DMX Lighting

falcon

Active Member
I use a Lepreon 624 lighting board at school through the dmx output and was wondering if I can run IQ lights with it. We only have 24 dimmers, but I do know you can patch up to 96 channels on the board. Is it possible to run IQ lights or any other dmx equiptment with this board and have the dimmer run the light and the higher channels run the dmx commands?
 
Sure. If it's dmx, it's dmx. You have 72 channels to play with. But remember, the bigger fixtures can use a lot of channels. A Martin Mac Entour uses 18. I think a HES X-spot uses 32. The only thing that might be a problem is aiming and moving them. If you're just using faders it can be a real pain. Better to have some sort of joystick or pointer control.

Also, if you do use any type of moving light, mirror or moving head, they really need separate addresses. Otherwise, all the movements will be exactly the same, and if you hang one stage left and the other stage right, they'll both point the same way, not opposite. The only way to counteract this would be if the fixture has an internal setting for reversing pan and tilt. But even so, they would have to be hung at exactly the same relative position on the stage.
 
It would all depend on how many and what type of fixtures you are getting if that board would be appropriate.

Just a question to anyone...

a DMX board... DMX512...shouldnt the board be able to expand up to 512 channels?? maybe the board can only run 96 dimmers? but even that makes no sence to me...DMX512 should be DMX512 no matter what?

Correct me if i am wrong. and explain how this works...would be great
 
There are some boards which only run as many as they have faders for. A lot of the low end dj dmx boards (Chauvet DMX 50, Martin Freekie come to mind) don't have a full 512. Other than cost I don't know why that is. I assumed the original question was posed because they were looking at some moving lights. I can't see the point of bringing in a bunch of 150 W color changers, which are less bright than the average conventional, which I assumed they had because they had the board.
 
I know enough about running dmx to use them, but I have never done it using our board at school. Assuming that I only have the board and the moving lights, no joy stick or any attachments, how do I control the channels after 24, since there are only 24 faders on one scene on the board? I don't get a joystick or anything fun like that, if we rent them, I will have to program it all using the faders, if I can. Or if it's possible.
 
The Leprecon 624 board has 24 channels. With soft-patch you can copy a board channel out to multiple DMX channels, but those channels will get exactly the same data. There are uses for this capability, and running intels is one of them.

DMX-512 is a protocol capable of transmitting data for up to 512 channels on a single cable. Nothing in the spec says a board manufacturer has to use all 512 channels. This allows room for a range of different consoles. The more channels a console can control, the more complex (and expensive) it becomes. If all DMX-512 boards had to have a full 512 channels, there would be no such thing as an "entry-level" system... and the Leprecon 642 is just a step or two up from "entry-level."

I've run a pair of American DJ Pocket-scan intels (yeah, cheap, but it's what I could afford at the time) from a James Lighting 916 board. Each PocketScan needs 7 channels, but the 916 only has 16. Could be a problem, but I use the softpatch. Board channel 1 goes to the stage-right pocket-scan PAN, channel 2 to the stage-left PAN. Channel 3 goes to both tilts, 4 to both color wheels, 5 to both gobo wheels, 6 to both shutters, 7 to the pan/tilt speed controls of both units and 8 to the lasers on both units. Everything works in unison except the pans, so I can compensate for the lights being on opposite sides of the stage. It's kind-of limited, but it works, and leaves 8 board-channels for the conventionals.

John
 
Does that board accept dmx in? If so, you could get something like a little 8 channel nsi and batch that in. A pain, but cheap.

Or you could rent something if this isn't for a permanent thing?
 

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