JD
Well-Known Member
It's hard to get LED's to go up that high, so most are just fringe purple. They have been getting better, but no where near's the "C" germicidal wavelengths! Gas tube discharge blacklights are the ones you have to worry about. (florescent, HID) The germicidal tubes are cheap and usually have clear glass.
DonAllen
Member
I bought four of these from an Australian ebay site to use as battery powered specials on a stage truck, which did not go ahead as there was not enough room on the truck. They are a fanles 240V version. Unfortunately seperate RGBW emitters which produces colour fringing and narrow beamwidth, but cheap enough price to have a play with. Tried them as footlight specials and they did the job so ordered another 8 similar to these https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/4-Pcs-M...DJ-Lighting-/263680486212?hash=item3d6494eb44 which brought the price down to AUD$16 delivered.
They were used as footlights in a production of The Secret garden, for the Cholera victims singing downstage to allow scene changes to occur upstage without any break in the show. Having 12 individual addressable specials allowed for easy plotting. We ended up focussing four middle stage left for other cholera victims specials. Director liked the option of choosing a nice "death mask" colour using the colour picker.
I have used them on another musical, Annie for the nasty children chorus bits.
A very useful addition to my stock of 60 PAR16 birdies that allow beamwidths from 16 degrees to 60 degrees but only one colour.
They were used as footlights in a production of The Secret garden, for the Cholera victims singing downstage to allow scene changes to occur upstage without any break in the show. Having 12 individual addressable specials allowed for easy plotting. We ended up focussing four middle stage left for other cholera victims specials. Director liked the option of choosing a nice "death mask" colour using the colour picker.
I have used them on another musical, Annie for the nasty children chorus bits.
A very useful addition to my stock of 60 PAR16 birdies that allow beamwidths from 16 degrees to 60 degrees but only one colour.
JD
Well-Known Member
Odd that they are fanless. The ones I have are rated 100-240 v 50/60 hz. The beams are stupid tight, but I guess for DJ use with hazers, they like to see the beam in the haze.
As it happens, I have a ton of those plastic defuses from the old florescent trothers and I chopped a piece off and tried it. Makes for a reasonable output.
As it happens, I have a ton of those plastic defuses from the old florescent trothers and I chopped a piece off and tried it. Makes for a reasonable output.
techieman33
Well-Known Member
There are tons of them out there. Just search ebay for rgbw led par. Here's 8 of them for $90. JD got them at a pretty good price, but they're not that expensive. It's amazing how cheap things can get when you produce them by the million. Personally I don't go quite that low on the scale of generic led fixtures. The ones I have I spent about $30 each on, and they have 9 rgbw leds on them. The homogenized fixtures look so much better IMO. And they also have IEC in and out. That makes it a lot easier to power them. It also removes one of the normal weak links which is the horrendously cheap power cables and their very brittle jackets. I just pony up and extra couple bucks and buy power cables from monoprice.
techieman33
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I have tons of male edison to female IEC cables laying around. It's the the male IEC to female IEC cables that I generally have to buy. The lights I linked could be exactly the same, or they might be slightly different. My guess is that one or two factories make the plastic shells, and then there are different companies that actually make the fixtures. Some will have different LEDs, power supplies, controllers, dmx profiles, etc. And since they buy componets wherever they can get them cheapest even buying from the same supplier is no guarantee that the lights you buy today will match the ones you bought yesterday.
BillConnerFASTC
Well-Known Member
JD
Well-Known Member
You don't get much of a curve with these things! Wouldn't surprise me if they were using 4 bit processing, which is common in those pic microcontrolers they love to use.
Still, for throwing some color on something and doing it on a shoestring budget, I'm impressed!
Now, we'll see how long they live! I am actually a bit optimistic as there are only three junctions in series.
techieman33
Well-Known Member
The dimming curve on my $30 isn't that great. between 50%-100% it isn't to bad. But the further down you go from there the worse it gets. And they pretty much snap on/off at about 10%. I've found if I can keep the fade times to 3 seconds or less it's not awful, especially when they're mixed in with a conventional rig. But I wouldn't try to just use them for a theatrical show. As JD said they're good for throwing lots of color on a budget. I primarily use mine for uplighting events. And they get used for things like dance recitals and a couple local ballet companies use them. I would much rather use real fixtures for the recitals and especially the ballets, but they don't have the budgets to pay for them.
videographer
Member
Hey all. So I have decided to learn more about DMX, and to that end I bought a Lixada USB to DMX cable and eight of those Lixada RGBW PAR cans to experiment with. The cable came with a super-basic piece of DMX mixing software called FreeStyler 512. I'm figuring it out bit by bit, but there doesn't seem to be any presets for Lixada lights to put into the mixer so I can map the lights. Pure newbie here, but can anyone lend some insight? Or is there some other software that would be easier to get started with?
Thanks in advance -
Thanks in advance -
Crisp image
Well-Known Member
You might find a generic fixture in Freesyler. To find out how a lamp works patch a bunch of dimmers and then what I do is put them at 50% and then play with each one to see what they do. once you figure that out you can write your own profile or use the correct generic one.
I hope this helps.
Regards
Geoff
JD
Well-Known Member
One of the reasons there may not be a "profile" is there is not too much consistency on what channels do what! I just bought a few of the more expensive (Ha!) $12 models, and the first thing I noticed is that even though they are identical, they moved some of the channels around! (#1 used to be the master, now it's #4, etc.) So, the lesson is, if you want to buy a bunch of them, make sure they are all from the same batch!
Of course I took it apart to see what my extra $3 bought... Well now, the new fans are quieter, the colors of the wires feeding the LEDs now agree with the colors of the LEDs, and (wow!) there is now a connector on the end of the AC cable where it plugs into the power supply board! (the old ones were soldered.)
JimmyM
Well-Known Member
And it appears the fraud continues over on ebay. Over the last few days “uking-top” has canceled three auctions on nice looking LEDs that were not reaching the companies buy it now prices. Is this a new way to advertise? Get attention and duck out in a way that does not let one complain using the current ebay complaint system?
They have two more “auctions” still going on the new line of lights, 232920741257 and 232920821174. I bet they get canceled also.
btw, Amazon has many of the same cheap DMX LEDs available. Not $9, but cheap.
Dear eBay Community Member,
The bid that you entered for the item (232920741257) has been cancelled
The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Dear eBay Community Member,
The bid that you entered for the item (232920821174) has been cancelled.
The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
This seems to be how “uking-top” runs a business.
The bid that you entered for the item (232920741257) has been cancelled
The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
Dear eBay Community Member,
The bid that you entered for the item (232920821174) has been cancelled.
The seller ended the listing early and cancelled all bids.
This seems to be how “uking-top” runs a business.
