Advice sought for lighting installation

[gavspav]

Hello I'm new here and generally don't know much about lighting.

 

I'm hoping to build a version of a fairground striker (strength tester where you swing a hammer and try to ring a bell) which triggers strings of lights - the harder you hit the further up the lights travel.

 

The interactive side of it is no problem for me (well problems are surmountable) but I cant seem to find a cheap way of achieving the lighting.

 

I have a marquee with a central pole and I would like to have the lights travelling up it and if possible up the guy ropes as well.

 

I do have a DMX controller but thats about it.

 

Have been looking at addressable led strips but I want about 8m and it look expensive.

 

Anyone got any advice?

 

Here's a couple of links to what I've been looking at. http://www.synopticlabs.com/blog/?p=97 http://www.logic-magic.co.uk/products.htm

Thanks,

 

 

Gavin

 

http://www.synopticlabs.com/blog/?p=97 http://www.logic-magic.co.uk/products.htm

[themadhippy]

how about some led bars for the pole? something like this

[gavspav]

Thanks - Yeah I guess that'd do it. Do you think about £120 a metre is the best I can do it for though? (I want about 6 or 7m).

 

Also wondering if there would be a flexible solution - be cool to do guy ropes as well.

 

Gavin

 

how about some led bars for the pole? something like this

[Stuart91]

How are you doing the physical side of it, i.e. the bit that gets hit by the hammer?

[SoLiEn]

http://www.greenledtec.com/product.asp?sid...id=34&id=51 ?

 

something from this site maybe?

[KidRay]

This LED tube by Eurolight might interest you:

available from Thomann for about £80 (€93). It has 16 DMX addressable sections, so depending on whether it has a dimmer channel and a strobe channel, that's 4-5 DMX channels per section, up to 80 DMX channels per metre. See where I'm going with this?

 

A thought does occur to me though; effectively you are making a giant VU meter, there are kits/chips etc. available for this application, you will be using a force meter or something instead of an audio input, but that's the only obvious difference. This might be a cheaper alternative than the DMX approach. A lot of the VU meter kits have peak hold, so it would be easy to see the strength of the blow!

[SoLiEn]

Give Robin a message, hes quite competeitive with LED stuff and DMX drivers for said stuff. he may already of done something similar, but I dunno.

 

 

 

Tel: 07812 334442

robin@illuminatedesign.co.uk

[gavspav]

Thanks for all your advice.

 

So far it looks like a choice between led bars which are simple but pricey and a vu meter solution which would probably work out cheaper but need alot more wiring.

 

As the whole set up will be moved alot I was hoping to avoid wiring to every individual bulb.

 

Addressable Led strips seem like they are quite a young product and still quite expensive for what they are.

 

I'm still thinking about this one!