empyfree

Good morning all.

I'm making my first foray into using LED pixel tape, and hope to avoid rookie errors by doing my research first. I've seen lots of videos and "how to" type instructions and have pieced together an amount of knowledge.

Fundamentally I'm wanting to create a flexible system of LED control, to allow for my initial project (towards the end of September) but then to be useful in the future also. I don't mind treating the tape itself as a consumable, but the finished product of control and power supply needs to be solid and roadworthy.

I've made an initial plan based on using an Artnet Pixel controller from SmartShow. (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SmartShow-NetPixel-Quad-16-Universe-Pixel-Driver-4-output-ArtNet-SPI-/273194230852)

(larger PDF version here: http://av-matrix.online/pixel-tape-designV1

My immediate plan is to get the controller, one PSU and a couple of lengths of tape to create a test-bench version of the above. It won't have the fancy enclosures or connectors to start with.

I know it's a lot of "plan" to take in at first glance! Any sage advice, warning, do's or don't's will all be gladly received.

We see quite a few young people who have been let loose on all sorts of exotic kit at college, only to find that the jobs they’re tasked with initially aren’t highly specced... Aparrantly they can’t line up a cheap projector, but they can program Ai media servers... The ones that adapt best aren’t necessarily the most highly skilled, it’s the ones with the best attitude to learning the basics properly.

The lure of freelance work is hard to resist for the younger generation. There’s a frightening lack of understanding of tax implications etc, so daily rates of £200+ seem brilliant.

Have you seen the Smartshow kit? I’m just looking into led tape for the first time and came across it.

http://smartshow.lighting/airpixel-quad/

Sorry. Just seen it mentioned above!

Freights not too bad a choice. We have subbed kit over to

AVCOM a few times (from Yorkshire). If you’ve got to transport yourselves over as well you might as well take a van full of the expensive bits.

We convinced a wedding party that the bride and groom had arrived by helicopter.

Sequence of bright lights outside a marquee moving across the space, accompanied by a panning sound effect file and some large fans to make the marquee linings shake a little. Thirty seconds after the engines “wound down” they appeared through a door in the marquee.

Some people got the trick, some people were annoyed that they weren’t allowed outside to see them land!

My question was more around “re-inventing the wheel”? If Jess Glynnes PA worked well, make that the default for that venue? Don’t spend the time, effort and reputation re designing unless the venue or layout has changed significantly.

The Spicy stage set did look to be super wide, so it may be that nothing precious is comparable.

Don’t think much blame can be laid on the singers here. Playback tracks (whether backing or including vocals) should be clear(ish) across the audience.

 

I was being somewhat ironic, not blaming the singers... but it is by all accounts a very tricky venue, possibly not the best place to start with all the added pressures of first shows...

Ah gotcha, I missed the irony!

Almost seems like there should be “local experts” at these tricky venues, maybe with an obscure PA, weird placement etc to really get the best out of it. Then just have a touring FOH package. Maybe there is, just seems strange to think you can tour a PA that size and hope it works everywhere.

As for the MagicQ wings, I'm afraid I still don't understand why you can have up to 8 Extra wings, but only one Mini wing. I realise that one can page up and down to get 10 pages of 10 playbacks with a wing, but since the wings don't use motorised faders thats hardly an ideal way to operate a show. If Chamsys don't want to alter the software to allow it to work with multiple Mini wings then I think there is a very good case for them to produce a small wing which can work alongside the Mini wing. This comes back to my earlier point about it being very expensive to add more physical faders, because however you set up the software there will eventually come a time when you could use more faders.

It’s a fairly simple ecosystem. One “master” wing or desk (mini, compact or whatever) and then extra wings or playback wings as you need it.

In the grand scheme of things they’re incredibly cheap for a quality bit of hardware. They have no sensible business case for allowing people to bodge a system together with multiple masters.

These are still short of your IP65 ideal, but an interesting concept!

http://www.claypaky.it/en/products/spheriscan