Need a remote douser ?

[Van]

Out of the blue we suddenly have issue with the light comming out of the front of the projector during the final black out of The Clean House . Yesterday,I get a note which says, basically,
" We can't have this light in the final scene. It's distracting! Fix It Now!" Of Course I reply,
" If you will remember I brought this up at the very first Production meeting, Projectors don't go black. You said That wouldn't be a problem, if you want it fixed I need $580.00 for a DMX controlled Douser, and it won't be here for a week."
"No Good you have 'till opening, two days."
So as I'm fuming my Master Carp/Shop Foreman says to me,"Hey I had a kid at UNLV last year who made a douser out of a CD-ROM drive, I don't know how he did it and it took him two months."
This starts my wheels turning. Two solder burns, $27.00 in parts at Radio Shack, one pretty much dead 32x CD-ROM drive, and 25' of Cat 5 cable and 6 hours later.....
I have a working , electronic remote control douser. Now I think I'm going to find a dmx decoder board, see about rigging it into the thing, I think I can give City theatrical a run for their money.
I'd be happy to share the details/plans with anybody here, but I'm seriously thinking about building a few proto types and marketing them....... With serious discounts to CB members of course.

[soundlight]

Ah...if you'd remember, that's been done before! It was even mentioned on the forums here! Anyways, plans and pictures would be most excellent.

[Van]

Well I looked for it here and didn't see it. Rats. I may keep going anyway. I'm tenacious that way.

[Charc]

Yep, I even brought it up multiple times this fall, I made one. Spent too much on wire from radioshack. (The 100' move came 2 hours before the house opened...)

I sprung the extra money on the mom-off-mom switch, really big, with a little accidental press guard... however, soldering from 10 AWG to 22 AWG was a little weird...

The ME at the regional theatre I'm interning at did the best thing: XLR adaptors. Makes his totally modular. Send power via XLR, just like cue-lights, so he can create any length he wants. Who doesn't have spare XLR cable lying around? Plus, makes it nice and clean.

[Charc]

Are those decoders available from anywhere cheaply?

[Van]

I'll do more research and let you knowabout the DMX decoder. XLR is a good idea. I used cat5 and RJ45's for mine however, because of the smaller foot print for the connector, and I have something like 5 miles of Cat5 wire lying around my office.

[Footer]

Great! another thing I can do while sitting around in my huge amounts of free time!.

[Charc]

Originally Posted by Van

I'll do more research and let you knowabout the DMX decoder. XLR is a good idea. I used cat5 and RJ45's for mine however, because of the smaller foot print for the connector, and I have something like 5 miles of Cat5 wire lying around my office.

*This post removed.*

[derekleffew]

van, this one for $155. Or for $39.95, this is probably more your speed.

[avkid]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

van, this one for $155. Or for $39.95, this is probably more your speed.

Hmm...neither of those are technically DMX 512 compliant.
(I like to argue in the wee hours of the morning)