PLASA - New Stuff

[Adrianfreston]

Hello All,

 

I am interested to know what new stuff people saw at PLASA and what they thought was good and bad (I am not interested in how many brochures or lanyards you got!). Can I also ask how you felt you where treated by the exhibitors this year, I have to say that on some I felt that I was in the way rather than a bonifide user and subsequent buyer!

 

Thanks Adrian.

[lonfire]

hi,

I agree... I went to look at PC DMX solutions to buy one soon but didn't get to talk to anybody! looked around peoples stands for ages, but they either didn't have enough people to talk to you or you couldn't tell who was a punter and who was from the company.. weird..

 

also there were soooo many companies doing LED technology stuff which looked really good.. but come on people!! who wants to spend 200 quid on one LED colour changing downlighter?!?!???!?!!

 

if anybody knows a good cheap supplier of DMX led fixtures let me know.. there is a guy on ebay knocking out DMX LED colour changers (CMY small ones) for about 30 quid each from china! now thats a more reasonable price..

 

rgds

chris

[Mush]

Sorry to see the return of the `VIP` or `invitation only` upper deck style private areas.

 

Having in a previous life worked in place that sold very high end interior lighting, one of the display chandeliers was over £40K, sometimes the serious buyer may be dressed as if they didn`t have 2 beans to rub together.

 

The cost of failing to invite a prospective purchaser `upstairs ` can be very high.

 

LED market is partly haunted by the spectre of Patent infringement suits and cease and desist orders from one particularly agressive manufacturer. Possibly more of a problem in the U.S. but still has an effect overall.

 

ebay knocking out DMX LED colour changers

 

Care to provide a link?

 

CMY small ones

 

er, RGB actually, there aren`t at present Magenta LEDs and CMY is more usually used for subtractive mixing, guessing its a English/Chinese translation thing.

[boac]

Did anyone else take a close look at the visualisation software being used on the High End stand? They had two Hog III's side by side, one of which was plugged into a standard WYSIWYG setup. The other was connected to a PC running a new program called ESP. Compared to WYSIWYG perform the difference was noticeable. ESP has real time rendering - there is realistic smoke wafting across your stage (and through your light beams), you can see a proper image of your gobo projected on all surfaces and bring it in and out of focus, you get shadows from your truss or other objects moving in real time as you move beams around... It looked like it was all there, very smooth, very lifelike. Apparently runs on a reasonably well specced PC, of the sort you might build to play the latest games, ie decent graphics card, processor etc.

 

High End have apparently been working quite closely with the developers of this software (whose name I annoyingly cannot remember) and were talking about it becoming available around the end of the year or early next year.

 

One thing to note is that ESP is visualisation software only. For CAD you would still need to use WYSIWYG or one of the other CAD packages.

[sam.henderson]

Yeah I saw that, ESP is cheaper as well. You can also visualise video in it!

 

My fave product of plasa was without a doubt the Jands Vista! What a cracker.

 

Sam

[jexjexjex]

Link for the very cheap DMX colour changes. They're here.

 

At the price they're asking, It's probably worth us all clubbing together to buy these - assuming the auction is genuine.

 

Your cash goes to Aussie land & the goods are in China - Hmmm...

 

Also, look at the box. I'd be concerned that there's a "Martin" type symbol over the letter I - Someone ripping off big time?

 

Having said that, at £30 ish quid each, if they're OK...

 

Take a look at the other items they're selling. You can get a pair of these for £81.00, which might be worth some LED type company (You know who you are :P ) trying out - Again, assing these are genuine-ish.

[boac]

You can also visualise video in it!

That's right, forgot to mention that - it'll show pyro too.

 

My fave product of plasa was without a doubt the Jands Vista! What a cracker.

Got to agree with that. Can't wait to have a go on one - preferably with a big rig plugged into it. Did have a few issues with the physical layout of the desk but the clever bits of software inside (timeline, fixture library) are definitely way overdue.

[lonfire]

hi,

yup those are the ones on ebay I was looking at..

 

if people were interested in clubbing together that might be an idea.. might be a better idea to buy one first to see what its like?? I've bourght LED items from china before and to get the brightness they just up'ed the current to the leds which mean they burn't out within a week or two..

 

I noticed that martin like symbol... I do like the look of these.. no need for an external LED controler.. just plug em in, plug in DMX and off you go!

 

the pricing on them seems strange.. if you buy bulk inc postage they are 53 quid each? when I saw these about two-three weeks ago they were 30 quid each.. tis weird..

 

rgds

chris

[Tomo]

if people were interested in clubbing together that might be an idea..  might be a better idea to buy one first to see what its like?? I've bourght LED items from china before and to get the brightness they just up'ed the current to the leds which mean they burn't out within a week or two..

They seem far too cheap to me - either they are very dim or the LEDs have been overrun, as I don't think you can get blue LEDs that cheaply.

[lonfire]

yeah indeed.. however LEDs are dirt cheap.. especialy if you buy them direct from china.. the prices we pay over here are massively inflated.. so making a whole LED colour changer shouldn't be too expensive.. a PIC a few power transistors, transformer, voltage reg, some leds, sockets, case.

 

but alas I think you may be right. they wont be massively bright or they'll degrade quickly.. but if you don't try and don't know..

 

has anybody seen any other UK companies doing reasonably priced LED products? even if you could buy the led downlighters for example with just three terminals for 12V RGB.. and run a load of them from a transformer through a cheap DMX dimmer.. would work well..

 

rgds

chris

[Tomo]

has anybody seen any other UK companies doing reasonably priced LED products?

Nope, but ShickShnack Systems in Germany do some reasonable DMX-controlled ones.

 

even if you could buy the led downlighters for example with just three terminals for 12V RGB.. and run a load of them from a transformer through a cheap DMX dimmer.. would work well..

You can't dim LEDs like that. Silicon isn't a resistor like tungsten! They drop a (nearly) fixed voltage across them at all currents, so the way to dim them is to turn them on and off very quickly, or vary the current limiting resistance.

Fiddling with the supply voltage doesn't give much of a dimming curve.

[Jimbo The Wiz]

That ESP software sounds interesting. can anyone remember the name of the developers so I can find it on the internet. any help would be great.

[martinw]

ESP Studios

[Jon T]

Did anybody see the pars on rotating yokes? Think they were made by Studio due. Were very smooth and looked stunning.

[sam.henderson]

Yep I sae them, I didnt think they were anything to new. Yeah the pyro on ESP was cool!

 

Sam