sunray

Oh yes, that has been my standard method for a while, pretty much any 100V amp will do.

For an urgent solution for some fairy lights at an event I fed a 400Hz signal generator into a 120W 100V line amplifier and set O/P voltage to 32V. An advantage to this is I had successful dimming just by using the volume control. I'm not suggesting it as a system though.

I've found this version you will dim well if using a wire wound transformer rather than SMPS. However if it's LED's the action is a bit notchy in as much as the groups of 10 behave differently and only takes place in around the top 20% or so of the dimmer.

Don't you just love that sort of thing. I had the same with a Spirit SX desk in a school, all of the main/sub buttons were down, at least someone had the sense to replug and ran the amps from the Aux o/p's for a show which meant they lost one show relay feed.

I moved all of mine on to a member on here some years ago for a show. However I've had some success driving 50m (500) LED's with a DMX-DIM, cheaper versions too but the dimming is never as smooth and most are only rated up to 24V. One thing to note is most modern LED fairy lights only use 2 wires and switch polarity to alternate LEDs to create chasing. Therefore using a DMX-DIM will only operate alternate LEDs.

As I have mentioned several times before for schools my go to is typically a Showtec/Jester style of desk and a printed sheet describing how to get the lights into basic manual mode. As such I've taken mine in and demonstrated a number of times, usually they ask if I can leave it in place instead of their computer based system, especially in junior schools. For several years I assisted, with several others, at a summer junior drama school, we took in sound and lighting kit and soon established who was more interested in tech than acting and taught them how to drive it. It quickly developed into 3 groups; Sound and desk based or PC based lighting. Lighting pretty much started with a fader based desk where the faders/channel number were very obvious then maths and binary and how to build a DMX system. From there it developed into desk or PC groups and using/programming them. The desk group always did better. End of the holiday there was a performance for the parents, I was always impressed with what they all learnt and how little help the tech's required during the performance.

One company I worked for issued 2 metre fairy tale pink cables for us to program some BMS devices, sometimes 2m wasn't enough but adding a f-f coupler to use 2 pink leads never worked, however using a normal grey/red/blue etc extension did. I twigged straighaway why but some of the others thought there was more to it. I confused them by replacing one plug on a 5m green flexible patch lead to make it a crossover and really wound them up by insisting it had to be used the right way round and added pink Dymo lables "commputer end" and "BMS end". For me the pink Dymo was just to indicate it was a crossover cable.

I gave upon this a while ago and did the job with a laptop, the problem I had was the transmitter demanded a named product and confirmation from the receiver. This was for a once a year function so not a big issue... other than having to put the laptop in a weatherproof polyethalene box 15ft up in the air to get over peoples heads. In another situation I had the opposite problem with having to select the receiver from a list.

Anglepois mic holder, but will require mounting, was a standard on the desks we manufacturered.

I thougt I replied to these last night but... It is always my preferred method with timber, particularly so with elderly beams. Jon has already made the comment about Unistrut in place of tube. As this is a church I wonder if DAC has been contacted yet, they may have preferred solutions.

In principle I agree, however seeing some of the construction techniques I wonder how they do stand up. Pressed steel Zed bars for example have very little rotational stability as discovered by a fairly local church hall when they added a curtain track, luckily the problem it created was a leaking roof where the Stramit roof slabs bacame misaligned, splitting the bitumous coating. I've witnessed various expansion fixings in holes drilled into steel reinforced concrete roof beams (and verticals for that matter) which are potentially not a good idea. So getting back to my first post, without knowing what beam we are talking about I am not in a position to make any assessments, even for 40Kg. To give this a little perspective this is my initial mock-up of the product suggested, on the left showing an aproximate height of 250+75mm in blue and on the right using the same products in a hanging mode will just get it into the 250mm with clearance for a hook clamp. I must stress this IS NOT my suggestion for an installation.

what is the beam? Not everything can tolerate that much twisting force or take that many fixings.

Putting "why is it called a green room in theatre."into Google suggests: The worlds biggest 'My mate said' site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_room: One of the oldest stories is that London's Blackfriars Theatre (1599) included a room behind the scenes, where the actors waited to go on stage, which happened to be painted green, and was called "the green room".[4][verification needed] A later renovation of London's Cockpit-in-Court theatre in 1662 included a green baize dressing room, which has also been suggested as the origin of the term.

I agree on both counts but I believe the green on billiards tables was due to it's easier availability, possibly an easiest colour to dye it. I heard somewhere (again my mate said basis) that when snooker was invented in india the covering was the red fabric used for uniforms. However not knowing which regiment was reputed to modify the table, was their uniform green? I have also heard (my mate said) there was evidence of a London theatre having a green baize lined room.

Very late to the party but... Today I saw 2 of these https://vi.aliexpress.com/item/1005006968266506.html? containing 1) the whole of a drumkit microphone set including leads and 2) all the other mics and leads for a 6 piece band using foam inserts in the drawer..