Never heard before of the "longer pins for 5kW, and shorter pins for 2.5kW." That's obviously a British permanent-install sort of thing.At ATV Centre all studio control rooms were fitted with a pin matrix patch panel - this enabled the lighting engineer to patch sets of lights on to one fader - for instance, all of the red lamps on one, all of the blues on another etc. Also by inserting different pins, you could select which load to run each dimmer at - longer pins for 5kW, and shorter pins for 2.5kW.
As well as provide flexibility, it also provided safety- in the past ?patching? lighting circuits had been via large connectors (one for each circuit carrying 240v - this again could take up a room). With the pin-matrix system, it would take the space of one small cupboard in the control room; and also the circuits were patched via low voltage signals of no more than 10v DC.
To answer the original question (" what is it "); it is indeed used in a matrix,but "it" is called a diode pin. I seem to recall on some systems ( Electrosonic maybe ? ) there were full value and half value pins........
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