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Anyone tried the Chinese Wireless DMX stuff?


alexforey

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I have a project coming up where we're looking into building LED strips into moving set pieces. It's unlikely that we'll be able to afford proper stuff like RC4, so I was wondering if anyone had tried the Chinese stuff from eBay.

 

The LEDs aren't show-critical, and we can put the transmitter directly overhead, so max range will be something like 5m.

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I haven't used the Chinese stuff, but I have hired RC4 kit in - might that be another option for you? You ought to be able to hire both Theater Wireless and City Theatrical by the week.

 

 

What kind of weekly rate have you been getting on them? We'd need 1x transmitter and 4x 4-channel wireless dimmers. With the Chinese stuff I'd end up building a little DMX LED driver, but it'd come in at something like £50 for everything if I did it myself. I'd much prefer to use RC4, if we can afford it, though.

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I can't remember exactly what the rate was but it was more than 50 quid. I spoke to Beverley at Technical Performance and Presentation who are the UK distributor (or at least they still were as of PLASA last year) However their website appears to be down, which could be a bad sign. The Phone numbers on it were Office 01444 616434 Mobile 07803 611976 could be worth a try.

Another alternative might be to buy in the LED dimmers too - again from your favourite auction site, a 3 channel dimmer is about 10 quid - and use those with the Chinese DMX adapters.

EDIT: Fix atrocious spilling and triping errors.

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Yes bought some of these recently http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/401117161063?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Tried them out at home worked fine in my old Spanish house where the signal had to pass through three 60 cm thick walls.

Tested them outdoors over a distance of about 30 metres.

Will by trying them in anger tomorrow might at a tech for an outdoor show.

Cheers

Gerry

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I used an adafruit huzzah with an arduino artnet library and had some good success controlling 100 channels of LED over wifi. was a bit of work to get it to work properly but has been pretty solid - huzzah cost about £10
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I'm not up on this development but am I to understand that I plug the transmitter into a spare DMX outlet on my DMX splitter and these wireless thingy's will work alongside my existing wired lighting from my Jester ML24?

 

If that's the case then £20 says have a go even though it seems too good to be true.

 

I take it each transmitter and receiver needs a power supply?

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I'm not up on this development but am I to understand that I plug the transmitter into a spare DMX outlet on my DMX splitter and these wireless thingy's will work alongside my existing wired lighting from my Jester ML24?

If that's the case then £20 says have a go even though it seems too good to be true.

I take it each transmitter and receiver needs a power supply?

 

That's how it works - the power supply is the fly in the ointment as it messes up what would otherwise be a really tidy and simple system. Though you can get some with rechargeable batteries in now which would work well for a temporary rig.

Of course... no radio system will ever be as reliable as a piece of wire...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yes bought some of these recently http://www.ebay.co.u...K%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Tried them out at home worked fine in my old Spanish house where the signal had to pass through three 60 cm thick walls.

Tested them outdoors over a distance of about 30 metres.

Will by trying them in anger tomorrow might at a tech for an outdoor show.

Cheers

Gerry

 

How did the trial by fire work out for you Gerry? Would be quite interested to find out how well these performed under a more demanding usage!

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Sorry I should have posted before.

Worked OK, no problems what so ever. Much easier to use than having DMX cables trailing across for grass for the punters to trip over.

Cheers

Gerry

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The PSUs they come with are often cheap 5v ones. You can use a buck converter to convert 12v to 5v if you are powering your RGB with 12v.

The PSUs often come with a US plug. You will need an adapter, or, even better, just buy a decent PSU here.

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