mixing color kinetics and regular DMX 512

[tokyoburns]

I came on to this project that is a residential house. The house has half DMX lights and half Color Kinetics. The color kinetics is divided onto three iplayer 3's and they want it programmed. this is becasue they have to be divided into zones and each zone needs to be triggered with control 4 independantly of eachother. no problem. color play makes that simple enough. for some reason or another however the rest of the lights on the house are 512 DMX and they also have to be divided into three zones. the controllers they have are three iplayer 2s and one iplayer 3. they are pretty much spent on their hardware and budget dont want to buy any more controllers. i also do not have a lighting board. basically i am looking for either a program besides color play that will let me interact with an iplayer 2 or i need an INEXPENSIVE controller that is exactly like an iplayer except for 512 lighting. It has to store shows and be triggered by a third party device. serial port preferred.

 

[JChenault]

First and most important question - what is the protocol you are using to drive the CK units ( and what units are they). My memory is that you can drive CK gear either over Ethernet, or using DMX over cat5. ( any time I have done it, I have used DMX over cat5). All of the iPlayers I have seen spit out DMX. The iPlayer2 in my basement spits out DMX.

If this is the case ( and I suspect it is) I think your question turns into 'How can I build a jumper cable to go from the CK DMX over Cat5 cabling to regular 5 pin ( or 3 pin) XLR cable.

Or am I missing something?

 

[tokyoburns]

yes its true that iplayers send dmx data but the only program that you can write shows for on the iplayer is color play. this wouldn't be a problem except that color play isnt a regular dmx writing program. it will only let you write data for fixtures with three channels. probably because color kinetics only wants you to use their led lights. its insufferably user friendly. the non color kinetics lights i have to program are varied in their number of channels so it makes programming extremely difficult. becasue color play doesn't let you play with individual channels but rather pick out out colors and effects for three channel lights the only way to send correct data to lights with more than three channels is to translate the colors you pick out for individual fixtures into seperate channels in your head (red=channel 1 @ 256, blue = Ch 2 @256, green=ch3 @256) then you have to mix colors in order to control certain channels (purple = ch 1 & 2 @ 256). than if lets say the fourth channel of a light is a dimmer channel than you have to make a second light in the program for every real light on the stage and set it to red to keep the dimmer ch all the way up (second light red = ch 4 @ 256). so now you have two lights to program for every one real light. its a huge pain just to make all the lights one color let program complex sweeps and chases.

however the concept of the iplayer is exactly what the project needs. a controller that lets you write dmx data with a pc then stores the show in a stand alone mode and can take third party commands via ten pin serial port. so i need an inexpensive alternative controller with the same concept or i need an alternative to color play that can work with the iplayer.

id prefer a program since i can probably find it for cheaper than three controllers.

i noticed the iplayer 2 will let you upload ".DMX" files but what program can write these files? doing some research i noticed you can write these files with whatever program comes with the iplayer 1 but i cant find that program anywhere.

hopefully that clears it up. any help is appreciated as i am running short on time.

thanks for responding.

 

[jmabray]

It's not exactly cheap, but this sounds like a perfect job for something like a Pharos or ETC Mosaic. Both of these products allow multiple fixture types and even have the ability to define your own fixtures. You can take serial commands in and have them trigger various timelines and do just about anything you need it to do.

You might also look at some sort of DMX recorder. These would use a console to write the actual "Show" and it just records the way it is played back from the console and then is triggered via various means (Contact closure, serial input, etc)

 

[MNicolai]

I suspect you're looking for something like this.

Software's included, and as far as DMX playback devices, the price isn't that bad.

 

[millamber]

Doug fleenor makes a device that might work for your situation. DMX Rerun

*edit actually that won't work for you specifically as you need a serial trigger, but I'll leave the link in case anyone needs a standalone controller.