Clay Packy Silverado Project

[techdude311]

Hello
I recently acquired a clay packy silverado scanner (stage light). I got it from a theatre that was going to throw them away because they didn't have the time or resources to fix them. I plugged it in and seems to run in a standalone mode and the dip switches seem to do nothing. I have tried both using dmx and using midi. Neither seems to work. I know the stepper motors are working fine, as they move in the standalone mode but I want full control of the fixture. I got the fixture opened up and am considering cutting the stepper motor wires from the circuit board and hooking them up to an arduino, making that become the new control board.

Challenges:

• Figuring out how to wire four stepper motors to the arduino
• figuring out how to connect the lamp without electrocuting myself
• controlling everything with dmx

Here are pictures of the project. All I have done is opened it up and unscrewed the circuit board from the case.

https://picasaweb.google.com/118436...authkey=Gv1sRgCP3z-pS8zLOZ2AE&feat=directlink


Please help with anything on my challenge list or any other suggestions you have.
Thanks A Lot!
Techdude311

 

[cbrandt]

You may want to check out something like this. It takes a lot of the headache out of the process. If you want something cheaper, you can buy the chips that board uses directly, only a couple of bucks apiece, but it uses more pins off your arduino.

That said, try giving lightparts.com a call. They've got a lot of stuff, and can often help you out when you're looking for old parts. In my opinion, always better if you can repair what you have, or use real parts, than trying to hack something in there.

BIG CAUTION! If you don't know what you're doing, don't touch the lamp stuff. That's huge voltage, and a huge amount of electricity to play around with. You can hurt or kill yourself without proper equipment and knowledge.

 

[porkchop]

First off I'd call Light Parts and see what it would cost to restore DMX control. They don't list the Silverado as a light the service, but they fix everything Clay Paky so they'll at least be able to tell you what it'll take to get back to OEM condition.
Side note: here's a manual if you don't have it

If that proves to be cost prohibitive, I would be concerned about if an Arduino would take the heat that the driver boards are exposed to inside a light, but they're all IC's so it might work. Adafruit sells motor shields that are made for 4 wire stepper motors to wire directly into and with some testing you might be able to reasonably recreate a DMX level of control. I'm not sure how these fixtures home, but they're old enough that if you send them in the negative direction are a reasonably slow speed they're eventually bump their way to 0.
If the lamp strikes I wouldn't reinvent the wheel, just set it so that it strikes on power up and control the shutter as needed.
And as far as DMX control goes Google "Arduino DMX", there are several projects that have DMX control options for Arduino shields.