Las Vegas Chase Lights!

[Robert F Jarvis]

We're doing "Tuna in Vegas" in a couple of months. Director wants some 'typical' Vegas (perhaps more related to the street) "Arrow" signs with chasing lights.
At this time, I'm thinking of making thin wooden arrows about 2' long 6" wide and then mounting LED's around the edges. I'll group and wire several adjacent LEDs and bring them out to a 12v relay box which I'll drive from a Arduino. The final step would be to control the Arduino to provide the various 'chases' from a DMX decoder. Hmm! lots of work so posting here to see if anyone has done this or similar or has a more efficient way of handling things. Bottom line; Although I want simple commads from the Cosnsole I want these things to be pretty much self standing.

 

[RonHebbard]

We're doing "Tuna in Vegas" in a couple of months. Director wants some 'typical' Vegas (perhaps more related to the street) "Arrow" signs with chasing lights.
At this time, I'm thinking of making thin wooden arrows about 2' long 6" wide and then mounting LED's around the edges. I'll group and wire several adjacent LEDs and bring them out to a 12v relay box which I'll drive from a Arduino. The final step would be to control the Arduino to provide the various 'chases' from a DMX decoder. Hmm! lots of work so posting here to see if anyone has done this or similar or has a more efficient way of handling things. Bottom line; Although I want simple commads from the Cosnsole I want these things to be pretty much self standing.

@Robert F Jarvis In ye aulde pre LED daze, I used to purchase 3 or 4 off the shelf pre-manufactured strings of Christmas lights (all the same color ) Typically sockets and lamps were on equidistant centres somewhere between 12" and 18".
I'd stagger the strings so the first lamp was on string one, the second lamp on string two, the third lamp on string three and the fourth lamp on string four. Physically I'd adjust the spacings to suit the size of sign, this usually left slack wiring to be hidden behind the sign.
Three or four dimmers controlled by the LX console permitted chases in either direction at varying speeds and intensities as required by any given scene in the production. In today's times, you'll likely be able to find pre-manufactured strings of LED Christmas lights in colors to your liking.

Granted, this won't provide stand alone operation but it would save you a lot of fabrication and wiring.
Immediately after Christmas you could have likely found these at blow out bargain prices.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

 

[DrewE]

The Arduino could easily be its own DMX512 decoder by hooking up an RS485 receiver chip. For something like this I would think hardcoding the DMX address would be perfectly okay, or if you had a few extra GPIOs you could jumper them to set the address. (Set the pull-up for the input, jumper to ground or leave floating.)

I think Ron's idea would be a bit easier; it oughtn't be hard to set up a chase in most any lighting console and not have to worry about it further. A very basic linear 12V power supply would not be at all purturbed if driven by a dimmer in non-dim mode and would turn on and off quickly if the filter capacitor is on the small side.

 

[Robert F Jarvis]

I'd stagger the strings so the first lamp was on string one, the second lamp on string two, the third lamp on string three and the fourth lamp on string four. Physically I'd adjust the spacings to suit the size of sign, this usually left slack wiring to be hidden behind the sign.
Three or four dimmers controlled by the LX console permitted chases in either direction at varying speeds and intensities as required by any given scene in the production. In today's times, you'll likely be able to find pre-manufactured strings of LED Christmas lights in colors to your liking. Granted, this won't provide stand alone operation but it would save you a lot of fabrication and wiring.
Immediately after Christmas you could have likely found these at blow out bargain prices.

It does sound a lot easier that way Ron and I'm off to look up some of those ligts. Thanks

 

[Robert F Jarvis]

The Arduino could easily be its own DMX512 decoder by hooking up an RS485 receiver chip. For something like this I would think hardcoding the DMX address would be perfectly okay, or if you had a few extra GPIOs you could jumper them to set the address. (Set the pull-up for the input, jumper to ground or leave floating.)

I think Ron's idea would be a bit easier; it oughtn't be hard to set up a chase in most any lighting console and not have to worry about it further. A very basic linear 12V power supply would not be at all purturbed if driven by a dimmer in non-dim mode and would turn on and off quickly if the filter capacitor is on the small side.

I like his idea as well but I am saving your notes on the DMX/Arduino. I hadn't though of hardcoding.

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Check out the christmas lighting people, you're probably looking for "RGB Pixels"; these are large modules, big enough to look structural on a sign (1-2" square)...

 

[Van]

There are a ton of ways to do this without adding the layers of complication that adding an Ardiuno and a reinventing the wheel will introduce.

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=LED+chase+module

Or if you really want to make it complicated buy a 3 channel DMX relay kit from Vellman or Q-kits.com and you can individually solder LED's to three runs of zip cord.

 

[jonliles]

personally, simpler the better. 3 or 4 strings of 120V Christmas Lights, a shoebox dimmer, and it you want to go really fancy, a wireless DMX receicer.

All of this could be powered by a deep cell battery and an DC to AC inverter.