Cue Light System: What do you think?

[Traitor800]

Erm, There is no NL4MX.
Yes, there is the NLT4MX. It's from the 40A rated metal bodied family and that series is somewhat more pricey than the NL series.
Of course there are Chinese males abundant, generally of typical Chinese quality though.

I'd have thought we still had a risk at this point of getting a far greater voltage across the cue light system than it's designed for. A decent amplifer can easily dump north of 100 volts across it's load... (Without me doing any impedance or voltage sums - it's late.)

Last time I checked the STX Series (to which the NLT4MX belongs) of connectors were still part of the Speakon family. And while yes they are more expensive than the other Speakon connectors, you don't have to purchase a barrel coupler to extend your cable which helps to offset the added cost of the connector.

And I would put a Female Panel mount Speakon (opposite gender as what is used on most speakers and amps) backstage for the cue light system to help prevent people from plugging amps/speakers into the cue light system.

 

[tyler.martin]

Maybe time for some thread resurrection...

Did you ever build your system?

I need to replace our homebrew system. Currently it uses a control box in the booth connected to the PSU onstage with HD15 Monitor cable. A pin provides the common 12v DC power to the switches at the SM desk, and when the switches are on, they trigger a 120v relay. All of our baskets are regular 120v lamps, but the relays are only rated for 1 Amp at 120V. I was thinking about rebuilding it to a similar system but replace all the HD15 with 2 runs of CAT5. I do need to be able to control 8 separate cue lights.

Or my other thought is to build a new one that uses large LED's in project boxes and use CAT5 as the wiring. We operate on the Standby - On - Go - Off principle, so only one light is needed per station, but it would be great to be able to daisy chain the boxes.

 

[Chris15]

If you changed your 12V DC supply to be an 12V AC one, you could effectively double your number of control channels for a given number of wires.

I may have posted this before, but refer to the attached diagram...

 

[Lambda]

Maybe time for some thread resurrection...

Did you ever build your system?

I need to replace our homebrew system. Currently it uses a control box in the booth connected to the PSU onstage with HD15 Monitor cable. A pin provides the common 12v DC power to the switches at the SM desk, and when the switches are on, they trigger a 120v relay. All of our baskets are regular 120v lamps, but the relays are only rated for 1 Amp at 120V. I was thinking about rebuilding it to a similar system but replace all the HD15 with 2 runs of CAT5. I do need to be able to control 8 separate cue lights.

Or my other thought is to build a new one that uses large LED's in project boxes and use CAT5 as the wiring. We operate on the Standby - On - Go - Off principle, so only one light is needed per station, but it would be great to be able to daisy chain the boxes.

I had thought this thread was dead and buried. No, I never built the system, it did not get approved by the department (and at this point I'm no longer even affiliated with that facility).
With my design you'll be able to use the LEDs and cat5 and daisy-chain the boxes like you describe, just fine. I'll see if I can dig up my old diagrams and scan them in for you (or just draw up some new ones), but it might take a while. Chris is right, if you use switched half-wave AC instead of DC you'll be able to control more lights with less wires.

 

[Dreadpoet]

I really like gam's cue light....takes all this hassle of cue lighting away for relatively inexpense

 

[tyler.martin]

I really like gam's cue light....takes all this hassle of cue lighting away for relatively inexpense

Unfortunatly it really doesnt work for our needs. I dont need 4 colors of LED, and I need them to be controlled per station.