LED House Lights ? ? ?

[RonHebbard]

Hello!
Are all of your venue's house lights LEDs?
If so; what fixtures are you using, both for illumination and to replace purely decorative applications? (You know how architects are, or were in the early seventies.)
How many fixtures in a venue of how many seats / how many balconies/ how many fire exits in addition to normal entrances?
Do they fade down, smooth as silk, all the way to black?
Do they fade up, smooth as silk, from black without any delays or flashes?
How do you like the color temperature?
How are they controlled and from how many locations?
How are they interfaced with your fire alarm system?
How do you handle transfers to back-up power; generators, UPS's, etcetera, from a 'life safety / emergency egress POV?
If wireless DMX is involved in your house light control, how does it recover in the event of power failure, transfers to emergency back-up power.
Yada, yada, etcetera; those sorts of questions.

One of our local venues (2,200 seats, 2 balconies, proscenium soft-seater) has a full CD80 rack, 96 x 2.4 KW dimmers, totally dedicated to house lights in the larger space. (This was an upgrade about 20 years ago replacing the original 20 dimmers which were a mixed bag of 12K, 6K and 4K units with zero to 10 volt analog control breaking down to a total of 96 x 20 Amp load breakers. At the time when the upgrade was contemplated, the CD80 rack with AMX-192 control was a natural progression along with a Strand Light Board M and hand-held remote, purely for house light control, replacing the severely failing collection of aging slide pots configured as a manual three scene preset originally installed in three locations; LXBooth, PJBooth and DSR.
In spaces where the house light fixtures range from 250, 500 and 1,000 watt halogen down lights through a large number of aesthetically decorative incandescents to tiny 120S6 aisle lights and row markers, what are people doing to shift to LEDs?
With thanks in advance for your time.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
Edited to correct 6S6 to 120S6

 

[RickR]

Search a bit here and you should find several recent discussions of LED house lights.

I've done several replacement projects. They all went to architectural fixtures rather than theatrical ones, mostly because that's what they had and the pricing is better. The most recent sounds much like yours but 24 2K dimmers. It required significant DMX distribution and an architectural control system replacement. There were some issues with product quality control. Dimming and color are excellent, just no amber drift. But now the HL are brighter, more even, more controllable and of course more efficient.

Decorative and marker lights have to be researched carefully. Retrofit lamps are usually the only practical answer and the dimming curve suffers.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I think I have designed facilities that satisfy all of your issues well with LED, but there is a cost. The renovated Alley Theatre is almost all LED, and the color and dimming is very good. But candidly, or bluntly if you prefer, it is a lot of work and requires a lot of experience to do well, and best you know them all before starting. Besides color and dimming, we do achieve compliance with all codes and standards, have not yet used wireless but would not be afraid to rely on ETCs ArcSystem mesh network, and control points are no different than with quartz - it all resolves to DMX and Paradigm. A lot of thought on whether you disconnect from power (relay) when off, since while the LEDs have long life, the power supplies maybe not so much. You're talking about a big project. That is a 30,000 ft glimpse. With apologies to Dave and moderators, I'm available.

 

[STEVETERRY]

With similar apologies, I suggest that you could do worse than hiring Bill for this type of project.

ST