Design LED House light Retro fit

[Esoteric]

Ah. I was thinking of a House to half fade, and then house out, but I suppose that makes sense that you would prefer to do a quick fade out, vs. a bump to black, even at half. Point taken and agreed! Full/smooth dimming jumps the cost exponentially... at the moment at least, which is why there aren't many options there yet for retrofits.

PHenry--That's a very neat PL house light! I was of course just referring to Retrofits in terms of output capability at this time. Just out of curiousity, why would you need tunable RGBW for a houselight? It could be very cool for some theatres that are more interactive with the audience where you break the 4th wall....

Cheers,

Mark

Yeah, I have at least half a dozen clients waiting on fully dimmable retrofit solutions and it seems like every other day I get a call from them because some Phillips or Cree dealer made a cold call and has no real idea what "fully dimmable" means and gets their hopes up over a $40 or $50 lamp, and then they call me wondering why I am trying to talk them into $1500 a piece units to do the same thing. I tell them to get get a sample and sure enough it does fine from 100%-20% and then BLINK its gone.

It is just really annoying having to deal with that all the time. Then I have to start the selling process all over again. I wish electrical distributor and sales people would stay in their residential/industrial world and out of the theater/house of worship world.

No disrespect toward you. I am sure you are awesome at what you do. But when someone actually makes a fully dimmable LED retrofit lamp, I will be a happy, happy man. But I consider myself up on what is in the market, and I know that such a thing is at least a couple of years away.

Until then, I tell my clients that their choices are conventional units and dimmers or an all in one LED unit replacement.

I also know you can play with dimmer curves to smooth things out, but I have still never seen an LED retrofit lamp that doesn't go BLINK at the end of its dimming curve and for house lights that is VERY annoying.

Cheers mate!

 

[tdrga]

I also know you can play with dimmer curves to smooth things out, but I have still never seen an LED retrofit lamp that doesn't go BLINK at the end of its dimming curve and for house lights that is VERY annoying.

Yep- I spent 2 1/2 hours yesterday adjusting dimmer curve, threshold values and voltage regulation on my houselight dimmers to try to get the LED lamps to match incandescents as closely as possible. I've been able to have them fade out (not terribly smoothly) but they always blink on when fading up from 0%. The $ wins over esthetics on this one.

-Todd

 

[Esoteric]

I have done the math a thousand times, and even for spaces with a show every night, I just can't find any savings in LED house lights. Well, I can but it is usually $5 or $10 a month. I mean at $.08-$.10 a kwH it takes so long to build up the savings.

 

[robmerow]

commercial house light fixtures

Hello,

I'm currently in the middle of researching house lighting fixtures to replace our current "dimmable florescent architectural fixtures" which have been a dimming nightmare and eyesore for 5 years. We're looking into the entire range of possibilities: from RGBAW DMX fixtures for color options to traditional incandescent pendants.

I seem to be having trouble locating just traditional, black commerical pendant fixtures with a screw base. You know, like the kind that every open-ceiling middle school & highschool auditorium has. If anyone could point me in this direction it would be awesome. Just want a price comparison to using architectural pendants to sourcefour pars.

Thanks!

 

[derekleffew]

Re: commercial house light fixtures


Altman Chalice seems to meet all of your requirements except medium screwbase. And if you're changing the entire fixture, that shouldn't matter.

I've also heard good things about affineonlighting - Home luminaire s. Pricey, but nice.

To date, none of the screw-in replacement lamps are acceptable due to their dimming curve, specifically the "bink" on or off at the low end of the curve. This may never be solved; it happens with the wall dimmers in my house even with incandescent lamps.

 

[Esoteric]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

Hello,

I'm currently in the middle of researching house lighting fixtures to replace our current "dimmable florescent architectural fixtures" which have been a dimming nightmare and eyesore for 5 years. We're looking into the entire range of possibilities: from RGBAW DMX fixtures for color options to traditional incandescent pendants.

I seem to be having trouble locating just traditional, black commerical pendant fixtures with a screw base. You know, like the kind that every open-ceiling middle school & highschool auditorium has. If anyone could point me in this direction it would be awesome. Just want a price comparison to using architectural pendants to sourcefour pars.

Thanks!

Yeah, I have had the HARDEST time finding a just a cheap, black pendant light to use as a traditional house light in houses of worship. I have actually gotten them from Home Depot the past few times. *lol* Right now with LED I use only a complete fixture. We have had good success with our Visioneer CWWW PAR and the Elation ELED PAR56 CWWW. We also LOVE the Affineon fixtures, but haven't gotten a project with the budget for their use. We are currently working on a project that is spec'ing our Visioneer RGBAW PAR because their space will be used as an immersive environment.

 

[robmerow]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

Yes, the black pendant with screw base for a regular lamp is really what I need to find. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned our LED alternatives, as my post was just relocated to this LED houselight thread when really I'm just looking for help in finding a traditional pendent fixture.

 

[derekleffew]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

Sorry I misread and mislead your post, Rob.

I'm just making a wild hypothesis here: "basic black pendant medium screwbase fixtures" usually take an R40/PAR38 or ER or BR30, or similar lamp; I'm guessing these luminaire s will continue to become even rarer in the future. The R40 is next on the environmentalists' chopping block, right behind the conventional A-lamp. My favorite, the 150R40/FL began disappearing in 1987, IIRC. Of course, us theatre folk who complain about dimming compose such a small portion of the overall market, no one cares about, or listens to, us. CFLs and LEDs for everyone! Except us.

Before we go back to sticking an E26 socket in a coffee can, there's some suggestions in this thread: http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/lighting-electrics/24183-simple-pendant-houselight.html .

 

[robmerow]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

Before we go back to sticking an E26 socket in a coffee can, there's some suggestions in this thread: http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/lighting-electrics/24183-simple-pendant-houselight.html .

Brilliant! Thank you!

 

[gafftaper]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

One thing I see missing from this discussion is how are these newer fixtures doing with the fade up? My old theater had dimmable CFL's... installed about 6 years ago so they were early models. After a lot of dimmer curve tweaking we got them to dim fairly smoothly, even with stopping at half and then all the way out. However, turning them back on was a nightmare. The house was purple and dim for about 30 seconds. It took over a minute and a half for them to reach full brightness.

I'm assuming this isn't a problem on the LED's, but I'm curious how Tyler's new CFLs do? Also what about those LED's with phosphors that JChenault was talking about??

 

[phenry]

PHenry--That's a very neat PL house light! I was of course just referring to Retrofits in terms of output capability at this time. Just out of curiousity, why would you need tunable RGBW for a houselight? It could be very cool for some theatres that are more interactive with the audience where you break the 4th wall....

That is exactly why people want them. You can immerse the audience into the lighting and set them in the right mood of the scene.

 

[JChenault]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

One thing I see missing from this discussion is how are these newer fixtures doing with the fade up? My old theater had dimmable CFL's... installed about 6 years ago so they were early models. After a lot of dimmer curve tweaking we got them to dim fairly smoothly, even with stopping at half and then all the way out. However, turning them back on was a nightmare. The house was purple and dim for about 30 seconds. It took over a minute and a half for them to reach full brightness.

I'm assuming this isn't a problem on the LED's, but I'm curious how Tyler's new CFLs do? Also what about those LED's with phosphors that JChenault was talking about??

Well - Just for grins I replaced a burned out Par lamp in our house light rig with one of the Phillips PAR led's last week. Initial blush is it works pretty well, but I'v not ready to be definite yet.

 

[lwinters630]

I have done the math a thousand times, and even for spaces with a show every night, I just can't find any savings in LED house lights. Well, I can but it is usually $5 or $10 a month. I mean at $.08-$.10 a kwH it takes so long to build up the savings.

The house lights in our school auditorium are also used during the school day. That means they are on for 8 to 12 hours/day 5 days/week and 11 month a year. I have about 65 bulbs. Does that change the pay off?

 

[lwinters630]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

Well - Just for grins I replaced a burned out Par lamp in our house light rig with one of the Phillips PAR led's last week. Initial blush is it works pretty well, but I'v not ready to be definite yet.

JChenault, which phillips did you use?

 

[RickR]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

Contact your local electrical supplier. I call them pipe & wire houses because they sell conduit, wire, boxes and such. They can find one of the many simple pendants made for standard commercial work. Home Depot and the like might have a catalog but they may also have trouble getting it right.

All the big names; Cooper/Halo, Acuity, Hubbell and lots of small and inexpensive makers do a variety of the old time basics. It's just that nobody advertises them anymore so you have to know who to ask.

 

[Mike9]

Re: commercial house light fixtures

I have the same problem - 20 fixtures with a 500watt halogen in each. Every time someone walks out of the room the meter does the happy dance. Unfortunately I haven't been able to sell the admin on the idea of new LED fixtures. $20,000 is a bitter pill to swallow. Even if we installed T5 fixtures for classes and static events and used the dimmables for shows it would save money.

 

[ruinexplorer]

I have done the math a thousand times, and even for spaces with a show every night, I just can't find any savings in LED house lights. Well, I can but it is usually $5 or $10 a month. I mean at $.08-$.10 a kwH it takes so long to build up the savings.

I haven't crunched numbers for theater, but when I was designing/fabricating exhibits at a natural history museum, I had proposed a retrofit (back in the late 90's). At the time, I calculated the cost per fixture based on cost of lamps over similar number of hours, the heat produced by an incandescent over that of a LED, and the cost of man hours for replacing incandescents. The savings was there, but the initial investment was a capital expenditure, which they were unable to get approved. Of course, I also had to take into account how it would change the look of the artifacts/specimens as well as the UV output of some lamps, in addition to dimming capabilities (static look), which dramatically limited which fixtures I could use.

Anyhow, what I would suggest in cost comparison is adding in man hours and HVAC in addition to strict operating costs.

 

[Pmarsland]

For those seriously considering LED house lights, I spent a couple of hours with some fixtures from GDS
ArcSystem

Having seen so many dismal lamps and fixture try to dim, these GDS units were absolutely breathtaking. It is definitely possible, though quite pricey. Also saw some from LumenPulse which were disappointing for our purposes. I've heard that the Light Source fixture will be very capable as a replacement house light.

As Ruinexplorer said, don't forget to factor in lamps, labor, HVAC loading and electricity use in the calculations. I am lucky that we are facing a serious HVAC replacement - the cooling power we won't have to purchase will go a long way toward financing a lot of new LED fixtures for our stages and houses.

Paul

 

[tyler.martin]

Resurrection!

I've just been sent a couple different brands of LED Par 38 screw in replacements, and they all dim miserably, even with a large incandescent load on the circuit as well. Another ing we noticed is the drivers are outputting a huge amount of RF which Unfortunatly is in same frequency range of some wireless gear we are using. Philips
doesn't have a spec sheet of which frequencies they would output on, but it seems to be in the 500-600mHZ range

 

[tjrobb]

Tyler- That's odd, just after I left my old workplace they went LED in the house. Haven't seen any issues so far, except the obvious cutout level. (Sensor dimmers, Philips PAR38 lamps, 17W)