Lighting System Upgrade Advice

jcslighting

Member
One of the venues I work in is looking at adding additional lighting to their existing system and I was looking for some input as to the best way to steer them.

The overview of the space is as follows: It is a wedding/event venue in part of on old Walmart Building. There is a stage that is 28" high and 30'w x 14'd and in front of the stage is a dance floor that is also 30'w but extends 20' from the stage apron. This entire area is framed from above in 12x12 box truss with a mid-span just DS of the apron. The current rig is really inadequate as I'm sure with the trussing and installation the budget didn't allow for enough fixtures. The stage is washed by Elation Sixpar300 fixtures - 4 from the mid truss, 4 from US truss, 2 from SL, 2 from SR - there are also 2 on each side over the dance floor to provide a 45deg front light wash.

The dance floor area is covered by 8 Elation Sixpar100 - 2 from each side. There are also 4 pin spot moving head LEDs and 4 profile LED moving heads.

Here is the situation - the sixpars are nice but too narrow to evenly wash the stage plus the dance floor area is used for other things like awards ceremonys that require a better wash than those little sixpar 100s can give it. When we have done theatrical shows I have brought in conventional fixtures to provide front light on both the stage and the dance floor however it involves pulling lots of cable and tying in power. This provides plenty of light from the front but the color can only be changed by changing gels - which may not be needed anyway. The venue owner wants to add enough light to not have to bring in additional equipment for these events/shows but wants to install permanent gear.

My initial thoughts were to add 9 conventional 50deg source 4 fixtures and DMX shoebox dimmer packs to run them. Run 3 on the lower dance floor, 3 on the upper dance floor, and 3 on the stage itself. This would require at least 2 dimmer packs but some cabling to reach each position or 3 packs - one at each position. This would allow open channels for adding more fixtures later plus will provide a nice wash that is controllable more than a PAR. However before I send that advice I thought maybe it may be better to both add more sixpar 300s on the stage - like 5 across instead of the 4 now and then add another 10 to wash the dance floor. The budget is what scares me and may scare them - like $600 a piece or around $7200 for that option. In both cases we would add an additional position approx 10' DS from the dance floor to catch the DS portion of it at a proper angle - the trussing would be more of a top light in that area.

I attached a .pdf plot/ground plan of the space from a Christmas show 2 years ago.

As always, thanks in advance for any and all suggestions or advice?
 

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With shoebox dimmers you take a big risk. Especially if you put them in the truss. A majority of your budget will go to just those to get the right sized ones. You go with the 100$ dimmers and you might as well not even bother with source 4s because you will be up the truss everyday replacing fuses and hating each minute of it.

If they want permanent convince them to do it right and buy real dimmers and have an Electrican come in and drop some circuits in strategic spots over the rig and be done with it.
 
With shoebox dimmers you take a big risk. Especially if you put them in the truss. A majority of your budget will go to just those to get the right sized ones. You go with the 100$ dimmers and you might as well not even bother with source 4s because you will be up the truss everyday replacing fuses and hating each minute of it.

If they want permanent convince them to do it right and buy real dimmers and have an Electrican come in and drop some circuits in strategic spots over the rig and be done with it.

I also thought about maybe using a small portable dimmer like the old Strand CD-80 packs or the small ETC stuff - usually 2.4k per circuit - would only need say 12 circuits. Could drop circuits at the truss that way.
3 phase power is available easily in the venue.
 
You should definitely do that. If you get real dimmers then you have room to expand your lighting inventory.

12 2.4k dimmers means atleast 24 s4 750s. Since you only need 9 you could use the extra 15 fixtures as leverage for growth in the future. 4000

https://www.usedlighting.com/37483/etc-24-x-2k-sensor-rack-multi-pin-stage-pin-outputs

Plus fixtures from used lighting is 2600.

And then a good electrician to do some tie in and home runs and you are close to 7.5.

If you go new well that’s a whole new ball game.
 
I have an unused ETC Smartbar in storage that I'd let go real cheap (came with an upgrade but wasn't needed). I believe it's only 6 channel, but maybe it's a start?

PM me if you're interested.
 
You should definitely do that. If you get real dimmers then you have room to expand your lighting inventory.

12 2.4k dimmers means atleast 24 s4 750s. Since you only need 9 you could use the extra 15 fixtures as leverage for growth in the future. 4000

https://www.usedlighting.com/37483/etc-24-x-2k-sensor-rack-multi-pin-stage-pin-outputs

Plus fixtures from used lighting is 2600.

And then a good electrician to do some tie in and home runs and you are close to 7.5.

If you go new well that’s a whole new ball game.


Some thoughts and options on this.

1) If you do a centralized rack, with larger capacity 2.4kw dimmers, it gives you the option to load up fewer dimmers with a greater number of conventional fixtures . That can be efficient, but reduces the flexibility of having individual fixtures on individual dimmers that are much larger in capacity then required.

2) Centralized makes it easier to troubleshoot problems with the dimmers, as opposed to having distributed dimmers out on the trusses.

3) You can readily convert pairs of circuits on a Sensor pack/rack to constant or relay should you expand into additional LED's, but you HAVE to convert 2 circuits when you do this, not always a convenience.

4) Having distributed dimmers means a requirement for dedicated power on the truss for the dimmers, but that power is easier to then repurpose to LED's. Thus I like the Leprecon ULD series 4x600 packs that have 2 - 5-15 edison feeds. You can run 4x575w S4's on this, of later pull the pack and just run daisy chained LED's from those power feeds. Note that buying cheap distributed dimmers works against you as they are potentially more trouble prone down the road, thus requiring access to the packs.
 
With dimmer doublers you could get back that individual control if it came to it. He only spec out for 9 fixtures to a final price of 7200. So I just gave him the used option to go above that number for the same price.

You could easily swing circuits over to a breaker panel if and when the time comes to lose the conventional fixtures in a specific spot if you didn’t want to sacrifice a whole module.


I completely agree that a distributed system in this case wouldn’t work and just be a speed bump in the final goal.
 
I’m a bit lost on the conflicting advice. I thought distributed systems were the way to go these days. Thanks, I may soon have an upgrade opportunity.
 
I’m a bit lost on the conflicting advice. I thought distributed systems were the way to go these days. Thanks, I may soon have an upgrade opportunity.
@JimOC_1 Perhaps what's confusing you is what's being distributed. Here are a few options / interpretations / possibilities.
Perhaps various posters will elaborate and elucidate . . .
We could be:
1; Distributing a mixed bag of incandescent, LED and arc sources.
2; Distributing SCR / TRIAC / IGBT dimmers and / or various types of luminaires with integral mechanical and / or electronic dimming.
3; Distributing raw, pure, non-distorted sine wave power and DMX512 and / or a spiffy new trendy networked control protocol.
Possibly some of our posters will define / better describe specifically what they're DISTRIBUTING?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
I’m a bit lost on the conflicting advice. I thought distributed systems were the way to go these days. Thanks, I may soon have an upgrade opportunity.

It all depends on the space. From what I gathered this is starting to be a permanent venue. Why have more equipment up in the air than you need. One offs and a few day events sure grab some shoe boxes and goto town.

Shoebox dimmers aren’t upgrading dimmers IMO. Especially if you are handing them because then you still have get power to the dimmers and they have to be powered from different circuits to maximize their potential. Then adding DMX in the mix just adds to more points of failure.
 

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