Battery Powered Wireless DMX

[wirralmatt]

Afternoon everyone,

 

I've got half an idea about a creating some light up costumes which can be controlled through DMX. Obviously that means no cables.

 

I can't seem to find anything on the market that does wireless DMX that is battery powered. Everything seems to need a power cable.

 

Does anyone know of anything that I can use to transmit wireless DMX, with a battery powered receiver, that's not specific to a particular brand (like the ADJ WiFLY kit only controls ADJ products as far as I can see).

 

Thanks

 

Matt

[sandall]

Presumably the little generic cigar-tube receivers could be run from 4x NiMH AA batteries instead of the supplied 5V wall-wart?? They are (were?) sold in multi-packs with 1x Tx & several x Rx.

[alistermorton]

Look at Theatre Wireless or City Theatrical if you want it to work reliably, I'd say. We've used our RC4 (Theatre Wireless) wireless dimmers in costumes and props powered from a fag packet sized rechargeable battery pack with no problems. Edited July 19, 2019 by alistermorton

[Shez]

Everything seems to need a power cable.

I think you'll struggle to find anything with integrated batteries - there's unlikely to be a market for such a thing as whatever DMX device they're driving will also need power so they can just share that source.

 

I've seen plenty of wireless battery powered receivers used on scenic trucks - just choose one that ideally needs the same voltage as your costume lights and you only have one battery to worry about.

[alistermorton]

I've seen plenty of wireless battery powered receivers used on scenic trucks - just choose one that ideally needs the same voltage as your costume lights and you only have one battery to worry about.

 

Not sure of others but the ones we have work on 6-36V which covers most of the bases. Same power as powers the load.

 

 

 

[DrV]

I've seen plenty of wireless battery powered receivers used on scenic trucks - just choose one that ideally needs the same voltage as your costume lights and you only have one battery to worry about.

 

Not sure of others but the ones we have work on 6-36V which covers most of the bases. Same power as powers the load.

Same for the City Theatrical devices. They switch (PWM) the supply voltage across the load. When I used a D4 (now called a Qolorflex) 4 channel device for a costume in "You gotta have a gimmick" I made up a 9volt pack with 6 x AA cells mounted on a waistband. Worked a treat. The practicals were made up of lots of pairs of LEDs, each pair in series with

a resistor. 2 white LEDs gave about 5.6V forward drop so I could conceivably have used them in three's with a lower resistance. The minimum for the D4 is 7.5V so 9 gave plenty of headroom. Maximum is 30V.

[maeterlinck]

Wireless solutions make a receiver that is battery powered.

https://wirelessdmx.com/products/micro-r-512-g5/

Battereies are part of the unit so it's self contained.

[ed_ld]

The Cintennas by Rat Pac dimmers, made for the film industry are great. They work with the Lumen Radio CRMX system and come either with a Lithium battery or there is a slightly cheaper one without that can be run off a USB power bank quite happily.

 

A. C. Lighting sell them over here for approx £380 last time I bought some.

 

https://www.ratpacdimmers.com/product/wireless-DMX-control/cintenna/cintenna-battery-rx-receiver/

[dmxlights]

There is a person called Bobby Lynas on facebook that has made wifi DMX units and he sells them on ebay his website is http://smartshow.lighting/ the facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/groups/339250392813786/ and his ebay page is https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/smartshow-uk/m.html?ssPageName=STRK%3Anull%3AMESOI&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2654

 

I have bought some of his items and they are very small in size.

 

I do not make anything from him

 

[ImagineerTom]

Broadly speaking the "light up costume synchronized to stage lighting" industry doesn't use DMX and every maker and costume supplier in the market seems to have evolved their own propriety control systems because of the wide range of possible uses (from simply switching some pea lights on to fully mappable pixels that would fill a universe of DMX per costume) so there's very little off-the-shelf available that fits that market. Pretty much everyone has developed something around a Rasberry Pi or Arduino infrastructure as they have some spectacular LED control protocols built in to their base architecture that makes designing a system surprisingly easy. So in short... don't be afraid to look at coding up something specific for your project rather than trying to find a ready made product.

[musht]

Pixels simplify the hardware considerably, its hard to find 5V RGB taoe otherwise ;-)

 

Smartshow as mentioned ,no affiliation, offer a robust plug and play solution.

 

ESP Pixelstick at more DIY end.

 

Both using Wifi.

 

Need the driver, some pixels as tape on stiff substrate or as individual sew in boards (don`t try and constantly flex LED tapes) 3 leads of multi multi core silicone test lead between and some USB powerbanks.

 

USB packs are physically and electrically well protected, using piles of NiCds is heavier with shorter run time and enough current available to melt wiring....

 

DMX RGB solution, DMX RF Tx/Rx , DMX RGB driver, 12V RGB tape/blocks, 4 leads of connection and the 9 - 12V battery packs.

 

As Tom mentions trade off is software, only get 170 pixels to a universe, Jinx and Xlights are both free and will control multi universes of pixels.

[Andyb]

Wireless solutions have a battery powered range that work well.

 

Available to hire (and purchase) from Enlightened.

 

https://www.enlx.co.uk/hire/lighting/control/wireless-solutions-r-512-DMX-micro-battery-receiver

[alistermorton]

Forgot to mention that the RC4 dimmers also have DMX out so you can hang any battery powered DMX kit off them too. Presumably others are similar.

[empyfree]

Have you seen the Smartshow kit? I’m just looking into led tape for the first time and came across it.

 

http://smartshow.lighting/airpixel-quad/

 

Sorry. Just seen it mentioned above!

Edited July 20, 2019 by empyfree

[sleah]

Cheap & Cheerful wise there's these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01N4WYB70/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got a couple and they've been very reliable on the few gigs I've done with them.