Control/Dimming house light control

Interesting info. I've never heard of that before. I like to think I could trust a crew to react appropriately by killing the sound and bringing up the lights themselves but it's nice that there's a way to idiot-proof it.

Rhode Island also requires it, they just installed this type of system at our theatre here about 3 weeks ago. The fire alarm system will automatically set our house dimming system into Override mode and turn on the lights, then it will kill all the power to our soundboard so everyone can hear the alarm and then third and last, it will kill our air handling system so that it wont circulate the smoke or feed the fire with fresh air.
 
Before the dimmer was put in we had a bunch of dimmer switches on the wall next to the door. (It got really cumbersome running over there to turn on or off the house lights.)
Now someone mentioned interconnecting the house lights with the fire alarm system. Is there a way of triggering certain channels with the I/F501 by a simple contact closure i.e. the relay? (I could also use that to control the house lights from outside the control booth)
 
Before the dimmer was put in we had a bunch of dimmer switches on the wall next to the door. (It got really cumbersome running over there to turn on or off the house lights.)
Now someone mentioned interconnecting the house lights with the fire alarm system. Is there a way of triggering certain channels with the I/F501 by a simple contact closure i.e. the relay? (I could also use that to control the house lights from outside the control booth)

quick answer to the fire alarm question is no -consult your fire alarm contractor and licensed (and qualified) electrician

the fire alarm stuff needs to operate in a fail safe fashion, and using an input to an IF501 that someone could unplug doesnt meet the requirements.

Now, as far as being to operate some of your houselights without having to buy a lumanet panel (i thought the cheapest lumanet panel was around $275), you could make up a panel with 4 switches and a 10v REGULATED dc power supply (dont use just any walwart or you will blow up your IF501 -has to be regulated) to feed the analog inputs on the IF501. I have attached the page of the manual which covers taking DMX in, merging with 4 analog channels, and outputting MPX. You set the start address for the analog to whatever you want.
 

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