Hello all, mysterious broken instrument!

[kingfisher1]

Howdy everyone, its been a while since i've posted here, however i now have an exciting new problem to pose to the controlbooth community!
A father at my school just moved to hawaii, and used our school basically as a garbage dump to dump anything remotely tech like into, excusing it as a donation. This hardly a problem because the theatre dept. not only got a DF-50 hazer, a set of stage sabres, and two real fencing sabres (with protective gear, and a LOT of fun to play with!!!). Some other things came too, and i'm in the process of decinding what is trash, what is ebay worth, and what we want to keep.

The first item of question is a sort of stupid dj type instrument, consisting of a revolving mirror and like a 300 watt lamp. When i plug it in, it turns on (an encouranging sign), and the mirror revolves twice then stops. This is all i can get the thing to do. I've made my self look like an idiot yelling, banging and playing loud music around it to see if it has a microphone that controls the mirror. On the back of the unit are two inputs for what i assume is a sort of control. Any clue as to what this would be?
The thing is called a BeamScan by OpTec. My google research dicovered that the company, was located in hakensack, nj, usa, and provided a website which was useless, as it was just their corprate info...so, can anyone shed so light of this?

we also got a "Little Dragoon" fogger made by an offshoot company to (if i remember correctly but i could be completely making this up) appollo. It appears to be out of juice, which would most likely contribute to its lack of ability to produce fog...
has anyone used these? is it worth it to spend the money (bear in mind the word school= no budget...) to buy the juice, especial if i'm not 100% sure if it works or not. Anyclue how to predict if it'll work?

we got another fogger, which i think i will have to post in detail a bit later, because i haven't got it sitting in front of me, all i know about it is that it is friggin big, and looks pretty nice, but is also pretty beat up

Premature Thankyou
-ian

[jonhirsh]

Is that your fogger?
http://www.hollywooddj.com/gemlitdrag80.html

[avkid]

Originally Posted by jonhirsh

Is that your fogger?
http://www.hollywooddj.com/gemlitdrag80.html

If it is I would suggest seeing if anybody has a portion of a bottle laying around you can have to test it with.

Run some distilled water through it first to clean it out.

As for the light, pictures!!

[kingfisher1]

That is indeed one of the foggers, although thanks to you picture i just discover the remote control that i though was wireless is not in fact wireless...

The other fogger, is a _Z20 Fogger (i forget the name, i have got to remember to bring a camera to school!)

[BrianE]

Hi Ian,

I know it's been a loooooong time since you posted this but I had a friend of mine give me 6 of these the other day. Now I am in the same boat that you were in a couple years ago. It would be a shame to toss them, as they all light up, but I can't get the mirror to spin except for when I first power them up.

Have you had any luck finding a controller or a way to get them running? Any help you could send my way would be appreciated. I would love to know how to control them via the RCA jacks. I've tried pumping music to them via a cd player, but got no response from the light. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Brian

[PhantomD]

The inputs on the back will be for music.

I have a similar fixture which, once turned on, revolves and then stops until it receives music input via a stereo jack.

Hope this helps.

To test this, try hooking a CD player or an electric piano up to it and see if it starts revolving. Often these devices have some sort of control on the back for music as well.

[soundlight]

Pictures, pictures, pictures. That'll let us know what they should be doing.

[Goph704]

Hey, just a quick question. How many Pins does your inputs on the back of the lighting fixture have? If it's a three pin you need XLR control, five pin you need DMX, control. I am not the best person here to advise on DMX control, but here's what i understand about it to this point. You should be able to run your fixture from the jack, into the board and have control of it that way, assuming it is DMX. Then you should have some type of address console, which will let you address your instrument to the proper channel number. (address=Channel number)
If you have any kind of DMX controller, be it a light board or a remote, you should be able to run the thing off of that. however might I advise not to plug it in anymore until you have some type of control because you can burn your motor out pretty quickly. Again, Pictures help, Most lighting people are suprisingly visual, I know I am.
- Goph

[len]

Most dj type lights use dmx data, but they use 3 pin cables, since most dj-market lighting was made that way as a cost savings. There could also be a 1/4" input, which would be for some proprietary controller. If there's dip switches or some other way to "address" the fixture, it could be set to a non-music mode, which is why you're not getting any activity from it. If it has less than 10 switches, probably a proprietary control, if it has 10 or more, chances are it will accept dmx, and the 10th or more switch controls whether it responds to data or a microphone.

You say it has two inputs. If both are 3-pin xlr, one being male and one female, chances are it will dmx.

[BrianE]

OK, I have some pictures of one of the lights. I don't believe they are DMX -- it's two RCA jacks, not an XLR style connector. I tried hooking up a CD player to the RCA jacs, but no results.

Here are four pictures of the light, with all the labels and jacks.

Any Ideas?

Thanks,
Brian