Stevens R. Miller
Well-Known Member
In another thread, we've been discussing safety issues (which is a very good idea, imho!), and that's made me curious about one related to the original topic. I've got a few LED lights that, when set to full power, draw about 460mA. Let's call that half an amp. Lots of modern gear has "feed through" or "daisy chain" connections, like this fine product:
But the lights I have don't provide for that. Instead, their AC cords are integrated into the housing, with no socket for anything else to plug into:
This is doubly annoying, since they do have two DMX jacks for daisy chaining, so it's not like the designers didn't know how to do it.
So I am wondering about safe options for providing power. Obviously, if I am hanging (say) a dozen lights, I would rather not run a dozen power cords. At half an amp each, one cord could take the six amps necessary to power them all. But what's a safe way to do it?
One option is the Caldwell Bennett MOXB12-50. That looks good, but I have never seen such a thing before and would like to know what people with more experience think of it.
Alternatively, as a ham radio operator for the last 40+ years, I am always willing to make things myself, if that's a reasonable choice. An option there might be based on something like thie OA Windsor 3-TD box. But I don't know if that's any better and, even if it is, I doubt that a fire marshall would be very approving of a stage festooned with a lot of my home-brew power cords.
What I certainly do not want to do is see power strips dangling from the pipes over the stage, plugged into each other or at the ends of a lot of extension cords, as a few of my well-intentioned colleagues might be prone to using if confronted with lights that don't have pass-through connectors.
As these lights draw such low current, I'm thinking that running several of them on a single line is safe, but I'd be grateful for any advice on what kind of line that should be.
But the lights I have don't provide for that. Instead, their AC cords are integrated into the housing, with no socket for anything else to plug into:
This is doubly annoying, since they do have two DMX jacks for daisy chaining, so it's not like the designers didn't know how to do it.
So I am wondering about safe options for providing power. Obviously, if I am hanging (say) a dozen lights, I would rather not run a dozen power cords. At half an amp each, one cord could take the six amps necessary to power them all. But what's a safe way to do it?
One option is the Caldwell Bennett MOXB12-50. That looks good, but I have never seen such a thing before and would like to know what people with more experience think of it.
Alternatively, as a ham radio operator for the last 40+ years, I am always willing to make things myself, if that's a reasonable choice. An option there might be based on something like thie OA Windsor 3-TD box. But I don't know if that's any better and, even if it is, I doubt that a fire marshall would be very approving of a stage festooned with a lot of my home-brew power cords.
What I certainly do not want to do is see power strips dangling from the pipes over the stage, plugged into each other or at the ends of a lot of extension cords, as a few of my well-intentioned colleagues might be prone to using if confronted with lights that don't have pass-through connectors.
As these lights draw such low current, I'm thinking that running several of them on a single line is safe, but I'd be grateful for any advice on what kind of line that should be.