TimmyTee

All good advice, thanks folks. I'm going to drag the dimmer home tomorrow and have a play, wired to single phase.

Having come on here to ask a question in another section, I realised I never followed up on this. The unit performed impeccably, can't be said for the cast and crew on the production. Now that some time has passed, I can look back and laugh. The person designated to operate the video had to drop out of the first performance, their stand-in was briefed and everything set up so that all they had to do was press the space bar at appropriate moments. The disaster was no way down to them, rather to the stage manager, who for some reason that only they know, decided to climb a ladder halfway through the second act. On the way down, they somehow managed to kick the RCD disabling, amongst other things, the projector. That was quickly rectified, but unfortunately the video software defaulted to a single monitor output and the operator had no idea how to rectify it. I was unable to leave my post which left me watching a train crash in slow motion. I suppose I should have realised things weren't going well when 5 minutes before curtain up, a child in the audience got their finger trapped in a cup holder on their seat. Those were the highlights of the show. It was really one to forget. I almost have, but not quite.

That's a good point, but since we've got at least 10 of them and they weigh next-to-nothing, I'm sure they'll come in handy.

Trial and error is my usual MO. If it doesn't trip or go up in smoke... The only trouble is that we're a "homeless" company and I have no way of hooking the dimmer pack up to a 3-phase supply. I suppose I could wire it up to single phase and try it at home.

Hi all, and thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this topic. I've been rooting through the stores of our am-dram group and found a box of old halogen floodlights, like this My question is whether I can convert them to dimmable LEDs, using something like this: Dimmable 118mm bulb Well, the answer is obviously yes. But my real question is whether they'd be compatible with a dimmer back, we have a Eurolight LD6230, would it be able to dim them? The other option would be to use non-dimmable bulbs and set the channel on the dimmer to a straight on/off, that could also be handy. Lastly, apologies for the bad puns. Shed some light, dim question.... As I said, am-dram.

The drawings on the first listing show via a switch, is it IP rather than HDBaseT? It is IP. Connected to my TV from across a room via 48m of Cat7, I didn't notice any latency, but I wasn't sending anything too meaty through. My main concern was how well it reproduced the resolution and the colours, both were more than adequate for our needs. I didn't bother checking the audio as we won't be sending that via the HDMI. We'll be using it to project backdrops via a short throw projector on stage, maybe some short videos, but mostly still images. I didn't have massive expectations of this bit of cheap kit, but it seems to perform better than expected. The true test will be how it performs in a 2.5 show with a heaped tablespoon of Murphy's Law. It's Am-Dram, a few glitches are part of the entertainment. One thing that I'm certain about. It will outperform the old 25 metre VGA set-up we had previously. But that's no great claim.

As it was sent outside Amazon in the end, I don't have an exact link. here is what appears to be identical SPANISH AMAZON and UK AMAZON

The new unit arrived today. Externally the only difference I can see, apart from different case printing, is that both the RX and TX have a power supply. "Does it work?" With flying colours! Very sharp images on my TV which is capable of much higher res than our projector. Did I say it was 100m? My mistake, they sent me a 150m unit. I'm off to write some glowing feedback.

Absolutely. If anyone else is going to modify your cabling, then colour coding is essential. Or if you don't have sight of both ends. Otherwise, the signals that pass through are colourblind. When I first arrived in Spain and started work as a spark, I saw some horrifying things. A domestic junction box with all black cables, for example. Another one I heard of was a guy that was in a flat with no earth connection, he had a local electrician in while he was away with the brief to install an earth cable in all sockets. He came back to find the entire apartment rewired in green/yellow cable, but still no earth connection.

Don't worry, I learned not to strip the individual wires many years ago. The excess plastic was covering pin 1 of one of the connectors, I noticed this when the probe from my continuity tester wasn't making a contact. With a new connector in place, I did a continuity check again, pin 1 is connected to pin 1, pin 2 to pin 2, etc. This matched exactly what was happening on a short Cat5 working cable. I'm confident the problem doesn't lie with the cable, but to rule that out completely, I'm going to make a 2m version and test that. I won't be needing the full 50m of the roll I bought, I think 40m will be sufficient. That will have to wait though, I have to get some work that I actually get paid for out of the way first. I'm typing this on my TV, my 2m homemade cable works. It's not me, it's the boxes. The Chinese vendor has been back in touch. They say the description is wrong and it can't achieve the 50m. By way of an apology, they are sending me a 100m unit free of charge. I really can't complain about that. Providing it works!

Well that's where you are going wrong.the pairs are 1&2, 3&6, 4&5, 7&8 There are several standards but as long as the pairs are correct and the same colours at each end it should work. I stick with: 1 = white orange 2 = orange, 3 = white green, 4 = blue, 5 = white blue, 6 = green, 7 = white brown, 8 = brown. Which is I believe the EANSI/TIA 568B standard. A crossover cable simply swaps the orange and green pairs viZ: 1 = white green, 2 = green, 3 = white orange, 4 = blue, 5 = white blue, 6 = orange, 7 = white brown, 8 = brown. Which is I believe the EANSI/TIA 568A standard. Originally most cables were made as a crossover with 568A at one end and 568B at the other but that requirement is extremely rare these days. Not that it matters but there is a tiny chance I've mixed 568A and 568B EDIT: I give up trying to understand the vagueries of CR's on this site. Yes. I think we were talking about the same thing but using different words. I have now tried a "straight-through" cable set-up. 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc. As you say, the colours are irrelevant. I then went mad traying to swap out different connections, to no avail. I then went on to compare a working cable with my own, they bothe were "straight-through" but..... I found a dodgy connector on my one, pin 1 wasn't giving a connection, excess plastic it looked like. After swapping that out and another continuity test for good measure, I plugged it all in and..... IT DIDN'T WORK. All roads didn't lead to Rome, my cabling is fine. The roads now lead to China! I think the magic boxes can't handle 50m. Thanks again all for your help. Let's see how they respond to my support request, they've acknowledged it and are "checking with their engineers".

Update I just tested the device using a forgotten 30m cable, I don't know the spec, it was 7€ on amazon panic-bought to allow me a cable connection while working from home during the lockdown. It worked perfectly with my laptop in the living room and a monitor at the other end of my flat. I am impressed with the quality in fact. I think it's the cable that is at fault then. I had no idea the connectors were so important, it's got to be 14 years since I last wired a network. To those that recommended other units, I fully agree, you get what you pay for. Unfortunately, our little am-dram company suffered a break-in to our store and we lost a lot of equipment that we'd built up over the years, buying good gear as and when the funds allowed. It exposed a massive loophole in our insurance, we weren't covered. Now we're in a situation of having to buy a lot of equipment on a limited budget. I'm stuck with these baked bean cans and bits of string for the time being. Richardash1981, you confirmed what I suspected, differing protocols for ethernet and this set-up. I take your point about the screened connectors, it does indeed work over much more basic cables, now successfully tested on a bargain bucket 30m cable. I suspect that I messed up the connections rather than the connectors themselves being at fault. Thanks for your wisdom. You're also right about the colour coding, I don't know if this is typical, but the pairs are foil-wrapped, blue+white, brown+white, green+white and orange+white. They are horrible to check before crimping the connector on, how do you know if you've swapped a white by mistake? I am mystified a little though, I got a 1 Gbps result when doing my ethernet test, you say 1 Gbps uses all 4, this suggests that all 4 pairs are correct. Ethernet must be more forgiving than these little boxes, I guess Also, if these things are working with an off-the-shelf ethernet cable, it says to me a standard crossover ethernet cable will do the job. All roads lead to Rome. Rome being my ham-fisted cable-making. Time to try again, my only concern is that with too much trial and error, my 50m cable will end up at 3m and there'll be a huge pile of discarded connectors. Once again, blue-room comes up trumps. Aside from the sage advice, just setting things out here has helped me clarify a lot of things, albeit in a rambling train of thought. Cheers all, this has helped me enormously and hopefully, it may help someone else in the future. Hold on. I've just read this again. If I've read correctly, I shouldn't need to do a crossover. As long as the pairs match, eg blue to 1 and its white to 2, orange to 3 and its white to 4, etc. it should be OK. Am I right? What the hell, I'm going to try it!

It was a 50m cable, standard non-shield connectors. I'll try with shielded ones, after sending a lower res. All good tips. Cheers!

Hi All, I got a cheap gizmo from Amazon THIS* for use in an upcoming show where we want to project backdrops. We don't have an amazing projector, we paid for short-throw at the cost of image quality, but it's more than adequate for our needs. As the tech desk will be some distance from the projector, this seemed an ideal solution, also the local HDMI port allows a monitor to mirror the projector output, very handy when you can only see 25% of the back of the stage. I opted for this model as it offered 60 metres over CAT6 or superior cable. I tried it with an old 1-metre long CAT5e cable, my laptop and my TV and all worked very well. However, I made up an ethernet cable using CAT7 and standard RJ45s and although the 2 units light up correctly (power and signal reaching the receiver) I get nothing on the TV. The reset button on the receiver made no difference. My first suspicion was the cable, I hate making up ethernet cables! But that tested fine between my laptop and my router, I got a 1GBPS test on fast.com, I didn't know I had such a fast connection! My question to those who are more clued up than me (not a very exclusive club), is whether there may be a different wiring standard needed for the ethernet cable? Or have I just got a duff bit of kit? As ever, thanks in advance for any help or advice on this. * not exactly the same, I got mine on Spanish Amazon but posted an English link, the actual item is THIS

Nothing spectacular, he just enters SR. I'm now thinking a bit of strobe with the fire extinguisher and a possible sound effect.

Thanks for the various responses, some good points raised. As I get older, I get more responsible, or maybe just more of a scaredy-cat? As a group, we were wary of going down the pyro route and the more I read, the more it confirms the decision. We are the typical all-hands to the pumps set-up with everyone doing various jobs, even the cast gets involved in set changes. Quite honestly, the idea of us with anything more explosive than a party popper scares the **** out of me. I'm not sure what the legislation is here, but I know none of us are even remotely qualified to handle this. Here is a translation of something I found in the rules for a talent show "Fire or smoke effects, crackers containing gunpowder and laser lights are prohibited. No objects may be scattered on stage during the performance, it is forbidden to stain, mark or damage the stage. In accordance with Royal Decree 137/1993 on the Regulation of Weapons, it is strictly forbidden for participants to use firearms, metal weapons and other blunt objects or imitations which, due to their characteristics, could lead to confusion as to their true nature, in their parade. It is also forbidden to use elements that are dangerous for the physical integrity of people, such as pyrotechnic and inflammable material. Only imitations of weapons made of plastic, cardboard and other materials that are not dangerous for either the contestants or the public will be allowed. It is forbidden to bring liquids or glass on stage." What? No Christmas crackers? There are some very strict laws here in some areas, then a complete lack of legislation in others. If you fancy a laugh, check out the health and safety in a local tradition, Google CORREFOC it means "fire-run" or BALL DE DIABLES "devil´s dance" you'll probably be left asking what the foc? I've done an online search and as far as I can see, stage pyro falls into 2 categories, T1, not very dangerous, must be over 18 and T2, only for use by experts. The T1 rules are along the lines of "read the instructions, make sure they're suitable for indoor use, respect the safety distances marked on the item". Regarding budget, we usually manage to make a small profit on our Pantos, it's the least profitable of all our events, but we view it as a chance to blow all the profits we make on other shows. One big factor though, we're currently up against Covid restrictions that limit us to 60% capacity, any hike in ticket prices would risk pushing them to beyond what the audience would bear. Hopefully, that restriction will be lifted come December. Back to the tech side, yeah the flashguns was my attempt at lateral thought, the flashbulb idea could work though. As for smoke machines, our now stolen fogger was pretty rubbish, it was hardly spontaneous, that's about my limit of experience of these from an operating perspective. However, I'll be getting my hands on a couple on a show I'm doing at the end of this month, I'll use it as a further learning experience. How about this idea? A C02 fire extinguisher? I can get a 2kg one for 30 to 40€ which should give us a few puffs as the genie enters SR. Any thoughts?

That's a nice idea, the whoosh would be nice. We'd have to look for local hire as the budget won't run to buying one. Well, it would but I have higher priorities! I'll run it past the director. Thanks.

Greetings one and all and thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions. We're an am-dram outfit, English-speaking near Barcelona and we're prepping for our Christmas pantomime, Aladdin. The director wants an effect for when the genie appears and the obvious answer would be pyro, FLASH BANG SMOKE and there he is. But, I really don't want to use pyro for safety reasons including some of these for starters: Loads of kids on stageInflammable materials all aroundLack of experience and confidencelack of personnel - I'll be busy missing sound cues and kicking the lighting guy who doesn't understand the dialoguePossible legal and/or permission issuesbudgetAnd so on So, my question is what alternatives are out there? There are three instances in the script, but if we can find a simple solution, we could give him one more in the walk down at the end. I've looked up old flashbulbs for cameras and am considering triggering them from a simple battery circuit and a push switch, but will it be a big enough flash? Being a child of the 70s, I remember messing with a flashcube and nearly blinding myself as a kid. Wire those together and get four times the flash at once? I also thought about several electronic flashguns and triggering them all at once, that may be an alternative. I'm going to forget about the smoke, apart from the fact that it isn't instant enough, someone stole our fog machine, we've still got the liquid though! The genie himself will be a responsible(ish) adult and could operate it himself.

Or maybe not. It packed up during a rehearsal, then slowly came back. I no longer have confidence in it and am going for something more basic, namely Multiplay. It can handle sound and video files to multiple outputs, but it can't do still images, something I was planning to use for backdrops, so that will be done using PowerPoint. No whistles and bells, just solid reliable performance.

Any tips on adding photos here?

You could try adjusting the transparency in the layers dashboard, no automation but it has worked for me.

I'll be working in a place this afternoon that has a projector in just this position, I'll grab you a photo later.

OK, I found the solution, if this helps anyone else, then great! The answer is time, it seems it takes a long while to load all the paths, so the answer is to start the programme and load the show well in advance. Panic over.

Insert lots of swear words. I spent all day yesterday preparing a show on Screenmonkey, it was all working perfectly, I loaded it today and first of all I had no sound (playing MP3 and WAV), then it wouldn't play video nor show any images. I've restarted the PC, reloaded Screenmonkey, uninstalled and reinstalled Screenmonkey. Nothing. I'm running Win10 on a laptop, I haven't made any changes whatsoever since it was working. Any ideas?

That is SO weird! I've just made up a sex changer and had exactly the same query. I did as the replies on here said and it works a treat.