ProSoundWeb Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Down

Author Topic: DMX Questions and Help  (Read 4574 times)

Steve Hayes

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 10
DMX Questions and Help
« on: September 18, 2021, 07:04:19 AM »

First up thanks for reading and any help!! My history is digital media, audio, video and being a musician. Not lighting - yet so forgive any ignorance!

I've got 4 ADJ Mega Hex LED lights and 4 similar lights from Beamz - the LED FlatPar 18. We've been using them to do some basic stage lighting for a church as nothing too complex needed. I was recently asked to dim the lights at times so this became the opportunity to set up a basic lighting control via DMX. We are on a very limited budget. (I've looked at the Behringer LC2412 and a 'Cobra Colour Control 8' to do what I'm asking below. Both these are possibly beyond budget but I could top up!)

What I'd ideally like is to get a controller that has a master dimmer function (so I can dim all the lights together) as well as having individual and easy control over all of the eight lights. As such I bought what I thought may work (should have got some advice first!) which was a Cameo Control 54 ('open box' item on offer). I wired everything up, added a terminator and assigned DMX addresses to all the lights (I actually used 4 ADJ and 2 of the Beamz ones). Having looked at the 'manual' and researched a fair bit before, I thought the Cameo Control would be able to do a 'master dimming' of the lights, which it seems it can't sadly!

I was only able to manually assign and then manage the lights on an individual basis - but not as a whole. Is there anything that would give me all this flexibility. Lots of controllers have things like chase sequences, strobe etc but these will be rarely used. Sadly the controller I got doesn't do scenes as I guess I could set up 'bright' and 'dimmed' scenes otherwise? I guess another option would be to give the ADJ lights the same DMX address so they work together - and the Beamz lights another DMX address to control them together. But then I presume I wouldn't be able to set the colours to each one individually?

I also had the issue of the 6 faders on the Cameo Control working fine with the ADJ lights controlling RGBW, brightness etc. But the Beamz lights (with DMX assigned properly I believe) started doing odd things when moving the controller faders. Instead of controlling colours etc, it started controlling fade speeds, strobe speeds etc. Very bizarre but they are fairly cheap lights I guess. I very well could have set up the DMX channels incorrectly however! Any advice on these also appreciated!!

Thanks so much for listening - I don't have a lighting shop locally except a 'disco' type lighting place, so your help is really valued.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2021, 07:09:39 AM by Steve HB »
Logged

Jeff Lelko

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2017
  • Cape Canaveral, FL
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #1 on: September 18, 2021, 09:07:49 AM »

First up thanks for reading and any help!! My history is digital media, audio, video and being a musician. Not lighting - yet so forgive any ignorance!

Hi Steve, before anyone can help you you’ll need to change your displayed name to your actual full name per the forum policy you agreed to when signing up.
Logged

Steve Hayes

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 10
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #2 on: September 18, 2021, 09:30:21 AM »

Hi Steve, before anyone can help you you’ll need to change your displayed name to your actual full name per the forum policy you agreed to when signing up.

Thanks. Done.
Logged

Jerome Malsack

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1402
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #3 on: September 18, 2021, 10:07:27 AM »

when assigning the lights to a dmx address, ADJ lights are set for 6 channels so the DMX address would need to start with 1 and the next light could be 7 or 8. 
then the 3rd light would be address 15 or 16.   So research the number of channels need to run the light and put the extra space in the controller. 

Logged

Steve Hayes

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 10
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #4 on: September 18, 2021, 10:17:16 AM »

when assigning the lights to a dmx address, ADJ lights are set for 6 channels so the DMX address would need to start with 1 and the next light could be 7 or 8. 
then the 3rd light would be address 15 or 16.   So research the number of channels need to run the light and put the extra space in the controller.

Thanks so much Jerome. Yes, so the lights are set 1, 7, 13, 19, 25, 31 so that works. I am able to control the colours on the ADJ ones and fade up and down individually. The Beamz ones (in 25 and 31 will turn on via the controller but only go to red and then changing the faders on the controller starts controlling fades, strobe etc and not colours at all. So that's a bit strange. Then I'd ideally like to be able to control the master for all of the lights and wondering if either of those desks mentioned (or others) would do that - and allow RGBW control etc. Thanks again for the pointers, it all really helps!
Logged

Scott Hofmann

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 454
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #5 on: September 18, 2021, 10:47:35 AM »

For what you are trying to do, I would go the route of a USB/DMX dongle and software. About $50 will get you an American DJ DMX Buddy or similar dongle. Much of the software is free, and all you need is a laptop or desktop computer. This would work much better than a cheap hardware console. You can experiment with different software packages to find one that you like.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2021, 10:51:51 AM by Scott Hofmann »
Logged
Scott Hofmann

Steve Hayes

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 10
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #6 on: September 18, 2021, 11:17:00 AM »

For what you are trying to do, I would go the route of a USB/DMX dongle and software. About $50 will get you an American DJ DMX Buddy or similar dongle. Much of the software is free, and all you need is a laptop or desktop computer. This would work much better than a cheap hardware console. You can experiment with different software packages to find one that you like.

Thanks so much Scott. I'd seen the Entec higher-end equivalent and had priced myself out of this kind of software/hardware combination but this looks very promising!
Logged

Paul G. OBrien

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1393
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #7 on: September 18, 2021, 12:31:14 PM »

This problem may be 2-fold.

 - To work correctly with a hardware controller the fixtures in question must all have a dedicated master dimmer channel, so do they?

 - And to control different brands of fixtures the controller must be capable of channel patching so that the same functions can be assigned to the same faders.

Software usually has fixture patching functionality built in but lowend hardware controllers often do not. I have not looked up the controller you purchased so I don't know if it does this or not. The Blizzard ProKontrol MH has this functionality plus some other stuff designed for movers that you don't need at the moment but if you wanted a relatively inexpensive hardware solution this would do the trick.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2021, 12:40:46 PM by Paul G. OBrien »
Logged

Steve Hayes

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 10
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #8 on: September 18, 2021, 01:22:07 PM »

This problem may be 2-fold.

 - To work correctly with a hardware controller the fixtures in question must all have a dedicated master dimmer channel, so do they?

 - And to control different brands of fixtures the controller must be capable of channel patching so that the same functions can be assigned to the same faders.

Software usually has fixture patching functionality built in but lowend hardware controllers often do not. I have not looked up the controller you purchased so I don't know if it does this or not. The Blizzard ProKontrol MH has this functionality plus some other stuff designed for movers that you don't need at the moment but if you wanted a relatively inexpensive hardware solution this would do the trick.

Thanks Paul. I believe all the lights all have a dedicated master dimmer channel as I can dim all of the lights (from both brands) via the controller. So it seems likely it's the channel patching that is the issue. The unit is around $100 US so definitely in the low-end. I may try to test the Beamz lights on their own tomorrow as this will help suss out what's happening (although I'm likely to return the controller). Just very strange that the ADJ LEDs functions all work perfectly and yet the Beamz ones seem to almost be using other 'channel routing' in terms of what they're doing!

Can't believe I missed the lower-end software solutions as mentioned, although this would mean using another computer, so I was thinking of the Behringer as a hardware solution as believe you can set up the faders to control RGBW etc and / or master dimming etc. I believe the Behringer must have channel patching to work with different brands of lights as I've seen a couple of videos showing this.
Logged

Paul G. OBrien

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1393
Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2021, 02:34:40 PM »

Just very strange that the ADJ LEDs functions all work perfectly and yet the Beamz ones seem to almost be using other 'channel routing' in terms of what they're doing!

Actually that is quite common, there is no standard for control channel layout so the fact that the ADJ fixtures correspond with that controller is pure coincidence.
Logged

ProSoundWeb Community

Re: DMX Questions and Help
« Reply #9 on: September 18, 2021, 02:34:40 PM »


Pages: [1] 2 3   Go Up
 



Site Hosted By Ashdown Technologies, Inc.

Page created in 0.036 seconds with 21 queries.