018). I've put together a quick guide on how the parts go together. Sorry about linking to the photos rather then embedding them. Apparently this forum won't let me embed images from Google photos :( Heres a photo of (almost) all of the parts. It doesn't show the plastic tabs or spacers which will be used to hold the lenses in place. The parts. Step 1. Attach the lenses to the front and rear plates. Step 1 photo. You need the aspheric and plano convex lenses from your Miniscan, two plastic plates with the large holes in them, 7 M3 Allen bolts with washers and spacers, 1 M3 countersunk bolt with washer and spacer, and 4 square clear plastic tabs. Attach the PC lens to the plate with the smaller hole using 3 Allen bolts and the countersunk bolt. Use the remaining bolts and plastic tabs to attach the aspheric lens to the other plate. The plastic tabs sit between the metal washer and the Nyloc nut. Do not tighten the bolts too much. The lenses needs to be free to move about a little. Step 2. Attach the side plates to the rear lens plate. Step 2 photo. Attach both side plates to the aspheric lens holder using 4 M4 countersunk bolts. It can be a bit fiddly getting the nuts to stay in place while doing up the bolts. It helps if you use some PVC tape to hold the nuts in place. Step 3. Attach the rear and side plates to the base plate. Step 3 photo. Attach the rear and side plates to the base plate using 4 M4 countersunk bolts. Step 4. Position the base spacers. Step 4 photo. Place the four base spacers on your metal base plate as shown in the photo. Step 5. Bolt the base plates together. Step 5 photo. Bolt the plastic base plate to the metal base plate with the 4 M4 pan head bolts. Step 6. Attach the PC lens plate. Step 6 photo. Finally, attach the PC lens plate to the holder using the remaining 4 M4 countersunk bolts. As I don't know which LED you'll be using, I haven't included an LED holder as I mentioned earlier. If you want to use the mounting holes I used for my original conversion, see this diagram for the hole spacings relative to the LED.

I'm fairly certain that the Martin software actually allows you to use incoming DMX to control as many submasters as you like. So you could have a cheap 24/48 channel desk and map each DMX channel of that desk to a submaster on the Martin software. You do need a genuine Martin interface to do this, but they only cost somewhere around £200. As for the MagicQ wings, I'm afraid I still don't understand why you can have up to 8 Extra wings, but only one Mini wing. I realise that one can page up and down to get 10 pages of 10 playbacks with a wing, but since the wings don't use motorised faders thats hardly an ideal way to operate a show. If Chamsys don't want to alter the software to allow it to work with multiple Mini wings then I think there is a very good case for them to produce a small wing which can work alongside the Mini wing. This comes back to my earlier point about it being very expensive to add more physical faders, because however you set up the software there will eventually come a time when you could use more faders.

Can I ask why the Mini wings can only control the first ten playbacks? It seems like an odd restriction from an end users point of view. It would be very useful to be able to use 2 to get 20 playbacks, for example. I know that adding an Extra wing would allow me to control more playbacks, but if all I want is more physical faders then buying an Extra wing is a very expensive way of making that happen. Even more so if I wanted 30 or 40 faders....

Mini wings, or Extra wings?

If you want some Miniscan spares, Halo Lighting have a pile of parts for sale on their website for the princely sum of £5! It looks like you could make one or two complete units out of all of the parts. I've found some of the old photos I took when I first started this thread. Heres one showing the first unit I built. The LedEngin LED wasn't fitted when I took this photo. It got clamped between the heatsink and the plastic plate. Because that plate was specific to that particular LED, it won't be included on the holders I send you. Link to the image. I had to do it this way because the forum doesn't appear to support Google photo sharing <_< For a heatsink, can I suggest that you use something from an old Pentium D? The Pentium D had a thermal design power of 95 Watts, so the heatsink should keep a 40-50 Watt LED comfortably cool. You should be able to get some for a few pounds each secondhand. Try and find some that have a flat base with enough space to drill a few holes for the LED holder. I've got a couple of these which I rescued for free from some old PCs that were being scrapped. To power the fan, can I recommend keeping the mains powered fan which sits under the lens holder, and scrapping the small fan that sits under the ballast? You can then use the power supply for the small fan to power your PC fan. However, I seem to recall that the power supply to that fan is 24 volts DC, not 12, so you'll need a DC-DC converter to power the PC fan. You may find that the Clay Paky fans have a small PCB attached to them. If so then your fans already have DC-DC converters. I think Clay Paky did this because they couldn't source the 24 volt fans any more. Because soldering COB LEDs can be somewhat tricky, you can now buy holders which clamp the LED down, and have electrical contacts built in. No soldering required! For the Cree LEDs I linked to a few posts back, I'll be using this holder. It has the added benefit of allowing me to attach a range of reflectors. You wouldn't need them for your Miniscans, but I'll be making a test LED rig to try out in profiles and Fresnels. If you want to go ahead with this can you pay via Paypal?

Just going off the prices found on Google, the cost of just the PC wing and Extra wing is comparable to that of the console you've already got. Add in a decent touchscreen PC and the Chamsys MIDI interface and you start getting nearer MQ60 money.

I think I'm right in saying that you can't use multiple Mini wings to control the MagicQ software. I know this always used to be the case, and if it still is I do have to ask why, since the only way to get more faders is to buy the considerably more expensive extra wing.

Okay, I've just got the quotes in from the Laser cutting companies that I've contacted. Due the minimum size of sheet material that they will work with, I can fit four sets of lens holder parts onto one sheet. I can therefore only supply the parts in multiples of four, unless more than one of you want to go ahead with his project. One set of four holders will cost you £60, and I will need the money up front before I have the parts made. The laser cutting company I'd use take up to 7 working days to produce the parts. Unless the mods have any objections, can we keep any messages about this project in this thread? That way if a few of you only want six holders, for example, you can combine your orders. Otherwise I'd have to sell each of you two sets of four holders.

I'm currently looking into getting the parts laser cut. This will be much faster than me trying to cut all the parts out on my CNC machine. As for the LED and driver, I won't be repeating the setup I originally used. There are plenty of mains-powered LED drivers available these days so I won't need to use separate power supplies and drivers. The Cree CMA1840 4000K, 92CRI LEDs look promising as for the same Wattage they provide twice the light output of the LedEngin I originally used, and the colour temperature should be closer to that of tungsten. Here are some links to the parts that I'm thinking of using: Cree LED. Osram LED driver.

I was not aware that Photobucket had stopped their free service. What would you like to know? LED technology has moved on somewhat in the 6 years since I started this project. I'm not sure that the LED I used is even available anymore. However you can get much more efficient LEDs that will produce more light for the same power. Newer LEDs all seem to have a much larger emitting area so I'm not sure how well they would work with the Miniscan optics. They ought to be fine since condensing optics like those used in the Miniscans should cope better with larger emitters than a simple reflector would. It might be worth experimenting with a low power LED to see what happens

We had to replace the air pump in ours last year. The old pump was an Elite 800, while new one was a metal-bodied pump mounted on rubber isolating blocks. This might explain why some versions are quieter than others.

It's physically big though. Hard to fit in a S4 mini. A mains-dimming LED driver, which works out the dim level by measuring the cutoff point on the mains waveform, is fairly simple in concept. In real life it's hard because the mains waveform is often badly distorted and a lot of mains dimmers are rubbish and can't handle a very small very capacitive load. Sure, it would be a bit of a squeeze, but at least it would be guaranteed to work from 0-100%. I've seen irises used as dimmers in discharge lamps, and yes, it does work, and doesn't do the usual 'shrinking beam' effect you usually get from an iris. One of those might be easier to fit inside the round body of a Source 4. It would just need to positioned in the right place so that it works as a dimmer and not an iris.

Or you could dim it mechanically, like everyone has had to do for years with discharge lamps. I don't know much about dimmable high power LED drivers, but I imagine that the electronics to control a couple of stepper motors for some dimming shutters is much simpler than an LED driver.

Hi Yes, the Miniscans are well made. If I were looking for a modern replacement, I'd look at some of the LED kit already available rather than try to convert a discharge fixture. To be honest, I only converted my Miniscans as that is what I already owned. If I were going to convert another fixture, I'd look for almost anything with condensing optics (an aspheric lens and plano-convex lens pair), but preferably a moving head. I can make the plastic parts to convert your Miniscans, if you already own some, but I wouldn't suggest buying some Miniscans just to convert them. The conversion does require some electrical knowledge to safely remove the parts you won't need (ballast, ignitor, lamp wiring, fan) and fitting the LED power supply and driver electronics. You'd also need to partially dismantle the Miniscan, and then build the holder for the LED and lenses. Finally you'd need to make a semi-circular disc to act as a tilt lock, as the Miniscan becomes quite unbalanced after the ballast and ignitor are removed. If you want to buy the ones I've got, I'd sell mine for about £400 for the pair and I might be persuaded to convert the other two Miniscans that I've got. Shipping them to France will be expensive though :D

Hi Sourdine Not sure why, but I haven't received your message. Thank you for your interest in my Miniscan conversion. Having used my pair of Miniscans for a little while they are still working very well. However I am thinking of selling them as I don't use them that much.

My LED Miniscans are roughly comparable to a 250W discharge fixture, if that's any help.

No, but I did build convert another Miniscan so I've got two to play with :) The bigger LED would need better cooling and temperature monitoring. I'd be a bit worried about running something that expensive without actively monitoring its heat output and cutting power to the lamp should it get too hot. Also the Meanwell LED drivers I was considering simply wouldn't have fitted inside the Miniscan. Of course there's no reason why I couldn't fit the 90W LED and associated driver into a bigger fixture....