CFLs are evil, that is the long and the short of it. Between
Power Factor and flickering, how much of a pain they are to dim, mercury content,
etc. they are just evil.
I love incandescents, and there are a lot of good
LED solutions now too. The Grand
Theatre (London, Ontario) has converted mainly to LEDs (save for
stage lighting of course), there were a few problems along the way with the choices but they were mainly solved by adding
fluorescent work light in the McManus Studio. They are of course using the
Strand A21 Dimming
System which works great.
There are several things you can do to change over to
DMX or to add
DMX functionality to your house-light
system. Some of the easiest and best solutions would to be to use something turnkey like the
Strand A21 (or the other aforementioned systems, like solutions from
ETC,
etc.) but these are NOT cheap.
A major consideration, do these
house lights need to be controlled elsewhere (other than the lighting
desk)?
A cheap-o solution I used for one
community theatre I help with was to install a
relay to
switch between two completely different circuits for the control of the
house lights, to either have standard "
switch" control, or
DMX control. Not at the same time. A LICENSED ELECTRICIAN would be required to do that, and I'd check with local codes,
etc.. (The
Identified's must be switched along with the
switch wires).
I would generally not recommend a
system like this, but it does inherently lock-out the controls in the
house during show. Again the dimmers is question may not like CFLs (but
incandescent or many
LED solutions would be happy with the
dimmer).
A rack-mount
dimmer hooked up instead, run only from the lighting boards
DMX would be easier, and happier. Again, CFLs not so happy depending on said
dimmer.
The aforementioned solution from
Doug Fleenor Design would work too.
The other thing is, as long as the
house controls are easily accessible by the lighting operator or SM to control for the run, just use what you have!
3-way/4-way switches can be used with 3-way dimmers to allow on-off functionality from more than one location. I've rigged up a 3-way slide
dimmer (like you have) in a box with some cable so that it can be moved on the
desk surface or hung on the wall that the lighting operator just puts beside the LX
console and can use to control the house-lights-- as getting up and controlling something on the wall is kinda not that smart. BINGO BANGO DONE. This is one of the easiest and cheap ways to go about it (again Licensed Electrician!).