End of Halogen?

[TimMc]

Well, not Ether over AC, but I understand that sACN/e.131 to the fixture is the coming thing...

I'm all for embedding DMX info in a network data stream and programming the fixture to respond to the appropriate data.

The IoT possibilities are interesting - I don't need a home refrigerator that orders groceries, I want fixtures that know where they are on a truss, who's next to them, and can reference the design to program their own function in the design. Hell, I'd be happy with an LD that can do that...

 

[macsound]

Yes. The lighting load with traditional fixtures is huge.

Theatres are challenging for mechanical engineers - they have to balance the fact that the "peak load" of both lighting and occupancy occurs often and all at once and for a few hours at a time. They also have to account for acoustics and have air move at much lower speeds than normal.

In a couple of the theatres I've worked in, they were designed with two or three HVAC systems.
The newer theatres had one AC for the audience and one for the stage. The stage AC was calculated based on the lighting load and the house AC was calculated based on the audience occupancy. And the management operated as such. So for rehearsals they only ran the stage AC, during shows, the house AC would be programmed to operate from doors to final curtain and the stage AC was programmed from curtain to final curtain.

The old spaces with three HVAC systems were more elementary.
One system was heat only and was piped through the floor under the seats, the stage had glorified exhaust fans on the walls of the fly tower with intake vents along the floor level and the house had retrofitted AC.

 

[Ben Stiegler]

and back to the tangent, we renovated a Scottish Rite Temple in SF some years ago and not only were there skeleton drawers in the ritual chambers (which became dance studios), but down in the (often-flooded basement) were kept, we were led to believe, the skeletons when not in use for rituals. Talk about ghosts of a theatre ...