Right now, I'm running 4 intel lights (American DJ PocketScans), 24
PAR cans, 3 strobes, 3 simple on-off effects (American DJ GEMs - multi-beam thingies that go roundy-round), two flame effects (fan makes a piece of silk flutter in the beams of orange and blue spots), and fourteen pinspots (...and a partridge in a pear treeee), all on an American DJ
DMX Operator - identical to the Chauvet DMX-40... and I'm using less than half the available channels.
An intel
effect can use up to 16
DMX channels (the PocketScans only use seven, so I can double up), but each
dimmer channel uses a single
DMX channel. I map the first intel as "scanner 1
page A" - that's
DMX address 1-8. It only uses 7 of the channels, but I've got plenty to spare. The second intel is "scanner 1
page B" -
DMX address 9-16. The third is "Scanner 2
page A" -
address 17-24 and the fourth is "Scanner 2
page B" -
address 25-31. Some of the simpler Chauvet scanners only use 4
DMX channels - you could put four on one of the DMX-40's "scanner" buttons.
Now comes the fun part. At the left side of the
stage, I have a tree with an 8-channel
dimmer pack. It gets mapped to
DMX channels 32-40 - "Scanner 3
page A." Six of the channels control six of the PARs, one controls a
strobe and one controls a flame
effect on top of the left
speaker stack. An identical setup on the right side of the
stage gets mapped to
DMX channels 41-48 - "scanner 3
page B."
At the rear of the
stage is yet another 8-channel pack mapped to channels 49-56 - "Scanner 4
page A" - that does 8 of the pinspots - two rows of four, pointed out over the heads of the audience at various angles. I can
chase them - looks really neat in
fog or
haze. Also at the rear is a four-channel pack mapped to channels 57-60 - the bottom 4 faders for "scanner 4
page B" - that controls the third
strobe and the three roundy-round effects, all positioned to backlight the band. A final four
channel pack on channels 61-64 - the top half of "Scanner 4
page B" - does the remaining pinspots, all on one
channel and aimed at my 24"
disco ball from different angles and in different colors, and three groups of four-per-channel 150W PAR38's set up as
footlights across the front of the
stage. They're set up with red, green and blue gels - all the reds on one
dimmer, all the green on another and all the blue on another. Physically, they're
grouped as four clusters of three lights, one of each color - lets me do some crude color-mixing to get other shades.
Anyhow, with all those lights, I've only used up 1/3 of the available
DMX channels out of a DMX-40. It's a controller I'm really familiar with, so I'll be very happy to answer any other questions about it.
John