How do I sync colour of LED Par 56s? (Newbie question)

[read_the_fanzine]

Hello all,

 

I put on gigs in a North London pub. The venue's equipment is pretty basic, so last time I got a PA + lighting hire company in, and it all went well, aside from the fact that it all went horribly over budget, and the lighting generated so much heat that the bands were lightly cooked, and the CD amp kept overheating!

 

I saw another gig at the venue a few weeks ago, and with nothing but a bare 100W bulb as lighting, it just wasn't the same!

 

So I discovered the delights of Thomann, and whilst stocking up with Mikes, stands etc, I bought 4 Showtec LED Par 56B lights and a lighting truss.

 

I'm quite impressed with their output, it is much better than I was expecting, and the sound to light thing seems to work quite well (at least at home with a stereo - not sure how they will react to a live band).

 

The instructions that come with them are basic to say the least, but here is what I want to achieve:

 

When using sound to light, I want each pair of lights to be on the same colour. I connected the OUT of one light to the IN of the other with a microphone XLR cable , hoping that this would make one a master and the other a slave, but no whatever I set the dip switches to, they still picked their random colours independently.

 

The other thing is that when we have an acoustic act on, I'd like to perhaps stick to one colour throughout their act. I thought maybe I could put it on Auto, and wait until the right colour came up and turn the speed down to the lowest point, but no they still continue to change colour.

 

Looks like I need a DMX controller?

 

Any recommendations for something quite basic? I noticed that Thomann do one for about £20, but I couldn't be sure that would arrive before next Saturday. Maplins have one for about £70 - would that do what I need? Is there a simpler/cheaper controller I could get that would cater for my basic needs?

 

I realise a PC based one would be good, but I don't have a laptop, and I'm not particularly flush after buying all this equipment :)

 

Any help would be great!

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

JK

http://www.readthefanzine.co.uk

[niclights]

What you were trying to achieve is not possible with those units. They do not have a 'master/slave' function though this is largely irrelevant as the sound-to-light is a complete disaster with (not particularly!) high volumes. Note that the word 'disaster' is probably an understatement!

 

Either you can set them up in fade mode (IIRC this is achieved by setting dip-switch 8) and then set fade speed by the other dip-switches. This might look ok and if you hook them all up to the power in such a fashion that you can turn them all on at once they 'might' stay in sync.

 

Otherwise you need the controller. Anything that can output DMX will work for you. Each unit uses 6 channels, so for maximum control over 4 you will need 24 channels. (You actually only need 3 channels per unit, but to take advantage of this the desk needs to have 'soft-patch' functions, which the more basic desks probably do not).

If you don't want individual control of the four units you can assign them all to the same address, or to two addresses in pairs. In this manner you would only need 6 or 12 channels respectively.

 

Note that although the inbuilt sound-to-light is terrible, you could make use of a similar function in the controller you choose, should you wish. This might be worth considering when choosing - essentially requires the ability to create chase(s) and obviously have some sort of microphone or line input with sensitivity control that can be used to trigger the chase steps.