Ynot

Another point to bear in mind is that unless you're REALLY lucky, and/or have some definitely useful skills to the right company, don't expect to fall into anything like a top job anytime soon. Like any career you need to be prepared to start at the bottom rungs and work your way to where you think you want to be.

One of the VERY few mistakes that ETC ever made, I reckon. Don't know anyone who actually liked the Congo OS. 😞

I think we should be good with the 10K used price - just wanted to see if there were other alternatives out there. 🙂

Thanks for the thought, but yes, we're aware of the different wiring standards for the Soca 🙂

However, as it will be staying permanently connected there's no risk at all of it getting cross-cabled with standard kit - and there's no other Soca to either truss regardless.

Looking for a 2nd hand LV6 motor controller with remote.

Got a couple of places I've found with at least one to sell, commercially, but just in case there's a Blue Roomer out there with one tucked away for a nice deal, I thought I'd ask 🙂

UPDATE - I'm now sorted, thanks to SLEAH.

Thanks for the other offers, though 🙂

Looking at the usual online sites, of course, but thought it might be feasible to ask if anyone here has any 6-way dimmer packs sitting around unused that they'd be happy to part with for a small community arts centre I'm trying to help out. Typically they're not flush with cash, but do have some budget available, but they're also wanting to invest in other gear as well, so trying to make their £££ go as far as possible. 🙂

So - DMX Tempus, or Act 6 or Betapack 2 or 3 or similar would be great.

You might want to look at a topic I started a little while back...

2 hours ago, J Pearce said:

Being brutally honest - this sort of thing is unlikely to ever find a home anywhere central and accessible. Unless someone with lots of money to spare decides to play benefactor (person or charity or government) I'd be surprised if a museum of lighting equipment would ever manage to pay the rent even on a barn in rural nowhere land.

But isn't that exactly what the chap in my OP has said they want to do??? "We have space and want your vintage gear..."

On a different tangent, I seem to recall there used to be a theatre museum near Drury Lane I think, but I believe that didn't survive for long 😞

On 5/5/2022 at 4:36 PM, Edward- Z88 said:

Hi @Zulu

If you choose to go down the Philips Hue route, you won't need to worry about dimming LED lamps.

Instead you can use a light fitting/fixture of your choice, and power this straight from the mains, not via a dimmer. You can then use a Philips Hue lamp of suitable style and lamp base in your fitting. In ZerOS 7.12 software, you will then be able to connect your FLX S24 to a Philips Hue bridge, and your Philips Hue lamps will then be automatically patched into your console. You can then control the Hue lamps just like a DMX fixture, with intensity and colour control, and record them into your cues.

Philips Hue lamps are available in full colour, tuneable white, and warm white variants depending on your needs. Smart Plugs are also compatible, to provide you with simple relays you can control from your console.

Please feel free to PM me if you'd like more information.

Hope this helps.

Edward

Is this unique to Z88 desks?

Or is the proprietary software/control side native to Phillips, and therefore potentially available to those of us with other desks...?

RGBL and RGBAL seem to be on the increase in mid-range fixtures and up at the moment - and yes that Lime (or in fact Mint in some like the Chauvet Ovation range) does have a very noticeable positive effect on the white light output.

That's the sort of link I need.
Thanks

Been looking at buying in some Styrofoam or other similar product in sheets to make up a gag wall of interlocking brick pieces that Frankenstein's monster can burst through on cue. So far, it's looking to be quite an expensive (relatively) task to source. The wall in question will be formed from a custom 8 x 4' flat, TV style, so 3"thick. That means the break-thru wall section will need to be made from 3" (75mm) Styro or other foam product, and fill around a 6' x 3' 'hole'.

I'm still on the Google for options, but does anyone have any contacts or alt suggestions for a budget material to use?

If I have to invest in the pukka Styro, then so be it, but always on the lookout for bargains 🙂

16 minutes ago, kerry davies said:

It isn't that simple, try HERE.

I think that if I were the AD concerned and knew this was only the armourers second job as senior I would be double and triple checking everything with her to build her confidence. Instead of which she didn't know they were about to rehearse with weapons she had checked much earlier. It can't be stressed too highly, pedantry pays where safety is involved. 

But shouldn't it BE that simple??

Clearly, as one would expect in the litigious world of the 'Merkins, the wagons continue to be circling with noone actually accepting th responsibility for the incident. But with any use of props that can be (and ARE) lethal, it behoves EVERY person in the chain of handling such to make 100% sure that what they pass on is as safe as it can possibly be... And that one person named as 'armourer' has - and SHOULD have - the overall responsibility for the weapons as a whole, regardless of whether she felt she wasn't given enough time, then she should accept that responsibility wholesale.

What Kerry says. 🙂
It's the use of the back-fill that came out of the hole coupled with the heavy use of the hydraulic tamper gizmo which ensured the poles stayed upright and solid. 🙂

As I recall (and looking at the vid) the hole drilled is not a great deal larger than the poles themselves, so little room for movement anyway.

Those that might have a less than satisfactory grounding MIGHT also have the use of ties, stays or struts or to add stability on long runs where there might be additional tension from the overhead cables where a steep angle of the run is involved.
GPO - OVERHEAD CONSTRUCTION - POLE STAYS & STRUTS (britishtelephones.com)

Hmmmm... (tm)
"Mr Halls had been given the gun by Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the 24-year-old armourer on the film. Lawyers for Ms Gutierrez-Reed have said she did not know where "the live rounds came from"."

If that is an accurate quotation, then sorry, but the responsibility lies 100% with that 'armourer'. I'm no firearms expert, but anyone who takes on that role MUST be able to tell the difference between a live and blank round... Mustn't they?

17 hours ago, kerry davies said:

I learned my lesson when I watched a young lad drive screws through a sign into 4 X 4 posts with a hammer.

Did you never see the pole erection guys fix the foot steps onto telegraph poles??
:)

Just seen this e-mail which looks like it's been sent to a variety of contacts, so some of you may have also seen a copy.

Sadly, most of our more ancient kit has gone over the years but I guess someone out there might have something to add to their collection...

The contact mail is david.sandham@sky.com for anyone who might want to get in touch.

Below is a screen grab of the kit he mentions (The SL and Quartet aren't THAT old, though... 🙂 )

I'll add my 10p to the forehead slapping posts here - I've mentioned here a while back about another school I've done a few shows at where their PAT tester failed PAR cans which had no safeties, or had the old ceramic lamp holders... The latter on the basis that 'students could get their fingers burned if they stuck them in the back of the lanterns - but seeing as I was being brought in to light their shows because the students weren't allowed to do anything with LX, that much was moot anyway!

Yes - PAT is and should be all about electrical testing and safety. There MAY be other hazards identified during testing, and of course if they are REAL hazards - and not just something an experienced tech should be able to recognise and mitigate, esp if it is part of a standard MOU - then they could/should be noted, and then it's up to the responsible adults in the room to RA the question and deal accordingly.

I would say that for this sort of thing you're not going to find anything that will give you any significant resistance to fire, if any at all. But that said, other than any upholstery that may be on the chairs (which you can of course treat as normal, although any reputable seating SHOULD already have been treated at manufacture) I'd say that there wouldn't be a specific requirement to cover the timberwork. 

It should all be down to your risk assessment, and whether there are other mitigations you can cite. For example, if this is for a simple play, with no naked flames or cigarettes for example, no pyrotechnics within close range of the furniture and no tungsten light fixtures or other heat sources nearby, then you should be perfectly fine to not worry about treatment.

You don't say where you are (your profile doesn't even list a country) or where you'll be touring, but in the UK, there's little difference between venues as to what is expected of visiting companies as a whole - they may have some specific practices but they won't be far from the rest. So I'd be tempted just to get what info they publish about risks etc and if any of them have a clause which requires FR treatments of low risk items, then talk to them about what they expect.

You think you had trouble aclimatising...???
😮

I've been an amateur practitioner since the mid 70s when I started as a young whippersnapper, (and things were VERY different back then!)

And I'd been the man in charge of a small am-dram (250 seater) theatre for quite some years when I did my first casual shifts at the Hippodrome in Brum, in my early 40s I think - and THAT was a very weird feeling I can say! 😄 I fully expected to be - and certainly was - at the bottom of the pecking order, and was the oldest part-timer there, and older than most of the full-timers too. So going from my own space, knowing where everything was, and being responsible for everything technical, and supervising most of the other amateurs on site, I went to the extreme opposite, having to ask about what was expected and where to find stuff (and how to get to it!). I was very much overwhelmed to start with, but it didn't take long to get into a rhythm. And after a couple of shifts it became very clear that everything was pretty much the same as my small space - just that everything was that much bigger. The same problems existed, (eg never enough space for storage...) just on a different scale.

So - the advice is the same as everyone else here - take each day/shift at a time, do what you know you can do with confidence, and where you're unsure, or even don't have a clue, just ASK. Few crews I've worked with have ever complained that they were asked questions to ensure the noob is doing it right, although try not to ask the same question more than once - remember the answers 🙂

I have literally NO words at this point...

(Though I'm sure if I thought long enough (maybe 2 or 3 minutes) I could come up with a few choice ones...!! 😮 😮 😮 )

1 minute ago, ErnD said:

I am referring to the wiring - polarity, not in/out/

My statement was trying to diagnose if the fixture was wired with reverse polarity.  And I was saying, if the 1st fixture was reverse polarity then any fixture connected to its DMX out should not work.

In my case, the fixture connected to the DMX out does work, so I should be able to assume that the polarity is not reversed for the fixture in question

As my updated post says - your assumption above is incorrect.

Do you have a reversal lead? Or can you make one up with pins 2/3 reversed on one end?

If you use a reversal lead and the suspect light DOES then work, then you will need to put a second reversal in from the out of that fixture to turn the polarity back to correct before you add any other fixtures that are NOT wired wrong. 

Does that make sense?

Let's make sure we're talking about the same thing when you say 'reversed'.

If you mean 'Does it matter whether I plug the cable with my DMX signal into the in or out on the fixture' then as has been said - no that does NOT matter at all as 99.99% of fixtures are just a parallel bit of wire across the input/output. Though it's really not a good idea to do it that way. 🙂

If you mean 'reversed' as in the internal wiring of the fixture may be reversed - ie pins 2 & 3 are wired wrong - then yes that WOULD give you problems. Although often that means the fixture will behave very oddly instead of not doing anything at all. But that IS a potential cause of your issues.

As for whether lights further down the chain would work - if you're using straight cables, and the first light in the chain is wired wrong (internally) but the second is correct, then that second one will work as normal, as the data is simply being passed thru the reversed fixture pin for pin.

Few LED PARs will compete well with a good old fashioned P64, although that argument doesn't actually holed up against a '64 with saturated colours in front. There is a trade-off there, certainly.

Everyone here will probably have their own experiences with different makes/models of LED gear, and the market is getting pretty full with a wide variety of choices. Your best bet would be to listen to what those are, but then 'audition' a few of the most popular ones for yourself to see what suits YOUR needs compared to what others might have. 🙂