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LED PARCANS + CONTROLLER?


Sound In Gloucestershire

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Hi everyone, ive just spent the last few hours reading old threads about this topic and I still dont know what to do now!

 

 

Basically I need 8 LED Parcans for Uplighting. Of course I want bright, budget is as cheap as possible (sorry). Thomann seems to be the cheapest place for these items, they also do the floorstanding ones which sounds great. Now they are being bought primarily for uplighting, but I will occasionally put them on a TBar for band lighting

 

Now ive immediately gone towards Par 64's, as the price difference isnt alot between 56 and 64's. Ive also ignored 5mm cans and opted for the 10mm ones.

 

http://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_led_pa...ilver_floor.htm

PAR 64 Floor Standing 10mm LED's £52

 

These look upto the job, does anyone know any reason why I should not go for these? Reliability wise, I can cope, especially with the 3 year warranty

 

Then I need a controller and boy this is a minefield! When doing uplighting jobs I want to be able to leave all heads on one colour easily, or have the heads gently rotating between two colours (or more). Then at night, I may wish to make them sound to light with the entertainment. Also handy for any band hires (plug in, and not do much with it, think small bands). They wont be controlling anything but led parcans, as ill use laptop based software for other lighting, not an option for these unnatended uplighting jobs

 

first of all, I was going to pick one of these up, for £32, this would cover the basic "one colour" jobs, am I correct? Set all heads to the same DMX address and Basically just mix the colours via the 3 faders and leave alone http://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_ddc6_dmx_controller.htm would this do the job?

 

then I need a controller that can deal with the more demanding customers. Thomann has many controllers between the £60 and £100 mark. These are two that caught my eye.

 

http://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_dmxmaster_i.htm £88 This one seems to have hotkeys for Scenes and chases, which appeals, I presume each hotkey can be programmed?

 

http://www.thomann.de/gb/elation_led_operator.htm £95 this one has lots of hotkeys for scenes and chases, but I cant see how they are programmed beyond their factory pre-sets, which is pretty useless? Unless someone can explain it to me? If it can be programmed, then its definately the simplest to use from the customers point of view

 

 

Sorry if some of my questions seem a bit obvious, ive only used manufacturers own lighting desks which match the effects

 

Any help is appreciated, advice or people with experience in doing this

 

Peter

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I was in the exact same situation as you a while back but with a little help I chose a Zero 88 Elera as my controller. Its a twelve channel desk so leaves u a little bit of room for expansion in the future and I also have the 64's just because they look a little bit more normal. The only downside is that not all LED's do a very good white light so maybe buy yourself a a tungsten par 64 and put a frost filter in front of it for when you have a live band in. Hope this helps

 

Jon Wing

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New tech is always going to take time to sort its self out, there are some very good LED lamps on the market now, home style GU10 5w LEDs amd even 12v 5w, with a equiv light o/p near 50w in its eqv t/h version, par64 and par36 lamps are better now then they were some year or so go, I had a problem with LED lamps and eventully found a company called International Lamps in I think Harlow Essex. the guy I spoke to, think his name was Terry Barnes was well up on the technolgy and pointed me in the right direction in both work and home, if in need give him a call, dont know there number but they have a websit so look them up.

Hope this helps, keep on cracking on !

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Hi Peter

 

I bought pretty much exactly the set up you are thinking about 6 months ago:

8 of these:

http://www.thomann.de/gb/eurolite_led_par_..._10_mm_leds.htm

1 of these:

http://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_dmxmaster_i.htm

 

The stairville controller will be fine for your purposes, from what I can work out it has more programmable scenes available (30 banks of 8 scenes) than the elation controller (16 scenes), although the elation has 8 chases as opposed to the stairville's 6.

 

Edit:

Having just had a quick scan of the elation user manual it seems that you cant program individual fixtures with it, it's all fixtures or nothing!

 

A couple of minor irritations with the stairville:

 

all the inputs are on the top side (looking at it face on), so you need at least a 3u size rack to get the cables plugged in.

 

The tap tempo button seems to control crossfade time rather than the time a scene is on for, (so if you tap at say 5s interval you get a 5s slow crossfade rather than 5s on one scene then a quicker crossfade, and this doesn't seem to be editable.But you can use the speed and fade time faders to achieve this, so no biggie).

 

There are versions of the Stairville unit under other brand names which have the additional capability of control via midi (the stairville has the midi socket, but not the software apparently).

 

The sound to light is far too sensitive when used onstage with any of the bands I play in, although there is an option to plug a mic into a phono socket on the unit and I intend to try this with a little mic wrapped in some foam or similar to attenuate the SPLs and placed inside the kick drum.

 

Other than those minor points I think it will do all of the things in your original post.

 

I use the 8 parcan set up with 3 different bands and, while it's not going to set the world alight, it's easily as effective as 8 300w standard parcans and much more flexible.

 

Hope this helps.

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sorry to say this now you've ordered! I've used most of the ones available from thomann. the 10mm ones you suggest aren't much better than the cheap 5mm ones. the eurolite ones are better, the 1w ones are great in comparisom. as a controller, why not use 1 can as master, you can select fades, static colours or chases rom the dip switches. otherwise with desks, the DMX master is horrid. I've got one andkeep on meaning to dispose of it on ebay. The cheap glp 12 or 24 channel regular theatre style desks are much better, the fade and speed controls work well, and you can preset scenes or chases, or sound to light on the lower set of faders.

I suggest you cancel your order asap, and buy 1 or each type of can, compare them, then get 7 more of the ones you want and ebay the ones you don't want!

hope this helps, sorry for bad grammer, was typed on my mobile!

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ronknights is right, the desk he mentions is better, as are the lights.

 

What he doesn't mention is that he's just doubled your budget. What you have ordered will do the job, of course you can get better gear if you spend more, it's up to you to decide how much.

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The big problem with all this advice is that it's based on unsound ground. If you buy mail order, then comparision between prducts is impossible, and asking different people who can only base their comment on what they have had, or seen is problematic on equipment of this type.

 

LED technology is moving so fast that buying any OEM product that does not have a make and model number is a gamble. Light output goes up with each new container opened by the big boys like Thomann, but they just advertise it as LED Parcan, black at a price. They look the same, cost less each time and the specs seem to mean very little.

 

The notion of ordering one of each seems sound, but if the 'real' order appears in 3 or 4 weeks time, what you get may be different to the one you first had.

 

My best guess is that kidray is going to get a huge parcel, lots of kit and will be really pleased with it. He's ordered it and let's be very blunt here - that's a really big box of kit for £500! That is not a lot of money, really, for what he's got. It's a system, it should work - job done. Next month he would have got a brighter one, he'll live with it.

 

What matters now is that he gets the system up and running, learns how to make it do what he wants, and fathoms out the weirdness of programming cleverer stuff.

 

I'm confident that he'll be happy - no need for any doom and gloom.

 

The worst bit about doing what he's doing is making up the mains cabling to make it work. Plugs, sockets, splitters - this is a substantial amount of money, compared to the cans!

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hehe I hope kidray doesnt receive them, as im the one whos paid for them!!

 

basically they are a PAR 64, Chrome and floor Standing thats the main requirements sorted, they cost £50 each which is unbelievably cheap, providing they do what they are told DMX wise, then I am very happy

 

Controller? ill let you know when it arrives hehe

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  • 2 weeks later...

just wanted to post an update

 

all arrived, all work perfectly

 

the mini controller is useless as its 6 channels and the cans are 7 channels, channel 7 being the brightness ** laughs out loud **

Its ok though as it can control my led par 36's which are 4 channel or my DMX strobe which is 2 channel

 

im impressed by the brightness, I dont have them to compare, but I have demo'd them to a customer in a room with the lights on and the sun shining through the window and they looked good. Used them in a nightclub tonight for lighting and also strobed them and was very happy!

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  • 2 weeks later...
The cheap glp 12 or 24 channel regular theatre style desks are much better,

 

Thankyou for this suggestion. I am new to DMX and looking into what equipment to recommend for a local hall with a small stage. Could anyone please suggest which theatre style desks to look at. All I have found so far are desks geared to disco/group venues (dripping with sound to light, flashing, strobing and sequencing - all of which are of little or no use to me), or theatre desks costing many thousands.

 

From what I have seen on the sites supplying LED Parcans, these units seem to occupy 4 or 6 DMX channels, but I have not been able to find any data on what each of these channels controls, or how these can be assigned to sliders on the control desk. Does this mean that, with a 24 slider desk, I can only manually control 8, 6 channel LED Parcans to get brightness and colour.

 

I am sorry if my question has already been answered somewhere else, but I have not yet been able to track down anything on this.

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