Color ?'s

[DCATTechie]

Can somone explain to me what the differenct between color scrollers and color changer are?

[Van]

I'll take a stab at it, and if anybody disagrees they'll fill in what I missed.

A color scroller and a color changer are essentially the same thing. A color fader is a different beast , but still kind of the same.
with a scroller, you build, or have built a "scroll" of color. first part is say R02, next R27, then r60 and so on. the scrolloer unit fits onto the front of your instrumentand rolls the scroll back and forth to the appropriate color for the appropriate cue. So a Color Changer or Scroller is like a film strip that you can run back and forth in front of your par can, but without the little gate shutter that a projector has you have hard transistions from color to color.

A color fader does the exact same thing except, there are typicaly, two or three rolls of color. There are also perforations made into the transistion between colors, this allows you to essentially "mix" the colors. Not really all that different from the CMY color mixing that is going on inside an intelligent fixture. Instead of dichroic filters though, your'e using "strings" of gel. `

Here's a link to a manual for a typical "fader" check the end of the manual for schematics you'll see how there are three layers of color
http://www.calstage.com/manuals/changers/morphfader.pdf


Here's a manual for a typical color changer, notice how it shows you, at the begining, how to load A color string.
http://www.calstage.com/manuals/changers/wybforerun.pdf


BTW not endorsing either product or Calstage, these were just the first couple of links I came across that adequately illustrated my point.
Hope that helps.

[DCATTechie]

Alright, thanks a lot....now i have a new question...once you've daisy chained all of your faders/scrollers together, you then plug the DMX cable into the box, but where to you plug then other end of the cable? In to the dimmer node,or directly in to the board/console?

[icewolf08]

Originally Posted by DCATTechie

Alright, thanks a lot....now i have a new question...once you've daisy chained all of your faders/scrollers together, you then plug the DMX cable into the box, but where to you plug then other end of the cable? In to the dimmer node,or directly in to the board/console?

Your scrollers probably run on a 4-pin cable, you should daisy-chain the scrollers in a loop to the power supply. Make sure you don't exceed the max capacity of the PSU or the max number of head feet of cable. The 5-pin DMX cable from the PSU can be plugged directly into your console to an active output. You should be able to set the outputs of your console either to specific universes or to specific DMX channels, it depends on your console. If you have a DMX through connection or DMX-out at your dimmers you can connect it there, you just need to be sure that you have enough available DMX addresses on that universe (i.e. if you have 500 dimmers and 20 scrollers, the output at your dimmers probably won't have enough addresses left as there are only 512 per DMX universe).