DMX lighting

CMOR · Post by **CMOR** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:24 pm

Well, I managed to start changing lights over to LED with DMX protocol at Aldo's. I found kits to change old pars to LED, have 4 up, 6 more coming. As well as a new controller. My question is simple...anyone here able to explain DMX programming in layman's terms as far as chases and scenes go? I understand telling each fixture what to do, but beyond that, I have vague ideas at best. It would probably help having all the gear in front of me to put together this puzzle.

Thanks for shedding some light on the situation (I couldn't resist),

Steve

floodcitybrass · Post by **floodcitybrass** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:02 pm

Let us know what controllor you have.... and what LED adapter kit you have. Does your LED kit have DMX on it on or they simply normal looking bulbs with a standard
Are they multicolored or 1 single color?

The reason I'm asking is to see if your lights should be plugged in to a separate dimmer/relay pack or if the fixtures have dimmers built into them

Typically you assign each light a unique address and it will corespond to a slider on your controller. You can put several lights on the same channel. They will simply respond the to one single slider. If you lights are multiple colored, they will probably take 1 channel per color so you would address your lights in increments of 3. Each channel on your board would control a different color of the light.

Programming dmx - you have scenes and shows.
A scene is a single snapshot of the slider settings.
A show consists of multiple scenes.
So the process goes....
Adjust the dimmers... save scene 1
Adjust the dimmers... save scene 2
Adjust the dimmers... save scene 3.... and then you have a show. You typically assign the show to a button on your controller.

CMOR · Post by **CMOR** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:48 pm

I'm starting out small and cheap. Chauvet Obey 40 is the controller, it meets the requirements-cheap, small, and easy to use(supposedly).

The kits are actually replacement guts for the cans. Take out everything but the screen, put in new guts. They can run on their own or be controlled via DMX. It's essentially a DMX LED par in a standard par can. A lot more cost effective, but only available to retrofit 64's.

Each one uses 4 channels(red, blue, green, control).

tonefight · Post by **tonefight** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 9:52 pm

Get ahold of onetooloud, he gets into this pretty heavy

KyleMayket · Post by **KyleMayket** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 9:48 am

it's kind of hard to just go out there and answer question for you, I set up, programmed and ran the lights for Fifth Member Management shows. When ever you have a specific question, ask it, and we'll do our best to answer it, but for now, floodcitybrass kinda got the basics covered, except you wouldn't program each slider to a certain color of light. On the LED's, because they're 4 channels, you would set each light's DMX address to how you wanted them run (if you always want each color to come on in unison, ie all stage red, all stage blue, or if you wanted them to operate individually, ie all lights a different color at the same time) that depends on you, but with a mini controller like that, you're not going to get that much out of it, I'm going to tell you that right now. If you want them to run in unison, put all of their DMX addresses to "1" with the dip-switches, if you want them to operate seperately, then address the first light to "1", the next would be addressed to "5" (every light has 4 channels), the next would be addressed to "9" and so forth...as for scenes, set the scene (or chase) and "set" them. with a chase it will be a several step process that's only limited by your imagination.

CMOR · Post by **CMOR** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 2:03 pm

Thanks for the input everyone. I think I have a better understanding now. It's probably going to come down to putting them up and figuring out what looks best.
I was probably going to pair off the lights to even out the stage, but yeah, I get ya...the possibilties are endless.

KyleMayket · Post by **KyleMayket** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 11:05 pm

Further more, what you can do is probably going to be limited by the number of channels that your controller has.

CMOR · Post by **CMOR** » Wed Dec 24, 2008 8:55 pm

The controller arrived today, so I know what I'll be working on.

It's like Christmas around here. We did presents this morning before my stepdaughter goes to her father's. Then an hour later, the controller get delivered. Today is a good day. Hope everyone is having a good holiday as well.

Steve