How Expandable is our System?

[drakew]

Hi all,

At my school, we are looking at how expandable our lighting setup is for multicolor LEDs and general longevity of our system.

I've recently been exploring our venue's system and trying to figure a lot of stuff out learning as I go along, as over the past decade there has been no cohesive documentation left. Our lighting console is a Strand presetPalette 48/96 connected via Shownet to two C21 dimmer racks. Our lights (mainly Strand's SL Coolbeams) are on motorized hoisted rails that have stage pin connectors. For the motorized rails, I was unable to see the exact model or manufacture, but there is a blue motor at the top if that helps.

Would multicolored LED fixtures work? If my understanding is correct, typically these fixtures are attached via DMX but our rails only have stage pin power outputs from the C21 dimmer racks. How would, or could, those work?

Additionally, how "reliable" is our Palette board?

Thanks!

 

[Amiers]

How many fixtures do you generally run?

What would the main purpose be of the new LED Fixtures?

What is your budget on LED fixtures?

As far as making it work. You can swag a DMX cable from the fly rail to whichever electric you want to hang the fixture.

As far as power. This is where it can get hairy and people will have difference of opinions. You could use the power on the electric and just set that specific dimmer as the C21 rack offers different settings

http://www.strandlighting.com/clien...oads/2-450174-030_C21-EC21_Ops_3_1.pdf#page17

Page 18 goes into details more about this topic.

After answering the questions above you will get a bit more answers and could prolly answer your own questions with them.

 

[Footer]

The pallete console is actually pretty decent. Its an orphan at this point, but it will do the job. You could have a lot worse. Odds are your install was done by Vincent Lighting out of Cincinnati. They are one of the larger strand houses in midwest. Sounds like you got a pretty good handle on what is going on. Take a pile of pictures of anything you don't know what is and post it here. There is someone around here who can identify it. Any questions you have just ask. If you want to buy LED fixtures we can point you in the right direction there as well. There are ways of turning those stagepin plugs into constant power. There are ways to get DMX to anywhere in the theatre... and odds are that system is already there.

And welcome to the booth! From one horse racing mecca to another, glad to have you here! I really need to get down to Lexington... I've heard Keeneland is great.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Get constant power to electrics - several options - and DMX as noted. I'd probably recommend wireless because it's so easy, but that's not the only option.

 

[Les]

As far as power. This is where it can get hairy and people will have difference of opinions. You could use the power on the electric and just set that specific dimmer as the C21 rack offers different settings

http://www.strandlighting.com/clien...oads/2-450174-030_C21-EC21_Ops_3_1.pdf#page17

Page 18 goes into details more about this topic.

Interesting - that seems to be at odds with Vari-Lite's advice. Keeping in mind that VL is merely referring to only their products, and I'm not sure exactly what they mean by "non-dim module". To me, this would mean "dedicated relay module", and would be fine to run electronic loads. Dimmers set to 'non-dim' is what I'd caution against unless some research has taken place (usually involving talking with the manufacturer of the lighting instrument, not the dimmer).

 

[AudJ]

I have a nearly identical system, but we have the 'II' version - you may want to explore your total number of channels available. The board can physically handle your proposal, but installations seem to vary greatly base on channel need, and the board has to have a USB thumb drive installed internally, which activates the number of channels purchased with the board. Without an upgrade (available at install or later), you might only have enough channels to operate your dimmers. With an upgrade, you would probably be fine.

If you have to upgrade channel count now, it would probably be more cost effective to purchase a modern board.

As far as reliability, I can't speak for everyone, but we have used 2 of these for 7 years now. One has had minor crashes occasionally, but has performed well overall. The other has been in for overhaul 3 times, and is completely unreliable. In the last year, it has been in the shop more than in use. Trying to obtain funding to replace both boards.

 

[drakew]

Thanks everyone. I'll see if there are any DMX drops in the rails or look into wireless.

 

[gobogirl]

We have C21 dimmers and Strand makes modules that are true non-dims and also (my favorite) modules that have a switch on front that allows them to be true non-dims or dimmers, as necessary.
One comment correctly stated that intelligent fixture manufacturing folks don't recommend powering their fixtures by fooling the light into thinking it is getting true non-dimmed power.
We are transitioning to LED fixtures and use both wired and wireless DMX for control.
We are an older venue, so we've had to retrofit DMX and drop it to our motorized electrics.
When we run out of addresses and wired universes we use wireless DMX.
It works fine.
Can't respond to console questions.
We were a Strand 550i and are now grandma 2.
Hope this helps

 

[gafftaper]

First most experts and all manufacturers will all tell you that you need to have truly non-dimmed power. A setting on a dimmer that says non-dim is usually still actually dimmed it just instantly goes from 0-100%. Inside the dimmer, a device chops up the electricity and the reassembles it in a way that produces more or less power to the lights making them dim. Delicate electronics like LED's and sound equipment can be damaged by running this type of power. Is it likely to happen? Maybe or Maybe not. Can you probably get away with running LED's on dimmed power... maybe. My feeling is when I'm spending thousands on new lights I'm going to make sure they don't get fried by the power, but as you've seen above there are some who would say it's probably safe.

I run a 6 year old high school performing arts center. We have 2 racks of C21 dimmers and a Palette VL (The big sister to your board). I have LED Cyc Lights, LED PAR's as down lights, and LED PAR's as side lights, plus four ETC Revolutions. Your system is very capable of doing all those things. However there are a few key issues you need to explore.

1) As has been noted DMX distribution. Where can you tap into DMX signal. Based on the age of your other equipment it seems very likely that you have some DMX ports around the theater to tap into.
2) Power. Do you have remotely on and off controlled Non-Dim circuits? Those are the best way to power LED's as you can shut them down easily when not in use. If not yes you can get either C21 modules that are "Constant" modules which always have power one unless you turn them off at the rack. Or you can get "contactor" modules which can be turned on and off from the light board but are not actually dimmed. Or you can just run standard power to them.
3) How many universes and channels did they buy when the got your light board? Strand sold those boards with a wide variety of options on the DMX channels. Odds are good it came with 2 universes, but you might find that it only has 1... or maybe you'll get lucky and they got 4 universes. Adding LED fixtures chews up channels of DMX data very quickly. Go to the Patch Screen and then select Patch routing and take a picture of the information you see on the right side of the screen. We should be able to help you determine how many universes you have. There are ways to upgrade this but it's expensive since it's a discontinued product.

 

[Rusty00101]

The issue with running luminaires or equipment that needs constant power through a dimmer relates to distortion of the AC waveform at the "zero crossing" - where the change between the top and the bottom half of the wave cycle happens. The consequence of doing so depends upon the luminaire or equipment.

Motorized breaker panels or contactor modules which fix into an existing dimmer rack are the way to go. Both of these are noisy, particularly if several are triggered simulatneously.

You want to turn off power to LED luminaires when they are not in use to save the LED drivers - they are what typically go first, not the actual diodes.