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[Bill Beach]

we are building a new youth building that will have a meeting room 30x35 feet
one end will likely have a removable stage (for as much flexibility as possible)
for lighting, there will probably be nothing in the initial plan but we need to put in the wiring to accommodate future needs
I know we will need several AC power circuits in the ceiling near the where the stage will be.
I know we will need some control wiring.  will we need 3-pin XLR connectors or 5-pin DMX, or both??
this is a small youth room, so we likely won't use a boatload of lighting in the foreseeable future, but then it is a youth room, so some lighting will likely be added at some point.
what would be a 'rule of thumb' to follow in the wiring?
do we do a circuit for stage front, right, left, and rear?  or 2 circuits for each?
should we put in both 3-pin and 5-pin at each location?
just need some input, please

[Bill Beach]

I am ssooo bummed that I have no responses yet!?!  

[Christy L Manoppo (okky)]

patience my friend.... maybe they are busy?


i'm not sure what your goal is, but let me try to explain 1 of them..

3pin DMX and 5pin DMX is doable. The only thing with 5pin DMX is, CMIIW, ETC created this for diagnostic purposes, especially for their high-end lighting systems.
So you can install 5pin dmx, but if you still buy a 3pin dmx fixture, it will still work by using just an adapter.

Quote:

do we do a circuit for stage front, right, left, and rear? or 2 circuits for each?

i'm not sure what you mean...is it a dmx universe?

and yeah, one more thing, lighting consumes lot of power... so plan it carefully..

[Arnold B. Krueger]

Bill Beach wrote on Sun, 19 April 2009 05:49

I know we will need several AC power circuits in the ceiling near the where the stage will be.

Power wiring usually costs far less and gives you more otions if you put it in before you close things up. Lots of wiring up front is a very good thing. Wiring you don't need does not cost nearly as much as wire you need to pull at a later date.

Quote:

I know we will need some control wiring.  will we need 3-pin XLR connectors or 5-pin DMX, or both??

Rule of thumb if there is a question about number of conductors in a cable, always go with the larger number, for the same reason as given for sizing power wiring.

Quote:

this is a small youth room, so we likely won't use a boatload of lighting in the foreseeable future, but then it is a youth room, so some lighting will likely be added at some point.

Lighting is very power hungry. You want to have lights above the stage shining straight down, other lights coming down from over the seating area at something between 30 and 40 degrees, and from the side walls, same angles. You may also want some foot lights, on the front of the stage shining up.  That puts you somewhere between 10 and 20 circuits.

You also want to control the entire room's lighting from your lighting console so that you can control all room lighting from one place. It is best if *all* lighting is dimmable from 1% to max.

Quote:

what would be a 'rule of thumb' to follow in the wiring? do we do a circuit for stage front, right, left, and rear?  or 2 circuits for each?

I'm thinking 2 to 4 per.

Quote:

should we put in both 3-pin and 5-pin at each location? just need some input, please

Having both would be ideal. It takes 2 signal wires to do basic DMX, the other 2 are for power or diagnostic purposes. Many dimmers only use 3 pin DMX.

DMX wiring is daisy-chained and either looped back to the control board, or terminated with a passive terminator at the far end.

If you are depending on others to do the installation, then that is an extra incentive to overbuild. If you can do your own termination, etc, then you may focus more on pulling wire now, and terminating what you need when you need it.

[John Fiorello]

Bill Beach wrote on Sun, 19 April 2009 00:49

we are building a new youth building that will have a meeting room 30x35 feet

Sorry it takes a while for people to respond in this forum, it's not as busy as some others...


First.  You have a small room, how high are the ceilings?  If you're not planning on doing a "boatload" of lighting, you really don't have to worry about dmx.  If you're making the room portable, no problem, dimmers are portable and so is the cable that hooks them up.  Wiring for power is important, just like Arnold said, but wire as much power as you can.  Don't worry about lighting.  If you do go dmx but you don't know where the lights will go yet, you're not going to know where to run the cables anyway.  Like Arnold said, dmx is run end to end, light to light, and it totally depends on how many lights you have and where they are.  Really the only thing you could do is run a send and return from where the stage might be and your FOH might be.  But again, if it's supposed to be a portable setup, you can just run the cables on the floor to wherever you need them.


As far as the 5/3 pin thing goes.  You're never gonna need 5 pin in this room.  Even your $15k Mac's come with 5 to 3 pin adapters.  

As far as size goes, if you have good control of the ambient light, I'd definitely look at led lights.  The power is minimal, you can daisy chain a bunch together and still keep them on 1 Edison jack, and they don't run at 100 degrees (which is important in a small room where 15 par 56's can fry an egg on stage).   **unless... you have like a 20 foot ceiling**


And if you decide to add wiring in the future and you decide you want to install it because you're not keeping things super portable, you still can.  And the price of 2 30 foot dmx cables won't even be worth worrying about.




my 2 cents, anyway.


JF

[Bill Beach]

wow, been a while since I checked this  
thanks so much for the very helpful replies
one question asked was ceiling height
I think they are planning around 12-13 feet
there has been some talk about a 'more or less' (some angled but some flat in the middle) cathedral ceiling for the front portion of the room (where the stage would be), but I think there were some engineering vs. cost issues there.
most of what we have in our main building is NSI multiplex,  but in order to open things up for more lighting options we may choose to go with another control board.  (although the NSI board we have does support DMX also).
I like the idea of LED lighting, and we will have control over ambient lighting.  we recently installed digital controls for our architectural lighting in the main building and everyone is so pleased with it, I'm sure it will be an easy sell for the new building.  minimal windows in the new building and full control over all lighting I'm thinking would be the ticket for using LED lights.  I like the idea that they use less power and give off less heat (not to mention last longer).  then the question comes, would we still need 10-20 circuits?  I'm a little concerned the church board will freak when they see what we will need for lighting.  as it is they are having to have the power company install new wiring from the street for the new building.  when the main building was built in the 50's they had enough foresight to provide ample power for a second building and we still had enough left to add our stage lighting about 5 or 9 years ago.  I want to be able to plan the same for this new building.
I do go on don't I?
again, thanks so much for the helpful replies    

[John Fiorello]

Bill Beach wrote on Sat, 02 May 2009 23:55

ess power and give off less heat (not to mention last longer).  then the question comes, would we still need 10-20 circuits?

k, my answer was just deleted cause my wireless timed out, so here's the short version



You won't need that many for the lights if you go LED.  you could run 500 lights on that.  Ok, maybe not 500, but we're running 8-56's, 4-64's, 4-36's, 3 uv, and a mini spot on one outlet (with a computer and board too).  So, yeah, maybe 500  


You can do quick math by going to the manufacture's website and getting the draw for each light and add them up.  It will give you an idea of how much power you'll be pulling.  Just leave room to grow the system.

Now, you might want those inputs for other things though...




JF

[Greg Hertfelder]

I have to agree with John's comments wholeheartedly.

Permanantly-installed dimmer racks and large quantities of channel circuits may make sense for a huge theatrical installatins, but there are so many modular options these days, that solution is overkill for a small, low-ceiling institution.

You can buy dimmers that clamp to the building grid/baton and receive the DMX signal, or just go with LED instruments, which includes the dimmer in each lighting instrument. LED instruments are more expensive, but you never need to think about gels again.

So, just supply 2-4 20amp circuits above the ceiling and a path for the low voltage DMX control circuit.

[Daniel Carter]

Bill,

To be safe I would put AT LEAST 6 circuits down stage and 6 up stage. So 12 total at 20 amps a piece. If you did LED maybe less for right now but not much room for addition later.

This will cover dimmer packs and moving lights and/or LED lights if you ever go the route. If you can you might want to go with LED by the way. Granted it can get expensive for the light up front, but the power consumption is unbelievably small. Especially with your ceiling height possibly being short you could get a lot out of the LEDS. This would eliminate some dimmers as well.

Would go with 3 pin. You can always get the adapters for five pin and most of the time lights always have five and three pin connectors whether it be dimmer packs, moving lights, and/or LED lights.

Would consider dimmer packs that can be hung in ceiling. Will cost WAY less and for your size would be ideal.

[Bill Beach]

actually, I was thinking of mounting the dimmer paks in a storage area with a sort of 'patch-panel' set up for powering the lights.  we would run several 20A 'circuits' above and behind the stage but instead of hooking them directly to the circuit breaker, terminate them with an Edison power cord in the same place the dimmer paks are located.  that way one can mix and match the lines for the best use of the lighting on the other end of the 'circuit'.  if it is an LED, then the cord would be connected directly to a power outlet.  if it is a standard light, connect the cord to a dimmer pak.  those lights you want controlled together, connect to the same output on the dimmer pak (obviously paying attention to the amps drawn per unit).

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