RoyS Posted November 22, 2012 Posted November 22, 2012 Hi All, For our upcoming secondary school Grease run I'm making various bits of set including a door and window truck, which will be double sided. One side shows the exterior of a house, the reverse side shows the inside. 2.4m wide, 2.7 high, counter weighted base for stability, 8x 80mm castors, Peter Evans bricks, etc. I'm now considering some linear LED on outriggers from the top to cast some nice shadows on the vac formed bricks and the inside wall and wondered if anyone could recommend something fairly cheap that we could buy... Two, meter long fixtures would do. Two a side would be great if the price was right. The LED's would have to be in lines and not in circular clumps (like pretend sunstrips) My goal price would be in under £90.00 each (pre VAT). One thought would be to buy some 3 colour Par64's and rip them to bits - mount the LED's in some skinny boxes and get busy with a soldering iron and lots of ribbon cable... All suggestions gratefully received... BTW, Don't you just love Sketchup....
DrV Posted November 22, 2012 Posted November 22, 2012 I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to do - generally speaking, linear lights produce less shadow than point sources, however, have you considered LED tape? I've just bought a load of it to make Cinderella's coach and it is very cheap, (about £10 for 5m) incredibly bright and runs off a 12V battery which is convenient for a truck.Dave
rossmck Posted November 22, 2012 Posted November 22, 2012 Where did you get 5m of LED tape for £10 ? ... It's usually about £10 / m ; ) That said I'd probably be inclined to use LED Tape for this - I've used it in quite a lot of places (including set pieces) with a DMX capable driver.
dbuckley Posted November 23, 2012 Posted November 23, 2012 My guess would be aliexpress, single colour in 5m reel.
mac500 Posted November 23, 2012 Posted November 23, 2012 American Dj now do the go series of led pars and bars which have a battery. Might be worth a look.
RoyS Posted November 23, 2012 Author Posted November 23, 2012 Thanks guys. I guess birdie's would be another way re the point source point.. The AliExpress site looks interesting for the cheap strip. For a 1m linear fixture these look interesting: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/LED-light-bar-led-flood-light-252pcs-RGB-color-LED-wall-washer-DMX-free-shipping-6pieces/662657215.html At £340 for 6 of them it works out at £56.66 each delivered to the UK.... I'd probably prefer this to strips as further, wider use will be more probable. Does anyone have experience in dealing with AliExpress?
dbuckley Posted November 23, 2012 Posted November 23, 2012 Frequent purchaser from aliexpress. It's like eBay for new stuff with mandatory escrow. Works really well, but buyer beware and make sure you know what you are ordering. E2A - we've bought four of those led strips. One had one of the buttons busted, and one has a few LEDs out, but I've not been bothered to fix it yet. 13 DMX channels, as they can be run in thirds, but the left to right order isn't what I hoped for, you need to number channels from the right. Excellent value purchase, we're happy.
RoyS Posted November 23, 2012 Author Posted November 23, 2012 Hi David, greetings from a dark (5:50) Southampton, UK.. For the effect im after I'd need the LEDs to be like, or similar too: RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB and not RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG-BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG-BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-GGGGGGGGGGGGGGG-BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB The web site site pics show a wall washed in what seems like the former arrangement. What your experience? Many thanks.
DrV Posted November 23, 2012 Posted November 23, 2012 Where did you get 5m of LED tape for £10 ? ... It's usually about £10 / m ; ) That said I'd probably be inclined to use LED Tape for this - I've used it in quite a lot of places (including set pieces) with a DMX capable driver. Ebay. This item although there are loads of others. This is just LED tape with a couple of wires on the end - I built my own driver using an Arduino 'cos I wanted the wheels to look like they were going round. It's controlled by a couple of switches on the coach, not DMX although there's no reason why it couldn't be. The whole thing runs off a 12V lead/acid battery so no trailing wires or radio control necessary. Dave
dbuckley Posted November 23, 2012 Posted November 23, 2012 What your experience? You can run the bar all one colour, or run it in three thirds, or do both at the same time. Channel 1 is effects if required, then 2-4 is RGB for the whole bar, then there are three lots of three channels for RGB for the thirds, for a total of thirteen channels. So to make the bar all one colour just use channels 2,3,4 to set RGB, and ignore 5-13. Like this: http://davidbuckley.name/pix/minimv4.jpg
RoyS Posted December 15, 2012 Author Posted December 15, 2012 Hi, Just to report back on the now delivered 1m LED Bars from AliExpress in the US. They in came in just over a week directly from China - although the transaction was with the US company. All of them worked fine taking a maximum of 12 channels for each fixture. (Thanks to the good people at Chamsys for knocking me up a hed file very rapidly) They are pretty bright and have a 20-5 degree angle. For the price they are phenomenal and it encourages me to go back and buy something else.. They were supplied with 5x 1.5m 'DMX' cables which caused problems. Replacing them with proper cable sorted out all the erratic behavior. Along the side with the connectors was a 'volume' control pot intended for disco Dave. These stuck out too far and as I'd never use them, I opened them up and tucked the pot inside out of harms way. The internal were all very tidy. PSU and seperate controller PCB's along with the LED boards in 3 sections. The mains power in is via IEC. For a dollar or two more they could have added a IEC out for easy daisy-chaining. This is something I might consider doing in the future when the warrenty has expired and I have a couple of hours to spare.. I have still to try them as I'd intended above the truck and will report back when I do rig them. For this price and quality I'm tempted to buy 6 more... Best wishes & seasons greets to all...
dbuckley Posted December 15, 2012 Posted December 15, 2012 On ours the daisy chain socket is a USA three pin "Edison" connector, so I've made up a few short Edison male to IEC females for linking. The connector I used looked pretty impressive, these jobbies from Parts Express, so I took a flyer on them being ok on 240v.
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