Jump to content

Tomo

Regular Members
  • Posts

    2,949
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    11

Everything posted by Tomo

  1. Don't compare LED fixture wattage. It doesn't tell you anything much about brightness, unfortunately. LED technology has changed very fast, and the quality & efficiency of the optics varies considerably between products. This means that the final "lumens per Watt" (lm/W) of LED fixtures varies wildly. At home I've got some 5W LED lamps that are considerably brighter than the 8W lamps I bought a couple of years before, despite being the same manufacturer and colour temperature. There's LED spots on the market that have fewer lumens per Watt than an HPL Source Four - at 200W they'd be the dimmest thing in your venue. The published figures to look at are the lux (or lumens) in the beam. However, as Bryson mentioned, take brightness figures with a liberal helping of salt. The measured brightness of a colour mixing or variable-white fixture varies greatly depending on the chosen colour. Many manufacturers only publish brightness at the single brightest shade of "white" - and that's often not a colour you'll ever want to use. (It's often a yucky pink or green) An additive colour mixing LED that's dimmer in 3200K white is often brighter in saturated or even pale tints than the nearest-equivalent gelled tungsten. For theatrical usage I'd strongly recommend additive colour mixing LED (RGBL or better), even if you think you'll nearly always want them in "open white". Single-colour white LED will never really match each other (or anything else in the rig). The cheaper ones use rather wide 'binning' so are often very different colours, even within the same nominal batch. The "white" is usually a very high colour temp (blue-white) as that measures brighter, but you'll likely actually want something warmer like your Cantatas. Gel is getting harder to buy with longer lead times, and doesn't behave like you'd expect in front of LED. (Lee make an LED series that tries to make LED match tungsten, if you go that route) Uncalibrated colour mixing fixtures also have some 'binning' colour consistency limitations, but it's generally a smaller difference - and of course you can manually match them as needed. Calibrated colour mixing fixtures like the ETC ColorSource Spot V avoid that issue as they're matched in the factory. TL;DR: Check the lux/lumens for 'supposedly' comparable fixtures, and get real demos. Light some people, costume and painted set/cloths. Run them for quite a while, you want to see what happens once they get warm - do fans get loud or distracting, does brightness drop? Any dealer worth their salt will happily demonstrate their offerings.
  2. Tomo

    DMX to Sacn

    All ETC DMX Gateways and (I think) all Pathway Nodes can do this. It's a simple configuration option. Probably most other brands too, though I've not used them If the GW/Node has a female XLR-5 (for DMX out) then you'll also need a male-to-male DMX cable adapter of course. Easily soldered up - and also available as a back-to-back barrel from all the usual suppliers, if you prefer.
  3. Diodes won't work, DMX is electrically push/pull so it'd just attenuate the signal in both directions. One option could be to do some minor surgery on either the head or the wireless receiver and hard-wire the RS485 DMX transceiver chip into the correct direction - basically make it imposisble for the (eg) fixture to ever transmit. This would of course invalidate the guarantee, so...
  4. Yes, except that gigabit hubs don't exist, and nobody makes 10/100 Base-T hubs anymore. So they're handy if it's a 100M network and you just so happen to have one knocking around.
  5. It is practically certain that it will not appear in DMX-Workshop, as that can only display receiving devices that respond to Art-Poll packets. Unbranded "Art-Net" stuff almost never does, so cannot be discovered. On the assumption that the device is actually capable of receiving Art-DMX: Can you see the Art-Net DMX output of the FLX in DMX Workshop? If not, that's the first problem to fix. Most "unbranded" Art-Net receivers only support broadcast Art-Net 1. Try enabling 'limited broadcast' mode (send to 255.255.255.255) in your console. In that mode all devices on the local physical network will receive the packets, but you won't be able to send more than around 8 universes (sometimes less) before things start to misbehave. (This is why it's not recommended!) Art-Net universes count from 0 (often written as 0-0 or 0-0-0), but most consoles count from 1. Some consoles default to universe 1 is Art-Net universe 0 (network is console minus 1), others to console universe 1 is Art-Net 1 and Art-Net universe 0 can't be patched. I've seen a lot of cheap/unbranded "Art-Net" devices that only work when set to universe 0. Try that. As a general rule-of-thumb, devices that say they support both sACN (E1.31) and Art-Net are far more likely to work than those that only say Art-Net as they're more likely to be using the open-source libraries that actually work.
  6. There looks to be a "DMX In" 5-pin XLR port immediately below the custom DIN thing. Very likely you can use any old DMX controller connected to that. Though be aware that it's going to be getting difficult (and more importantly, expensive) to get replacement lamps for the fixtures, so it's worth starting to save up for some replacements in a few years.
  7. Tomo

    Load lamps

    Simply swapping out tungsten lamps for "dimmable" LED lamps does not work and never will. I cannot emphasise that enough! 2-wire mains dimmable retrofit LED lamps will never* dim all the way to zero, and all brands will 'popcorn' where they turn on/off at different points. - Both limitations are mostly due to manufacturing tolerances, so the cheaper the lamp, the worse. Reverse-phase/trailing edge/IGBT dimmers generally make them behave better than the traditional SCR/triac dimmers you currently have, and may be good enough for some purposes/installations. The major modular dimming systems have reverse phase modules available, or you can rewire to fit external products like the AL Sundial mentioned above. But don't expect them to be as good as the tungsten you had before, that is only possible with DMX-controlled LED fittings or remote LED drivers like the ETC F-Drive. Eg If your existing houselight dimming is ETC Sensor racks then you can fit "PhaseAdept" or "ELV" modules - your ETC dealer can check which are suitable for your existing racks, and arrange a trial to see if they give "good enough" results. * While it can technically be done, it'd cost far more and always perform worse than the existing mid-range remote-driver LED retrofits.
  8. A lot of discharge lamps have a little blob of metallic mercury sloshing about inside them when cold, so I don't think that's necessarily an indicator of a bad lamp. Doesn't mean the lamp is good either, so swapping the lamp is a good troubleshooting step.
  9. The "standard bases" part is simply impossible for anything other than a PAR-style lamp. LEDs run cool, but the diodes have to stay cool or they die very quickly. That said, retrofits do exist, eg the ETC Source 4WRD that replaces the burner, lamp and reflector. Most of that is the massive heatsink, heatpipes and related gubbins to keep the diodes cool.
  10. It's a physical microswitch in the body of the socket.
  11. You absolutely cannot fit a filament lamp! It won't work and is likely to damage the luminaire. The proper lamp is a Philips MSR 1200 SA, which is a discharge lamp. They're still available from theatrical suppliers for around £160 inc VAT give or take. Thomann list them at £211, as you've no doubt already found. While Philips have left the lighting market, these have been spun off to Signify and were a very popular moving head lamp. I'd guess they're still manufactured, though probably not for many more years.
  12. Tomo

    Image Projector

    ColorSource Spot jr could be an option. M-size gate, RGBL (normal or deep blue option). 5700lm https://www.etcconnect.com/Products/Entertainment-Fixtures/ColorSource-Spot-jr/Features.aspx Or of course an actual Source Four Mini LED. E-size gate.
  13. Methinks something has been rather mangled in the telling! Four years is 35,000 hours, so roughly 2/3 of the way through a realistic L70 of 50-60k hours. Decent quality luminaires will easily last that long, however if they were left in the same saturated colour the whole time I'd expect a visible colour shift - which would not be covered by any warranty, any more than burnt gel. On the other hand, a lot of the LED tape probably would have failed. It's poorly cooled and made as cheap and bright as possible, so runs hot and dies young. Most places treat it as a consumable. On the gripping hand, a tungsten or discharge rig treated that way would have blown all the lamps and likely need some new reflectors. Some of the discharge lamps would have gone up in an exciting way. Pretty costly error even before considering the electricity.
  14. Theatrical and other special-purpose halogen lamps have always been a sideline of a plant that makes filament lamps for general use. It is already very difficult to purchase many types of halogen lamps - the 'general' market doesn't want tungsten lamps anymore so the plants are closing. As time goes by the remaining lamps will become a lot rarer and more expensive. For example, the final floppy disk manufacturing plant closed a few years ago. Aerospace and industrial that still need them buys second-hand/refurbished at great expense. In theory there's about 3 years supply left - of course, it'll actually be longer than that as airframes and machinery get upgraded reducing demand.
  15. Broken cable can do this kind of thing. DMX (like most digital protocols) tends to keep working reasonably well under absolutely terrible conditions - until it suddenly doesn't. DMX is perhaps worse than most, because there's no error checking and error correction is entirely based on the idea that a new packet will be along in a few milliseconds to correct a wrong value. That worked very well with tungsten lamps and (to some extent) moving lights because they simply can't physically react that fast - but LEDs can. Making sure your cables are correctly terminated both prevents a lot of issues and - perhaps more importantly - causes a semi-broken line to stop working altogether, instead of intermittently doing crazy things. Much easier to find and fix the problem. I've seen many sites where one of the wires had broken and was making intermittent connection. It'd usually appear to be just fine, then occasionally cause all kinds of weird flicker - sometimes apparently triggered by loud sounds, possibly because the noise would make the broken strands vibrate.
  16. Usual causes of this kind of failure are bad crimping, undersized/low quality connector and undersized wire. Undersized wire is a leading cause of bad crimping, of course. If the issue really is that the wire is undersized for the load & conditions, then it'll eventually burn out further up or at the other end. I'd recommend replacing the whole run, don't just patch in across the failed bit. Also, the greenish tint likely indicates moisture, so have a look for signs of corrosion elsewhere before closing everything up.
  17. That's a bug in the fixtures. It means they aren't compliant with ANSI E1.11 DMX512A-1990. It makes me sad that after 33 years there are still fixtures which don't follow the standard.
  18. Tomo

    Tripping supply

    Fixtures that have an "in" and "thru" for their power do not create any delay at all. It's just a convenient way to connect several luminaires to the same socket, electrically the same as a Y-split extension lead or Aus/NZ piggyback plugs. As with all extension leads, the plug, socket, internal wiring and fuse (if present) have some maximum rating that must not be exeeded, and it's fairly easy to accidentally put "one too many" on the daisychain - or a stack of plugs for that matter. Many manufacturers say "No more than N luminaires of the same type may be daisychained" simply because it's an easy and quick way of checking that a run is within the maximum safe loading of that first luminaire in the chain. As you've guessed, the problem here is 'simply' that there are too many luminaires being switched on at once for the inrush rating of the breaker. The solution will be to spread them more evenly across the circuits of the LSC APS unit, or remove some fixtures. The most likely actual cause is that a few of the fixtures have been rearranged or added, increasing the inrush of one of the power-on sequence steps. It won't trip every time because the actual inrush depends on many factors, including the exact timing of the switch-on, the charge in the capacitors of the loads and of course whether you're in a hurry with a fractious full house. This is becoming an increasingly common problem these days. - System designed for six fixtures, someone adds "just one more" and it seems fine, but tomorrow it trips on powerup.
  19. The factories are closing. Most theatrical halogen lamps were a sideline for a plant that 'normally' produced lamps for domestic use, and domestic demand has vanished. Now the only factories left are the ones producing lamps for specialist applications, like military, aviation, inside ovens etc. I'd expect that ACL, PAR and HPL lamps will be around for some years to come, but everything else is unlikely to be around for much longer.
  20. 3 pin XLR is explicitly prohibited by the actual ANSI E1.11 DMX512A standard, because cross-plugging audio and lighting is very likely to damage the equipment (or worse). So, anything that is 3-pin (since 1990) was made by someone who either didn't read the standard or deliberately chose not to comply. What else did they omit? Some 3-pin stuff also uses a different pinout. (Presumably because they didn't read the pin numbering on an XLR-3.) In general, I would only chain splitter "thru", and not splitter "outputs". This is simply because if the splitter fails, then everything on its outputs will stop working. However, the "thru" is passive, so it's likely to still work after a failure. Thus, if my splitters are connected via "thru" then everything on my other splitters should keep working until I've a chance to replug or swap the bad splitter. I would also very strongly recommend fully-isolated splitters. - Especially if you have some 3-pin (nonstandard) equipment, as the isolation should limit the damage if someone crossplugs and you get unlucky.
  21. HSE block seems to be Biocide permission extensions that have already expired, and regulations about agreements between EU countries (so no longer applicable anyway) That document reads as absolute desperation to find anything at all.
  22. EchoTouch would be the ETC product to take a look at. https://www.etcconnect.com/Products/Architectural-Systems/Echo/EchoTouch/Features.aspx It's basically the architectural version of a ColorSource console - one local DMX output, also sACN output and snapshot. PIN lockouts for playback and setup. Supports both simple preset playback and sequences, static and moving lights, multiple spaces with space combine (eg if they've got airwalls), and you can connect external button stations if so desired.
  23. Once you start going network, it won't be long before an existing splitter rack is mostly redundant and either spread around the venue where a few extra ports are needed off a gateway, or sold off. I'd recommend choosing Ethernet-to-DMX Output Gateways that can be configured to run in either direction, like the ETC Response Gateways (or some Pathway?) That way, most of the time they're doing something useful (or being your cold spares 'just in case'), and for a visiting DMX-only console you simply make up a few male-to-male XLR-5 gender changers and pick up one or two of your cold spares/portable gateways off an unused bridge, set to an input and off they go. - A smaller console implies a smaller show, after all. I think it's a pretty safe bet that any console that has more than 2 universes has E1.31 sACN. Pretty much everything with 2 or more from the last decade has sACN, and it's practically certain that nobody is still touring 5-or-more universe consoles that predate network output. With the ETC Response you can also use the "Advanced Input Patch" to do a 'virtual' repatch and give a one-universe visiting console control of fixtures across multiple network universes. I find this an absolute lifesaver when a small console tours in! Not sure if Pathway have an equivalent feature, you'd need to check.
  24. No need to apologise, this is more complex than you'd like - and the necessary data isn't generally published so you're always guessing to some extent. 75W at 12VDC is 6.25A, so call it 7A total load all-in. Ten minutes is 1.17 Amp-hours of consumption. A "high discharge" or "deep cycle" SLA battery is generally assumed to derate to ~50% capacity when discharged at 1C (eg 7Ah nameplate with 7A draw). So that kind of 7Ah SLA would derate to ~3.5Ah, you'd be using less than 50% of the capacity and be ok. However, a "standby" or "high capacity" SLA battery (as found in most UPS) derate a lot further at 1C and die very quickly if discharged below 50%. With Jivemaster's 1/4 estimate, your 1.17Ah @ 7A discharge would take 2/3 of a "standby" SLA, and probably effectively kill it within a few cycles. I'd suggest LiFePO4 for this application as they're designed for fast discharge down to 20% nameplate capacity. Most golf carts/electric scooters and "off-grid" systems use them these days as they're cheaper and less ... combustible than lithium polymer. I believe an 8Ah LiFePO4 is about £50. The chargers are a bit more expensive than SLA, but they also charge faster so you might not need as many batteries.
  25. The ETC ColorSource family should fit your requirements and budget. All versions have 80 'desk channels' (independent fixtures, regardless of DMX slot count). The difference is whether there's 20 or 40 physical faders and so how much paging you need to do. Standard edition lists around the lower end of your budget, AV edition around the top end of your budget and adds Ethernet, a second physical DMX port and monitor. There's a free offline editor of course, look under the "Software" link of the above page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.