Tomo

bpalmer was very unclear in that description! The DMX input is merged with the internal presets/sequences and transmitted out of the DMX output. So the DMX input can only control DMX devices, it can't play back Presets or control the Echo Bus dimmers etc. (It also won't pass RDM) You'll need the EchoAccess app connected to the Bluetooth interface to configure the scene controller. IIRC you can also control the system and lock out stations with the app. I'm not sure exactly what the "DMX Active" options mean either, unfortunately. I'd guess that "Off" is probably what you want. (I only deal with EchoTouch, which just uses the normal sACN per-channel-priority arbitration so is easy to set it to stomp, HTP or be the backup.)

This is now in public review, see here: https://tsp.esta.org/tsp/documents/public_review_docs.php First half is aimed at everyone, middle bit is more detailed, final section is primarily for product designers/manufacturers.

A huge part of this is "What do you want them to do?" "Open Tungsten White" or colour mixing? If you're after deep colours, then there's quite a few good options. If you're after the classic warm glow, there aren't many - avoid RGB like the plague, the LED Red+Green "yellow" is just plain awful. RGBW is also often poor at faking 'tungsten' because the W is usually very high colour temp (as that increases nominal brightness), so you have to bring in lots of RG to warm it up and it's pretty yucky. If you're after the lens glow, then there's quite a few single-colour Warm White (but they won't gel like you expect), but very few colour-mixing ones that have a similar external look. Almost all have multiple lenses, which is fine if you can't see up the nose but less so when it's in view.

Quite a lot of fixtures have a built-in self-terminating circuit on the "Thru" XLR-5 - it's just a PCB-mount female XLR-5 with a built-in microswitch, and a resistor. So you may well find that many of those runs were terminated anyway, even if you didn't do anything at all. The real trouble with DMX is that you've no idea how close you are to disaster. It's very difficult to tell the difference between a DMX run that's right on the edge of a massive flicker storm, and one that's got plenty of headroom. I recall one site that had been running 'just fine' for years, then suddenly it started having flicker storms lasting several minutes. The problem there turned out to be an XLR-5 that had not been soldered at all, they'd just stuffed the cores into the buckets. RDM tends to detect these borderline installs - if RDM doesn't work over a passive run, chances are that the DMX signal is very poor and you've been living on the edge.

A lot of places have the tungsten Sunstrips in hire stock for something like £20-30 + VAT each, which seems pretty reasonable. The LED version might be a bit more, but perhaps worth it - 9kW is rather a lot of power in a small venue.

I used to see breakable rods in these. Lockable from either side, shoving the interior pushbar hard enough would shatter a rod in the locking mechanism and open the door. Seems like a good idea on the face of it, but the trouble with this system is that you need a new breakable rod to secure the door afterwards, and I don't fancy the chances of being able to find one the same day - or even the same week. Saw a lot of sites with a broken lock and a padlock and chain instead...

I'd also strongly recommend starting putting together a plan to replace them with LED over the next few years. While the 'common' theatrical halogen lamps are very unlikely to actually disappear altogether, they are going to get harder to buy and a lot more expensive over the next few years as the factories making them shut down. You really don't want to be spending milspec or aviation type money on replacement lamps! It won't be very long before they're like floppy disks and thermionic tubes - still available, but rare and possibly even collectible(!) - 5-8 years ago there was only one place in the world making floppy disks. Now, nowhere does so anyone still using floppies is reliant on old stock.

Yes. Technically it's an RS422/423 driver, but for receive there's basically no difference. Check it's got power first, though - I'd suggest pulling it and measuring between pins 16 (VCC) and 8 (GND), should be 5VDC. If that's failed then sort out the 5V rail first!

In a lot of fixtures the DMX transceiver chip is an 8-pin DIP in a socket, so dead easy to swap - just make sure you get it the right way around! There are a few different types, so best to replace like-with-like. Usually something like £2-3 from Farnell et al.

Almost everybody notices snap-on/snap-off and popcorning, unless you can't actually get a blackout at all. School shows (especially when in school halls) get a lot of slack because everyone is there for their specific darling (and they usually don't get a decent blackout anyway). Way back when, I had a few 'school show' parents pass compliments on how the lighting was "so much better than last year", when the only real change was a (possibly) better blackout and actually using the proper houselights instead of the exam hall floods. Punters rarely know why they don't like it, only that they didn't. Anyway, for the OP: First of all, try to find out why these hires are using the tungsten houselights instead of the cleaning workers. It's very likely because they're "too harsh" (meaning too cool), or that they flicker. I agree with richardash that it's worth looking into replacing the florry worklights with non-dim LED. It may well save more energy than replacing the houselights, as workers tend to be on for far longer. - If nothing else, it's going to be more difficult to buy (and dispose of!) replacement tubes in the next few years as they don't meet the Eco Design regs that came into force this year. The specialist halogen lamps are still permitted and will still be made for many years (albeit the price will rise), but the same is not true for fluorescent tubes. The other common alternative is to replace both systems with theatrical-quality dimming LEDs and use them for everything, perhaps breaking it up into more circuits so the purely decorative lamps are only used for shows. Choosing something suitable depends entirely on your current houselighting and control. - Many smaller places have simply put up a load of COB LED Par-style fixtures, others lots of LED tape with good drivers, but that's not suitable if you've got a nice chandelier!

How many actual devices do you have, and is it feasible to rearrange them into a pair of daisychains by adding a few link cables?

The V-Pro dimmers are pretty good, I use them at home. The problem is that your lamps are not dimmable below ~20%. You will not find any mains-dimmable LED lamps that go below ~5%. None. There are none on the market, and they will probably never exist. The only LED lamps that dim below around 5% are ones that have their own specialist dimming system that takes hard power and a control signal, usually DMX. (Note that DALI and analog controlled LED systems are usually aimed at general illumination and do not dim below 5-10%) There's only three options for theatrical LED houselighting: DMX to fixture Run hot power and DMX cables to the fixtures. Requires extra cable. Usually cheapest. Radio-controlled. Easiest to install, you just need "hot power" to the fitting DMX/sACN/Art-Net control goes to a transmitter box somewhere in range, pair the lamps to the transmitter box and off you go. Remote driver A remote driver box feeds the LED lamp circuit. DMX/sACN/Art-Net is connected to the driver box. Budget and circumstances will decide which of the above three options are feasible. ETC's ArcSystem is very nice (though I would say that, wouldn't I?) and available as either ArcMesh (2) or ArcLamp Driver (3). There are other similar systems too. Many places have put up a few cheap LED-RGBW par-type fixtures and use those as houselighting for theatrical shows. If budget is tight, that's probably the cheapest decent option.

The cable's knackered anyway, so you have to replace it regardless. Best to assume the worst. It's a small quantity anyway, so you only need to launder that carpet and take up Cardiff's kind offer.

All the ETC Net3 and Response Gateways do this kind of input patching. I don't think any of the cheaper brands do. However, if it's not feasible to repair your current Pathport node, I'd actually recommend replacing the 6-channel controller with one capable of running your real system.

We did a similar distance when programming for a rather tall building a few years back. The link was a point-to-point wireless ethernet bridge. Carried about 30 universes of sACN easily, but struggled with bi-directional traffic. Hard power was available both ends, however I believe the actual unit was 12 or 24VDC powered so easily made battery. Main difficulty was aiming the antenna, both ends needed to be pretty accurately focused for it to work. Does either end need to move?

A 'dimmable' architectural ceiling panel is not going to dim to zero. 0-10V (or 1-10V) arch lights dim to a 'low level', and will not turn off that way. The intent is that you turn off the power to turn them off. If that is not a showstopper for you, then some things to watch out for: Most of these actually put ~10VDC on the wire and rely on the controller pulling the voltage down (sometimes called 1-10V or "Sink" control). - The 'original' design was to have a variable resistor between the control lines. Very cheap and cheerful. Some 0-10V demux units will die if connected to that, others don't mind but may need a switch in the right position for them to work. The 0/1-10V control line is very often not isolated from mains voltage - and thus very likely to destroy a demux, even when working correctly. They must be treated as if the 0-10V wires are live. (Eg Pathway PDF) Some fittings have fully-isolated control wires. If you do go this route, you definitely want this type. (And even in this case, treat the control wires as being live) ETC White Paper: Understanding 0–10V LED Drivers (Needs a MyETC login, hence the Pathway link above)

Yes, halogen will become hard to get for exactly the same reason you can't buy brand-new 5 1/4 floppy disks anymore. The tooling wears out in the lamp factories, and the factory decides it's not worth replacing because the quantities are too low. They won't go away entirely - they'll just get more and more expensive as they become bespoke. PAR will probably be in mass production for the longest, as there's a huge installed base and nothing quite like them.

Learn basic fault-finding techniques - halving the run, logical elimination etc. I've seen (and taken phone calls from) far too many people who really have no idea how to locate a fault. No matter what comes in the future, there will always be hardware failures - broken cables, connectors, buttons and touchscreens. Learn about Ethernet networking - not in detail, but the broad strokes and the most common failures and issues like wrong subnet, duplicate IP addresses, spotting DHCP failures, unexpected loops, long switch startup times etc. (While modern installs are likely to be mostly DHCP/zeroconf, there's still a place for static IPs)

It's been done a few times using custom gobos or masking (depending on the optics type). There's a statue in France lit by exterior HID spotlights with custom gobos carefully cutting out most of the spill past the statue. That said, the effect will degrade as the fixtures age, the optics get misted/dusty, and over time they get scratched, the gobos/masking and optics burn out/degrade and the focus gets knocked. So there will need to be an ongoing regular maintenance plan to keep the fixtures clean, in good condition and accurately focused.

Within the EU suppliers must comply with WEEEEEEE*, which requires the supplier to arrange for suitable recycling at the end of the device's lifetime. (Some do this by direct return, others by paying into 3rd party schemes) Most of an LED fixture is pretty easy to recycle. - By mass they're mostly sheet steel and alumnium blocks/castings that will pop away from the rest with a few screws and/or heating. - Some have glass optics, which is again simple. Plastic optics and casings might be harder or impossible to recycle, depends what it's made of. The PCBs are more difficult. I'm not sure how much is actually extracted and how much ends up being burned or buried. Obviously the gold and copper is recycled, but I'm pretty sure IC epoxies, FR4 et al substrates are impossible to recycle. While some fixtures are using copper or aluminium-cored PCBs for the LED arrays, which are reasonably easy to recycle (but a total pain to manufacture), pretty much all of them are also using FR4-style or CEM (paper-backed) PCB materials. So an LED parcan landfill should be a very tiny amount of ash. - As long as the user does actually return them for recycling, which is a different question I guess. * Might have too many E's.

Not really, it would only need to have a short delay where it won't change state until the input value has not changed for some length of time. 10 frames (1/4 second) would should be sufficient for most purposes. They're relays, they can't (or shouldn't) switch very fast anyway.

The best comparisons to make is probably vacuum tubes and floppy disks. There's probably only one or two places in the world still making them in very low quantities, as well as a few in various warehouses. They're now seriously expensive, and often of poor quality. You can currently buy a single floppy disk from Amazon for about £4 - I'm sure you used to get 25 disks for that!

I often use 5V tape with an ATX PC power supply, mostly because I happen to have a few of them knocking about. Note that they aren't always particularly stable with zero load on the 12V line, but that's easily sorted.

Sketchup from Trimble is very nice for beginners. The way lines and shapes just 'snap' into place makes sketching up far easier than traditional CAD. It works very well for architectural-style design. Unfortunately the free version is now online-only which makes me very sad as the UI has been greatly ripped apart to squeeze it into a browser :(

If they don't need to dim all the way to zero, there are a lot of retrofit dimmable LED lamps which will dim pretty well down to "quite low" on most reverse-phase dimmers. Those could be fitted to almost any nice-looking fitting that takes bayonet, ES or SES lamps. They'll need new dimmers though, as while while most of them will also run from an SCR dimmer like an Act6, they won't go anywhere near as low and are likely to mishave quite badly below *ahem* percentage. You have to set a significant 'knee' to avoid the bad zone. - Note that the behaviour of these lamps often varies wildly depending on how many are on the circuit, and more is not always better! They also tend to flicker like crazy when they start 'wearing out'. While they often claim ridiculously long lifetimes, that is usually only the diodes. The rest of the electronics will fail much earlier. The fade-to-warm ones I use at home (Philips DimTone) are quite nice, but they're now starting to die and have only done around 6000 hours. They're no longer manufactured of course. Expect to have to replace the entire lot in one go every few years, as you won't find the same ones ever again.