Marks256

Ok, i am going to make a long story short. I am the techie for a local play/musical. More specifically, i am the lighting person. Well, funny thing is, since our school is being renovated, the lighting system was taken down and stored safely way. According to the director of the play, the lighting controller board was destroyed in the process and since lost...

Now it is my job to make a replacement. I am lost. I highly doubt i will get a budget, either. I (we) need as cheap of a solution as possible.

Since we no-longer have a stage in our high school, all the lights have been moved to the middle school where the play will be held. With any luck, the lighting beams (the things on the ceiling) will have a dmx receiver on it, but if not, i guess i am screwed.

I have been searching around the internet looking for schematics, and the ones that i have found made me decide not to make one... So, i guess i am up a creek without a paddle.


Wednesday (two days from now) i will be checking out the lighting status as to what equipment we have and do not have. I am assuming ~24 lights will be used.


So i guess i should ask a few questions...

How do the lighting systems work? What i mean is, first off, how much voltage do these lights take? I am assuming 120vac at quite a few watts, but it is very possible they are 220... Also, what do the plugs look like? Like, for the lights themselves? Sure, i bet they vary from manufacture to manufacture. What type of DMX receiver would i need? (assuming the setup doesn't already have the receivers)




What i was thinking was, if i can get a DMX setup going, i could make a Linux DMX controller (if only i can find a GOOD DMX dongle) I was thinking maybe this one? http://llg.cubic.org/dmx30/

or this one for overkill... http://llg.cubic.org/dmx4linux/avrdmx.html


but, as i said before, i will need a receiver... OR AN ALTERNATIVE!

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mneary

I've been usinig the Open DMX USB from enttec for several years now. (Currently US$60). They provide drivers for it, and it hooks to all my DMX receivers.

For software I use the free LightsUp! (check sourceforge). It gives me scripting, scenes, mapping, and curves. Nothing fancy, so it's perfect for someone who only has an hour to train. (I'm fond of this package because I helped design it.) It runs on XP, and doesn't need a parallel or serial port.

It's open source, so if you want to add something you could. (Needs Visual Studio to compile.) Probably pretty hard to port to linux, since it uses MFC for its GUI.

Marks256

Linux would be nice... $60 sounds like quite a bit. I don't even know if we will be using DMX...

On the other hand, USB would be nice, there for i wouldn't mind windoz, simply for the fact i could use it on my laptop (it only had usb ports. no serial or parallel). If we by some chance have a DMX system, i will probably get a hold of an Open DMX USB.

thanks

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theinfamousbob

Sounds like a computer with DMX is the best way to go. I'd prefer a computer to our HUGE light board at my old high school. Had enough channels to pull your hair out. (Not that we didn't hang 300-some lights not counting front of house... )

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BeeBop

If I remember correctly, Elliot Sound Productions web site has some info on lighting, try here:
http://sound.westhost.com/projects-a.htm

mneary

Id $60 is too much, you can buy it without the box for $45. If that's still too much, they have schematics on the site.

Marks256

I think $60 should be just fine. Tomorrow i will find out if we have a DMX setup. I hope we do... i really want to geek out with a computer...

Assuming that there is NO DMX setup, what other type of setup may it be? The more i think about it, it doesn't seem plausable that it wouldn't be DMX... There are quite a few lights on the ceiling...

But, again, assuming it isn't DMX, are there any other possibilities?

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mneary

If it's not DMX, then it might be AMX or MIDI. Hopefully not, as equipment is harder to get in the past decade or so.

Marks256

Let's hope...

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erosennin

If there is no DMX, what we used to do was hire a Dimmer (assuming you have 3phase near by), run power to the lights by extension leads and then feed the DMX from our lighting board into this hired dimmer. (Hire cost us about AU$30 a day)
This used to happen because our existing dimmer wouldn't handle the load for some shows, so this is what we did.

You could then use this USB DMX device to run the dimmer. There is also another "DIY" device called the "manolator" - http://www.freedmx.com/
This however is a parallel interface and you mentioned that you don't have parallel.
As it is PIC Based however, you could use a pic with USB and mod the firmware... I don't know if you'd want to bother with this though, I wouldn't....

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Marks256

No DMX. No anything.

It turns out that the middle school's stage can't pump out enough power to control the REAL stage lights, so i am stuck using some piece of crap some guy put together. The real stage lights will be installed AFTER our play.

Oh well... what can you do?

so, now i have to make a crappy little switch board with dimmers to control the home-made lights.

Time for some math...

I have 3 strips of 27 lights (so a total of 81 lights). Assuming each light bulb is 75watts, that means all three strips will consume 6075watts (120vac). Therefore, i will need ~50 amps. I checked the breaker box. There are only 20's in there... 50 amps means i will have to tap into THREE separate circuits.

Is my math right? If so, Three separate 20's won't be TOO bad, but we are also renting two large light trees... I am sure those are going to draw a crap load, too...

Perhaps 50watt bulbs, or even 25watt bulbs would be a better choice...

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theinfamousbob

How big is your stage? Those lamps sound too low wattage to do anything. Best of luck with the new stage lights...after the production.

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Marks256

The stage isn't very big. I would say about 50 foot wide. Then again, i am not good at estimating distance...

Any bigger lights, and there would be no way i could control them, let alone power them... I have about 12 600watt dimmer switches, but i doubt they would be able to do much...

This isn't sounding too fun... I am deathly afraid of mains power for some reason...

I think what we need is a budget... And some nice big fat breakers...

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Bob Scott

This is what happens. The night of the event you're all set and running from taps in the breaker box. Then some event organizer plugs in a huge coffee maker.

Bob

Marks256

Unfortunately i have seen that before...

Wanna know the sad part? The breaker box isn't even labeled! There is no telling what breaker goes where! You can tell that at one point in time it was labeled, but some idiot cut a hole in the door for easy access to the over head lights, and never replaced the tape! So now i am going to have to go through the breaker box, and trip breakers in order to find 3 or 4 separate circuits!


How many amps would be safe to pull from a 20 amp breaker? I am sure it isn't safe to pull THAT much (over heating?)

I have decided to only run 36 of the 52 lights. 100 watt bulbs. I have no idea how i am going to color them...

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