laser DMX controller

[fender62]

newbie question, I have two lasers - kam 300 rgb and a equinox kamikaze, can I use a martin 2518 DMX controller or a botex dc 1216 for them, and do I need some software as well

[Jivemaster]

DMX is very slow for lasers.

[Dmills]

Depends, these are not your classic ILDA laser systems, they are DJ toys, using the DMX for scene recall from on board memoey.

 

Now that said the channel count is high enough that while it could probably be done with those controllers, it will likely be painful to do, far better to grab some software and a suitable dongle and write a few custom fixtures.

 

Regards, Dan.

[fender62]

thanks for advice, so it's better to get an ilda equipped laser, can you recommend a budget ilda one if one exists

[Ynot]

You may find better answers in a more appropriate forum, such as PhotonLexicon - http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/

 

Whilst lasers MAY be viable for use in theatre (which the Blue Room is more of than anything else) there aren't too many experts or experienced users here.

 

 

 

[Folivora]

It depends on the laser you are using. Almost every laser is built with a D-sub 25 way connector (oooooold school) that takes the ILDA protocol.

 

On the whole you will need to run Laser software to control your laser. Probably the worlds front runner in laser show design and operating is Pangolin, using the LD2000 software bundle and now more popular is Beyond or its more basic version Quickshow (other brands/ products are available). These run on a PC and you will require some sort of hardware dongle to run them. Getting a FB3 with a Quickshow license is the cheapest solution whilst still pretty powerful!

 

If this is the route you go down It is possible to control the Laser show PC like a media server- either taking an art-net input straight into the PC and calling up pre programmed frames or animations that go to your laser.

 

check out http://www.pangolin.com/LD2000/ for products.

 

 

A lot of the more inexpensive lasers will have a flash card port- (I haven't checked out your lasers) if this is the case- The card will hold some hundreds of laser animations that you can recall over DMX. You program these on a PC using Pangolin software and then upload them to the laser via a USB port on the laser OR you can pre program the flash card and insert it into the laser.

 

 

However your lasers run, on the whole If you are going to use DMX- treat your laser like a media server. Like a moving head, a media server will have a multi channel personality Ch 1: Media folder, Ch 2: media File: Ch 3: Y- scale, Ch 4: X- scale Ch 5: speed etc etc. In this case you will be MUCH better suited to using a moving light desk (HOG/MA/Avo etc) IMO, the most powerful whilst MASSIVELY inexpensive way to achieve this is with Chamsys (you can get the software free and the DMX dongle is next to nothing) and no matter what others say about Chamsys short comings, no one can argue with its price to power ratio… and if they try, they are really missing the point.

 

Hope this helps. Like the other guy said, check out http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/… there is a WEALTH of info and tips on there but be warned, it can get overly geeky and sometimes tricky to get a straight answer…

 

Have fun with your lasers.

[godboy]

I have used two Kam iLink RPB and two Kam iLink Blue Lasers. Four KAM lasers in total and had no issue running them via DMX. Mine are running on showcad. It is unfortunate that I do not know your Martin controler but I imagine a software based controller would be easier. That said I see no reason why the martin one wouldn't work. As DMills said they need allot of channels. I believe it was 10 on the RPB one and 8 on the blue only one.

 

What I can say is that you can definitely run these Kam units on DMX and have them looking good. Although they do struggle on larger patterns this didn't matter much on my project as I have them dotted all around the venue. The key is to spend time programing lots of presets ready to activate. You will not want to program these live.

 

One thing that tripped me up initially is channel the first channel on the RPB version of the lasers is 'mode'. You must raise this 'mode' channel up to 100% for the Lasers to start being under DMX control. At 0% the lasers stay on stand alone.

Once channel one (Mode) is on 100% (DMX Mode) the lasers will probably black out. You must pull up the colour channel, (I believe it is three) off of 0%. This is due to the colour channel being black out at 0%.

 

I hope this is some help.