Control/Dimming Inteligent fixtures with dimmer daisy-out??

[strandcentury]

Hey, my school has an ETC SmartFade 2496 console and is looking into getting 2 Martin Mania SCX500 scanners. I know you are wondering why we did not buy an ML instead... but had we already made our purchase before we even thought of using moving lights.

I am posting this under Control/Dimming... because this is a question about connection and addressing issues...

We have two analogue dimmer packs that are retrofitted with a Fleenor DMX to 0-10v converter. Everything works like a charm... But I am wondering if we could daisy chain the two scanners together and then send the signal from the DMX OUT on the converter. We only have 18 channels of dimming... so its not like we are short on DMX channels.



Would this work...

CONSOLE>DIMMER>SCX500-1>SCX500-2
or something like that

and if not... how would we go about doing this...

Is there a 3pin to 5pin DMX adapter available... and are they ridiculously expensive?

Also... the scanners... do they require any particular maintenance...
they would be sitting upright on the ground most of the time and possibly sometimes mounted...

Thanks folks

 

[Bbartlett]

As far as I can tell you should be fine daisy-chaining from the DMX-OUT on the converter. You will want to make up a DMX terminator to put in the DMX-OUT of the last scanner I believe. 3 to 5 pin adapters are plentiful and cheap, or you can knock one up yourself.

As far as scanner maintenance, I will let someone else comment, as I have not had much experience with them.

Hope that helps.

 

[DuckJordan]

My first question is are you planning on actually using these fixtures and how much budget do you really have? If you only have enough budget to buy but no plan on about at least half every 2 years of the cost i would not spend the money on movers. Also if your just planning on getting some for the shear purpose of hey look at what we've got then i would suggest not doing so.

The biggest problem i see with a lot of schools at least in my area is the push to go more technological with equipment without the budget necessary to keep them in good repair. So with that added on even with simple scanners I would seriously ask myself how many times are we going to use them and actually need them? Could i just buy 2 or 3 good conventionals instead and get more use out of those? What kind of budget are we going to get for maintenance on these instruments?

 

[jb595]

Would this work...

CONSOLE>DIMMER>SCX500-1>SCX500-2
or something like that
you would have to take the DMX loop thru out on the dmx to analog converter. you can not take the output of the dimmer as this would be analog.

Is there a 3pin to 5pin DMX adapter available... and are they ridiculously expensive?
yup. easy and cheap. its simple to make as although its a 5 pin connector, only the first 3 pins are used.

Also... the scanners... do they require any particular maintenance...
they would be sitting upright on the ground most of the time and possibly sometimes mounted...
i have some SCX700's. they are quite good on lack of maintanence. are they permanently installed, or are you moving them around, setting up and packing up after gigs?.

regards,
Jake

 

[NJLX]

This may just be me, but I would think about an alternate method of control. If you try to control even a scanner with a SmartFade you're going to be hating yourself. (maybe consider a computer with a dmx dongle and free software)