DMX Dimmer Pack

[imbuffnotreally]

Hi Everybody!

I was wondering if anybody new of or had some plans for a 4-12 channel DMX Dimmer Pack and/or Controller. I was wanting them for a project.

Thank you very much and God Bless!

[chausman]

I'd suggest you look at Leprecon. They have very reliable, rather inexpensive equipment.

Or, did you mean you wanted to design and build your own?

[gafftaper]

First off, welcome to CB! Please, stop by the new member forum and introduce yourself. It sounds like you are asking for information to build a dimmer yourself. If that's the case why? Is this because you really want to just experience building one or to save money.

If it's to save money, I think you'll have a hard time building it for less than the cost of a cheap American DJ DP-415. They are not amazing but for $90-$100 including shipping they are hard to beat for cheap. I've had good results with The Elation Cyber Pak ($200). I installed a set in a church, they get about 8 hours of use a week and have been running great for 2 1/2 years now. The Leprecon ULD's are one of the better options if you have the $600 to spend. Top of the line would be the ETC SmartBar2, they will cost you about $800.

[imbuffnotreally]

Hey guys.

Chausman - Yes, I was wanting to build one.

Gafftaper - It was kind of a two for thing. I wanted the experience and I was hoping building one would save some money.

[sk8rsdad]

Building one for a hobby is fun. Building one that could be certified for use in a public performance space can be a real learning opportunity. Getting an inspection sticker from your AHJ would be a great opportunity to meet and learn from some people in the industry.

[JD]

If it is for fun, there is always the halfway approach. A number of companies build raw driver boards. Quite literally the PCBs, and transformer. It would be a simple matter of using outboard triacs and filter chokes. Or, if you still want a bit of a challenge, you could design you own block of back-to-back SCR's to run off of it.

This approach will probably leave you sane. Building it from nothing may drive you insane as you would need to design your own DMX processor circuit. A LOT of work for very little savings.

If you intend to use these commercially (theater) then save yourself the nightmare and buy something that has already been certified.

[UndefinedGroupUK]

Hey, we made our own dimmer packs from Velleman Kits, a German company who specialise in making PCB's for hobbiest and we found these 0-10V dimmers which were perfect.

Velleman, Inc.

We had 16 of them running off a Zero 88 Sirius 24 and they worked perfectly for our needs, meant we could plug dimmers into the 13A outlets available to us with minimal fuss, only slight problem we ever had was that you had to set the pot's on the dimmers for a certain load so we ended up having 'PAR 56 Dimmers' and 'CODA Flood Dimmers' which didn't leave us too much wriggle room. So we have all these loaded into a big box which a photograph is attached below. We have just changed to DMX as the Sirius 24 has finally had its last show and is showing up faults left right and centre, as it was third hand when we first got ahold of it. So now we have an Alcora and have just adapted to these dimmers using a light processor Dmux which we picked up for £50 from ebay and now we have our own 16 channel DMX dimmers and the whole lot (Demux included came to just under £400 (cables connectors and box included) which we couldn't even get 2 alpha packs for! and we had the fun of spending summer holidays building these and getting to know the other side of lighting, not just plugging it in and pushing faders - defiantly recommend the experience!!

[cpf]

I hope those are faux-wood insulation sheets to prevent shorting to the grounded metal cabinet, because otherwise that would be quite a fire risk :neutral:

And since I'm already on a roll, there is waaaay too much insulation stripped from the feed lines. Edit: oops, those are two conductor pairs, nvm.

So, yes, possible to build your own, but you should do it right lest you burn something down.

[JD]

I hope those are faux-wood insulation sheets to prevent shorting to the grounded metal cabinet, because otherwise that would be quite a fire risk :neutral:

And since I'm already on a roll, there is waaaay too much insulation stripped from the feed lines.

So, yes, possible to build your own, but you should do it right lest you burn something down.

Actually, I think those are two conductor cables (Brown/Blue.) However........ A wooden dimmer rack?
Kind of like washing your hands off with gasoline while catching a smoke!

Any little "Sput/Fizzle" would have a lot of fuel waiting for it.

[silicsound]

I had alot of fun building these guys DMX dimmer pack
There pretty cheap, only 30$. And they also have alot of other uses like servo and stepper motor controllers. And the code for them is pretty open. They even have RDM.

[UndefinedGroupUK]

Actually, I think those are two conductor cables (Brown/Blue.) However........ A wooden dimmer rack?
Kind of like washing your hands off with gasoline while catching a smoke!

Any little "Sput/Fizzle" would have a lot of fuel waiting for it.

The whole box was sprayed with a fireproofing agent before the dimmers were installed to make sure there was no chance of a fire and the dimmers are spread out to try and contain any problems and the whole system was checked and tested by an electrician before we started using it, and its now had its 5th Annual PAT test and passed every one! The amount of insulation stripped really doesn't matter in this case because its inside a locked unit, if it wasn't for the price of the cable we would have used none double insulated cables anyway.