Tomo

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.

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.

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.

Human vision, usually! The Phantom boat is driven by a stage hand. Stage trucks are often driven directly by stage crew who know the marks they need to hit and make sure they do so within a reasonable margin of error. Basically remote-controlled cars. It takes practice and rehearsal of course, but is more than good enough for most purposes and allows for some flexibility in case actors or other stage elements miss their marks!

Note that shielded Cat5/6 is not really recommended for DMX usage, as it's currently unclear what RJ45 fixtures, splitters and patch panels should do with the shield. (This is one of the reasons why ESTA are reopening the E1.11 DMX512-A standard rather than simply reaffirming it) Some leave it floating, while others connect it to ground which can lead to ground loop problems. When making your adapters: The colour coding mentioned in the E1.11 standard assumes RJ45s are wired to EIA/TIA 586B as that's the most common. Be aware that "Crossover" patch leads will swap the Data 1 and Data 2 pairs. Do not connect anything to the blue pair (RJ45 pins 4 & 5). These can have large voltages (>60VAC) on them in some use cases, which can damage equipment and even be dangerous. Both of the brown pair of conductors must be connected to XLR5 pin 1 You must not connect anything to the XLR shell. ANSI E1.11-2008 (R2013) Standard RJ45 pin assignment: 1 white / orange: data 1+ (XLR-5 pin 3 2 orange: data 1- (XLR-5 Pin 2) 3 white / green: data 2+ (optional, XLR-5 Pin 5) 6 green: data 2- (optional, XLR-5 Pin 4) 4 blue: Do Not Connect 5 white / blue: Do Not Connect 7 white / brown: Data Link Common (Common Reference) for Data 1 (0v, XLR-5 Pin 1) 8 brown: Data Link Common (Common Reference) for Data 2 (0v, XLR-5 Pin 1)

Assuming you're not using the "Thru" on the splitter, this would be 4 on the first run, then 4 on each of the other two runs. Board + Light + Light + Splitter Splitter + Light + Light + Light (twice) That said, in reality you run into cable and reliability/redundancy issues long before you run into the line driver limits. You can only do "the maximums" if your cable is perfect. Nobody has perfect cable. Limit each segment to what you are prepared to lose simultaneously The latter is generally more important. If a single luminaire or cable breaks, what are you going to lose? Are you going to have to stop the show, or can you afford to limp on without everyone on that cable segment? Eg I'd never do the above, I'd always run directly Board > Splitter so a single failed light won't take out everything.

ColorSource has 20 or 40 Playbacks, and many pages of content that can be loaded onto them. When you change page, all "inactive" playbacks are loaded with the new content, and any playbacks that are "active" keep the old content until it is brought out. Eg. If you are on Page 1 and push up Playback #1 (call that preset 1.1), then change to Page 2, Playback #1 is still controlling preset 1.1 until it's brought back down to zero. Then when you bring 1.1 down to zero, preset 2.1 is loaded onto the Playback. This ensures all active playbacks are immediately available, so you can't get in a situation where you need to search to find out why a light is "stuck on". What is on that playback? If something needs to be on all the time, then perhaps the Independents might be a better way?

The Wago connectors are probably the easiest, assuming the connection only needs to be made and broken a few times for storage/repair. Solder to the tape, strip 11mm, pop the lever up, then shove 'em in and snap shut. Rated at 20A/32A depending on UL/EN and the wire used. Available from all electrical wholesalers. You'lI never use choc block again 😉 If it's touring, then I'd recommend 4-pin XLR or Speakon because you will be able to get spares from most hire companies. Wagos aren't intended to be reused more than a few times.

It doesn't use location services or anything like that. The emergency broadcast system is cell-based - they pick some cells, choose a message and broadcast to every mobile that's connected to those masts. The phones then ignore the signal because everyone finds them annoying and turns it off the first time it interrupts them.

Almost certainly not! According to the manual I found in a quick Google, this unit is rated for 6A total load across all the outputs. Power dissipation is the square of the current, so at 20A total load you'd be asking the unit's LED driver circuit to dissipate 11-12 times the design power (best case). It's certain to burn something out after a while - if you're lucky, it'll blow internal fuses within a few seconds. However, it might be possible to run it at 12VDC with 6A of LED load - depending on what internal voltages it relies on.

A huge amount of "mass-market" commercial software now relies on an internet connection to check the licence, even if fully locally installed. It's really quite worrying how reliant even "standalone" software tools have become. Interestingly my (new) FTTP ISP tells me that Openreach Level 2/2-plus are pointless, as they've historically delivered exactly the same service for Level 1 and the extra payout if it goes down and they miss the SLA is less than the monthly cost difference. They suggested a PAYG data SIM box as my backup if I didn't want to tether to my smartphone. There's one-calendar-month 50GB deals for under £20, or "unlimited" (limited to one month) for a bit more. Though quite what you're supposed to do if you don't have decent mobile coverage after the switchoff is beyond me.

It may well be an incorrectly manufactured injection moulding tool that the 'real' customer rejected. Then someone picks up the tool dirt cheap, and bangs out a load of generic LED par casings. I've seen more than a few items where the casing manufacturer looks to have picked up an injection mould out of a skip to bang out a load of 'free' widgets. Sometimes it's very obvious where the tool was badly worn or defective and a bit's missing, filed down or simply left out-of-tolerance for the purchaser to deal with...

The HSE have published some guidance on the matter - https://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/faq-portable-appliance-testing.htm The main risk PAT is there to protect you from is wear and tear on things like cables and plugs/sockets, and undetected/unreported physical damage - "I dropped it but it looked ok" If the fixtures stay rigged, indoors and "out of reach" then the HSE guidance implies a formal visual every 2-4 years (not hand-held, rarely moved) and electrical test up to five years apart, as there's a relatively low risk that something will get broken or wear out. That said, they want cleaning fairly regularly anyway, and a visual inspection should be part of cleaning!

RGBWC usually means RGB Warm-white, Cool-white. Though some of the things the chip manufacturers call "white" are not what we'd generally call white. They can be quite heavily tinted.

Sort of. Under 'normal' use it could easily take many minutes to send that single 120-character text message. It's intended for use in wilderness areas where you're the only one trying to send a text within ten miles, and a half hour delay is better than no message at all.

From what's turned up in this thread so far I would say it is highly likely that the damage is due to leaving the fixtures powered during large electrical storms. - As I have not seen any of the actual fixtures, this is of course speculation based on comments so far on this thread. Repeated large electrical storms are quite likely to damage electronic equipment like LED fixtures (and computers/consoles etc) if they are not isolated. A strike near local transmission lines or substation may result in quite large surges that can damage or even overcome the built-in protection. The built-in protection has a maximum rating - so a big enough hit will overwhelm it and damage the electronics. It also wears out if subjected to repeated surges. Even a small hit heats up surge suppression devices a lot (that's how it works), and (esp. if not given a chance to cool) this can 'burn out' some of the protective internal structure, reducing its effectiveness. Over time subjecting a device to repeated 'small' strikes may burn out much of the protection, until finally an event that a new device would handle just fine instead damages or even destroys it. It is generally recommended that unused equipment is isolated during large storms.

Yes, mousewheel maps to the Intensity wheel when in the Stage views. Otherwise it scrolls lists. The pointer acts as an actual mousepointer until you touch/click the "Trackball P/T" softbutton Yes, they do. The lighthack code on github supports Eos, Cobalt and ColorSource using the same binary. The whole ColorSource AV OSC command set is available over USB on both CS and CSAV, so you can (eg) drive any parameters you like by name.

They'll never dim 'nicely'. Mains dimmable LED doesn't dim to zero, and on those dimmers you'll be lucky to get below 20%. SCR/Triac dimmers like the one linked have relatively high minimum loads - 40-50W of resistive (tungsten) is a common minimum. Mains LED lamps like the ones linked will tend to flicker, flash, or never fully turn off at all. Adding more in parallel can make it better - or worse. I'd suggest fitting non-dimmable LED retrofits and using them as working light.

That's all I ever got either. Don't even know how many there actually are 😞

Just like with floppy disks, vinyl (now PET) records and thermionic valves, it will eventually become difficult (read - expensive) to purchase quality replacement lamps for existing halogen theatrical fixtures, as the factories that make them decide it's not worth their while. However, this is some time in the future, and of course halogen lamps can last several years in "lightly-used" rigs. My recommendation would be to start putting aside a kitty towards infrastructure upgrades to support LED fixtures in a few years time. Infrastructure like switched power controls and installed cabling is often a better investment than fixtures - you can usually hire a few fixtures for not a lot, but temporary infrastructure costs a lot of time and cash you'd rather be spending directly on the show. As time goes by there will no doubt be a healthy secondhand market in the 'decent' LED fixtures, so you will probably be able to afford some good-quality fixtures with many years of life left - it's currently a bit of a minefield though.

Due to the nature of DMX, a lot of broken systems "appear to work fine" right until the moment they ... don't. A lot of the time, more than half the packets could get rejected due to framing errors and you'd never know - 20 fps looks very similar to 44 fps. If the fixtures respond relatively slowly (like tungsten or motorised parameters), single-packet wrong values are often invisible as the device simply can't respond quickly enough for you to see them. A system with broken wires, wrong impedance cable or missing/wrong termination does have reflections, but reflections don't actually matter until a receiver is sat on a node. Changing the cable length moves the nodes, so adding or removing cable might move a node onto a fixture - or off it. Changing the DMX levels can make it more or less likely that a fixture is going to miscount slots - the most classic flicker. eg it misses the actual start bit due to a noise spike, but the levels for the next few slots look like proper framing. (This is why checking both stop bits matters, but many devices don't) A broken common/shield raises the noise floor and also means the common-mode voltage will be set entirely by capacitive coupling to "something". Which depends on what's near the cables, the specific details of the fixtures beyond the break and the condition of the liver in the chicken you sacrificed before the show. Once you exceed the common mode limit the transceiver chip could start to do almost anything. Eventually it might enter thermal shutdown or even burn out, but that'll take a while. Until it actually fails there may not be any visible symptoms at all. LED fixtures (and strobes) can respond far quicker, so it's fairly common for a system to be "fine" for years, then they get some new LED fixtures that don't have any smoothing and they flicker. TL;DR: Use the right cable, always fit a terminator.

This is a really, really bad idea. You're certain to accidentally dim the Macs sooner or later, which will destroy them pretty quickly. As to short-term solutions: Best is just to run a suitable extension lead (with adapters) from nearby 13A hard power. If that's not possible, many dimmer packs have the option to change the "dimmer curve" or "mode" to "Switched" or "Always On". This is much better than setting the level via DMX or manual levels. These modes will disable any voltage regulation or similar features of the dimmer, (usually) it'll "hard-fire" the SCRs to minimise the disturbance around zerocross. It protects against accidentally dimming the load, eg by accidentally using the wrong encoder on the console, loading the wrong showfile, or while manually bringing the level up after a power outage. That said, your measurements probably did not tell you what you think they did. Even Switched or Always-On mode is quite likely to cause damage to the moving lights, as the SCR + choke remains in series and these will always cause current disturbance. Electronic ballasts and many switch-mode PSUs really don't like this. You won't see this disturbance using an oscilloscope to measure open-circuit voltage, as the disturbance is current, not voltage. In fact you'll probably see a pretty clean sinewave on a high-impedance oscilloscope with the dimmer entirely "off"! As other mentioned, the striking of arc lamps is also quite likely to damage the dimmers. Admittedly, new SCRs are probably much cheaper than new ballasts.

I'd guess that the SRAM is corrupted. In the absence of an actual "hold this button during boot to clear the memory", you could try unplugging it, then removing the battery or shorting the supercap (via a resistor) for 20-30sec. That would of course wipe absolutely everything - not that it matters if it won't run anymore! Doesn't look like this has any way of saving a showfile, so hopefully all the important stuff is written down somewhere.

What features are you looking for? Where/which formats do your 3D theatre and set models come from? Which formats do you need to export? All the upper-end consoles have some level of 3D viz built-in - Eos/Augment3d, Avolites/Capture, MA/MA3D, Chamsys/magicVis. However, AFAIK none of them do any paperwork or exports other than the console's normal ASCII/CSV exports for Lightwright et al, their 3D rendering are all simplified compared to what things like Wyg and Capture can do. (MVR doesn't really count yet, the spec is currently too limited and changeable) For actual pre-viz packages, the main distinguishing factors are paperwork, realism of live and pre-rendered stills/video clips and which data formats they can import/export. Not much point in buying a package that can't import the formats you get sent the sets in, or can't export data your consoles and other tools can use. For example, I'd be very worried by a package that's proud of being able to load "3DS" (as opposed to just mentioning it in a long list of others). That format was obsolete in 1996 and is "unitless" - it doesn't say anything at all about the actual size.

Type AC RCDs are not suitable for any of the loads you've listed - or indeed most loads people are likely to encounter these days. For breakers, you need C or D curve as the inrush currents for LED fixtures are very high. With LED fixtures, in most cases you will hit the leakage current or inrush current limits long before troubling the overcurrent rating. - The video PK links to above goes into that in a bit more detail!