Owain

Thought you might like this thread on Reddit

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this is a fire alarm system in a theatre. We had a production last week and the colleague (who has no qualifactions) who was working it couldn't remember how to isolate the performance space as they were using smoke/fog machines so resorted to yanking out wires instead.

Good idea, though I would definitely make a name for myself as the person who installed shopping trolleys on the wall!

You can probably get a grant for that from somewhere.

That'll almost certainly have something to do with it, especially in that particular scenario where the various traders will have quite different ideas of what the volume should be.

All the more reason to not give them the opportunity to fiddle.

Grid switch electrical faceplates would do, but would be a bit chunky - although Clipsal Australia do some high-density gridswitches with a lot of switches in a small box and Contactum have 8 in a UK double box.

If you don't want to make them, plenty of fabricators could

https://www.hoyles.com/custom-design

Tev (stagebus) had to fight for *months* to get his moving heads that appeared in cash converters, when he very first started the business. He got the damn things back eventually though. They did at least take them off the shelf fairly promptly when he notified them that they were his though.

Might have been quicker to "buy" them back, then launch a civil action for the amount.

I think by 2025 BT are hoping to migrate all services to fibre delivery, and VoIP for telephony.

There might be some rural places using a wireless local loop substitute, which will bring its own problems.

Theatres will usually have a stage comms system as well - is that on battery backup?

And in places like London, with widespread power failure, the tube stops and so do the traffic lights. In disaster planning we are now having to consider situations where it may not be possible to evacuate a venue and people may have to stay overnight because they can't get home (staff at least, even if you chuck the punters out)

Band's stolen equipment found in Cash Generator store

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-51402225

Bassist Charlie Howarth said: "The majority of the equipment [stolen] was mine. [When Guy called] it was pretty remarkable... Never thought we'd get it back and so quickly... 24 hours [afterwards] is pretty mad."

Cash Generator has not yet responded to a request for a comment when approached by the BBC.

There's a loose spiral, and there's tightly wrapped like a heating element. Guess which I use?

If the cable is in contact with a thermally conducting surface isn't the current-carrying capacity higher than if in free air?

Staff around the country are being consigned to poverty as a report from Citizens Advice Scotland revealed that 36,876 Scots are not being paid the legal minimum wage by their employers.

Former Edinburgh Fringe worker Shira Kaliski has told how she ended up working for “slave wages” at the world famous festival.The 26-year-old was classed as a “volunteer” while with C Venues, a firm she believes exploited hundreds of people trying to gain experience in the arts. She said: “I and many others were frequently working 10 to 15 hours a day for what must have been not much more than a few pounds an hour at best. We were classed as volunteers but it was clearly a commercial operation. Someone must have been making plenty of money but it certainly wasn’t the workers.

“In Edinburgh, pay ranged from about £600 to just over £1000 a month. But in terms of hours worked, it was nowhere near the minimum wage as you were working every waking hour"

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/shock-report-reveals-37000-scots-21178420

The LED and electronics are not a problem - it’s the physical construction materials that I need advice on, specifically the front cover/difuser.

For diffuser, fresnel lenses from broken tellies? May also be a source of LED strips

Stab vests, t-shirts, trousers, hats, imitation batons and more were stolen from a prop and set production company in Limerigg near Slamannan and many of the garments are embroidered with ‘Police’.

The items “look very realistic”, warned Detective Chief Inspector Colin Campbell of Forth Valley CID, who is appealing for witnesses.

Other items taken included police fleeces, handcuffs and PAVA spray containers; tools and vehicle diagnostic equipment were also stolen in the incident.

https://www.alloaadvertiser.com/news/forth_valley/17879922.criminals-impersonate-police-following-theft-props/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-49573508

Especially for overhead runs we discussed using BT style Dropwire here

http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=54318

Star layout not possible due to there being 6 leopards right where the star needs to form.

That's one way of stopping equipment getting nicked.

The old topic mentioned covers most things.

To add/clarify- you can tap a 100V speaker line with a 100-to-audio-line level transformer if you need to put another amp halfway along.- you can run balanced line audio over twisted pair (or even untwisted pair at a push) over long distances with a transformer at each end.

If you're hiring kit, and it's a speech application, consider traditional 'Grampian' horns on poles rather than re-entrant horns or boxes. You can cover a longer distance with fewer, lower rated speakers.

Use a second, simpler puppet (basically a doll) with no inner 'workings' but with added legs and tail and have him 'walked' like a toddler between two adults holding his hands (paws). Jiggle him about a bit.

Or use a hide which is appropriate for the scene and movable - eg a street sweeper pushing a barrow, which might be used throughout the performance rather than being created just for the walkdown.