Beginner Help

[jordanp]

Thank you guys in advance. I am a beginner at lighting design but understand the basics of DMX controlled light shows and have a little experience there. I work for a church and the pastor wants to know if this stage design is possible using light bulbs.

For Simplicity sake, lets say we have a 10X10 grid on the back stage with a light bulb every square foot giving us 100 light bulbs. Is there a way to control them Via DMX, or any other way, that would allow me to randomize them so that they turn on and off to give that "sparkling" look.. Thanks again.

[the kid]

If you have a desk with built in effect you could go for digital festoon. Programme each lamp to a channel and run chases.

[lite_lad]

Or the simpler way would be to wire them into dimmers, presuming you don't have 100 dimmers lying around then you'll probably want to put the bulbs into strings. With the effect you want you'll probably do this randomly rather than any particular pattern and then program a chase in whatever desk your using that gives you the desired result.

 

The amount of variation you want determines the number of dimmers you need and vice versa.

 

obviously you will need someone electrically competent to wire this up and ensure it is safe, which from your post sounds like you may need to get someone else.

[dmxtothemax]

Thank you guys in advance. I am a beginner at lighting design but understand the basics of DMX controlled light shows and have a little experience there. I work for a church and the pastor wants to know if this stage design is possible using light bulbs.

For Simplicity sake, lets say we have a 10X10 grid on the back stage with a light bulb every square foot giving us 100 light bulbs. Is there a way to control them Via DMX, or any other way, that would allow me to randomize them so that they turn on and off to give that "sparkling" look.. Thanks again.

 

 

YES !

If you want a totally random flickering look,

 

Use low wattage bulbs of 15, 25 or 40w,

 

Wire each lamp in series with a floro starter.

 

They will just flash off and on randomlly,

 

experiment with wattages to vary the speed of flashing.

[themadhippy]

with a bit of naughtyness you might be able to get it down to 20 channels

[Roderick]

And don't forget that if you only have 4 or 5 25w - 60w bulbs per channel you will need a ballast load for each channel. Most dimmers don't like loads less than about 500w (on a 2.4kW dimmer).

Do they need to be dimmable? Switching may be a lot easier and cheaper with something like this: 24ch switch pack

[musht]

Guess first question is, how big a bulb?

 

Fairy lite size, number of fairy lite and LED solutions around.

 

Household, 20-100W size, dimming on standard theatre dimmers may need ballast or running a few lamps together because of the low load.

 

Wonder if Mr Hippy is suggesting using switching or dimming to control them in a 10 X 10 matrix? matrix contollers used to be used for disco lites back in the day...

 

Theatre lamp size, 450W + each, no problems with enough dimmers and a suitably large available power supply.

 

Or if budget isn`t an issue:

 

Local to U.S. market MIDI controlled low wattage dimmers, 300W channel up to 540 dimmers a rack:

 

http://www.midilite.com/

 

Euroland 40 X 60W channels in 1U:

 

http://www.theater-technisch-lab.nl/indexdim.htm

[themadhippy]

Wonder if Mr Hippy is suggesting using switching or dimming to control them in a 10 X 10 matrix?

yep,but as I mentioned you need to know what your upto as your switching (or dimming ) the neutral only and the big green (or whatever colour it is this week ) book of rulze dont like that,of course if you use an isolating transformer what is live and what is neutral?