Need Recommendations concerning LED Tubes

[soundguy99]

Hey guys,
I am doing some lighting at a local Bowling alley was looking for some reccomendations for some LED tubes.
Right now they have LED par 64's on all the lanes over the pins, which look great, however,
they also have these AMF (bowling company), Rope lighting in side of the gutters, which I would like to replace.
Their actually running lightjockey, so I was thinking some DMX controlled LED Color Tubes,
that can all be run off of Lightjockey, with separate addresses. That way I can chase back and forth across the lanes, forward and backwards, from one end of the tube to the other, strobe color mix, ect. I would have much more control that what I do right now.
I have looked and most are all some sort of dimmer or controller based units, where the tubes are plugged into the controller and from there into a DMX controller, which may or may not limit my programing options as it really doesn`t give a clear DMX profile over what I would have access too, unlike a typical LED fixture where you can get a full DMX Profile.
Can anyone recommend some sort of Color Tubes, that would be ok for the gutters and would give me the control that I am after. Weather or not the tubes are plugged to a control unit, is not completely a problem as long as I would have the control over the fixtures as I really would like to have the fixtures be part of the show, rather than 1 chase for the gutters and one for the pins themselves.
Any thoughts are greatly Appreciated,
Also on a second note, is there any good free tutorials exampling the Automation in the Cue List, and how that relates to the Media Player and Time Codes,
Thanks,
Soundguy

 

[derekleffew]

The leader in the field is the Element Labs/Barco Versa Tube. Neo-Neon makes a close copy. Both require a proprietary processor and a media server. I wouldn't use either to line a bowling alley lane without some sort of heavy duty high-impact protection (Lexan trough, perhaps?).

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[soundguy99]

Thanks for the reply,
The lights definitely look good but again I am not sure how the dmx part of it would work nor what the "dmx profile" would be as far as what I have access too.
You said you still need a processor and a media server. Can you give me a better Idea of the setup, and what I might expect in terms of control from Lightjockey. I having a tough time trying to picture this.
Thanks,
soundguy

 

[MNicolai]

LED tubes are pretty high-end for bowling alley decor lighting. Generally a media server receives control on what content to play and how to play that content from a lighting controller, and then the media server tells the processor(s) of the LED system what to display on the tubes.

I'm going off of a price list Element Labs sent to me six years ago, so I imagine the numbers are pretty different now and that the equipment available has changed since then, but at that time the retail value of the gear used to shoot this Coldplay video was $350,000. Each Versa Tube was $470 and each processor (of which they used three in the video) was $6500 each.

A system riser for a Versa Tube system can be found here. Basically, a DVI video input (presumably from a media server, but it could be from a personal computer) feeds into the D2 processor, and then the processor maps the video content out to each of the tubes.

Barco has since discontinued this product line, but that should give you an idea of what an LED tube system would get you.

There are plenty of LED rope light solutions out there as well that are far easier to install and involve a lot less overhead, but to put those in every lane isn't going to be an inexpensive purchase. With LED rope lights, each string would have a few DMX channels for it, one for each color -- a lot simpler than a media server and processor rig.

 

[derekleffew]

In Mike's example, each 1 meter VersaTube is 16 pixels, so to control one tube would take 48 (16xRGB) DMX channels. String ten together and you have 480 channels, just less than one DMX universe (512 channels). So you can see controlling tubes via DMX (from LightJockey or anything else) is just not practical. Using a media server (arKaos, Catalyst, Axon, Green Hippo, etc.) to output to the tubes, the console tells the media server what clip to play, how to play it, via 40-400 DMX channels (depending on which media server), and the proprietary tube's processor does the rest.

 

[LavaASU]

I can't vouch for them, but there are numerous chinese LED tubes that do basically the same thing with less pixels and not as great color (or brightness). When I looked into a large system of them (in the hundreds of units) they would've been $20-30 per tube. Those might be a possibility for your project... but I'd highly suggest abusing a sample in every possible way to test them first.

 

[smigit2002]

For Lightjockey, I would suggest working your way through the help manual found at
ftp://ftp.martin.dk/controller/Lightjockey/docs/
You will need to log in as a guest, and then grab the doc entitled "lj-Help_2_95_1.pdf"
Additionally, searching the Lightjockey forums on Martin's website can be helpful:
Martin Bulletin Board - Martin LightJockey 2

As for the tubes, I'm not sure what your budget might be, but in case LED tubes are looking to be out of it, I'm curious how, if at all, your rope lights are controlled. You could theoretically get DMX controllable relays for each of the rope lights, and then have on/off control of each one. Obviously you wouldn't be able to pulse down the lanes or color change, but you could go side to side.

Good luck!

 

[JChenault]

In Mike's example, each 1 meter VersaTube is 16 pixels, so to control one tube would take 48 (16xRGB) DMX channels. String ten together and you have 480 channels, just less than one DMX universe (512 channels). So you can see controlling tubes via DMX (from LightJockey or anything else) is just not practical. Using a media server (arKaos, Catalyst, Axon, Green Hippo, etc.) to output to the tubes, the console tells the media server what clip to play, how to play it, via 40-400 DMX channels (depending on which media server), and the proprietary tube's processor does the rest.

Putting aside the question of practicality and cost of putting LED tubes in a bowling alley for a moment. I am not sure I agree with Derek here. If you want to reproduce any kind of image - you do need some kind of media server. End of discussion. But I am not sure this bowling alley wants to produce images. I am seeing more of a 'Chase colors down the lanes' - or 'Chase across lanes'. Something like 'When a strike gets rolled - do a happy flash / chase in red and green to highlight the lane. I am not aware of media servers that do this kind of thing very well. Sure they are great at creating and manipulating images - a chase on a tube - not so much.

If someone came to me with this project I would consider something like one of the color kinetics tube lamps - and get a reasonably high end architectural control system ( something like e:cue ). I am not convinced that a dedicated media server is the way to go.

Let's lay it out.
60 feet of lanes. Put in a CK Powercore Address them in 9 inch or so segments and I use half a universe per string of lights. Assume we put the units between the lanes - so if I have 30 lanes, I need 16 universes. Doable with something like e:cue. and probably easier than trying to get a media server with the right images to do chases, etc that the client wants.

 

[LuxMax]

Versa Tubes cannot be directly controlled at the pixel level by DMX. They use video as the source either live DVI signal (with the D2 processor) or video files on compact flash card (with the C1 processor). The tubes are mapped out in software and loaded into the processor.
While you can go down this route with media servers, it will not be fun. They layout you describe requires some custom video content just to display simple effects.
John is correct in that you may want to go more lo-res and use a DMX controller that will give you multiple universes, some kind of basic pixel mapping and decent effects, and have capability for external trigger inputs.
Controllers that do this easily are: E:Cue, Chamsys, and GrandMA.
For installations, I like E:Cue. The software is relatively easy to use with mapped LED arrays and is pretty cost effective when you get into multiple DMX universes.
For fixtures, you would want to use something with pretty wide spacing so you don't end up using 1000's of DMX channels. I'd say 9"-12" spacing is pretty good for a bowling alley size room.

 

[jmabray]

Try something along the lines of the X-tube from Acclaim. It's more cost effective than the versatube and also is directly DMX controllable. You will, however, most likely do best for control options if you do some sort of device that allows for Pixel Matrices. (Mosiac, Pharos, ION, EOS, Hog, etc....)

 

[derekleffew]

Jeff, the Acclaim X-Tube Pro looks like a nice product. But it's still 36 DMX channels per meter. [For those wondering, a regulation bowling lane is 60' (18.288m) long]. So 648 DMX channels per lane.

John, I mostly agree with you. It comes down to a question of what resolution is desired, and what our respective definitions of "chase" is. A 60' strip of lights changing from R to G to B, I'd call a color chase. A true chase would require individual control of each of the 216 pixels down the lane (times however many lanes there are).

 

[jmabray]

I am pretty sure you can adjust the number of pixels per meter that the device responds to. You could make the device have 3 channel control if you wanted to get that low res.

 

[stgtech91]

The alley im working on right now has these and they are pretty fantastic. Just what you are looking for however I am sure they are quite pricey.

Xtreme Lighted Capping - QubicaAMF

Aaron