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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Lighting Forum => Topic started by: Arthur Clarke on August 01, 2018, 12:35:50 PM
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I have a completely unbranded LED batten, is there any way for me to work out which DMX channels do what?
I don't have a manual (i can't get one, don't know where they where bought from, or who owned them previously), but I'm assuming there must be a way for me to work out the channels?
It's an 8 x 3w RGB LED batten. It has been used professionally before (production stickers on the back). It also has a standard small 4 button digital menu on the back.
I can set it to 'Person' and then to Arc1 or Arc1+D. Am I correct in thinking these Arc settings are standard settings throughout all fixtures? Will Arc1+D always be 1-Dimmer, 2-R, 3-G, 4-B, or do these change from fixture to fixture?
Any help would be very much appreciated. Any help even with the digital menu would be great.
Mods, apologies if this is in the wrong place or been gone over many times before. Any directions would be great.
cheers
Snuffy
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Awe crap, before I give you an answer you need to fix your display name to your full REAL name as per forum rules.
Please update in the settings. Thanks!
Hint: you can use capital letters and spaces for proper name grammar in your username
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Name changed, any help is much appreciated.
cheers
Snuffy
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Bad boy/girl. No cookies for you.
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Name changed, any help is much appreciated.
cheers
Snuffy
Oh come on now, that's a character on Sesame street. Now you are making fun of a requirement to join this group.
Nate - Shame on you for not catching the reference.
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Oh come on now, that's a character on Sesame street. Now you are making fun of a requirement to join this group.
Nate - Shame on you for not catching the reference.
You know, I've never watched sesame street; not a single episode.
I did question the name though, but the lastname matched his/her sign-off name so I figured it was 'somewhat' real?
'Nathan's tired of the name game baloney and realized this is an international forum too late, so gave the benefit of the doubt. That's two strikes now... i'm rooting for a homerun'
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You know, I've never watched sesame street; not a single episode.
Now I am just sad that you did see Jim Henson's creation. No Cookie Monster?
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Now I am just sad that you did see Jim Henson's creation. No Cookie Monster?
I've seen parts... I do like cookies :)
Scientific America (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/baby-tv-sesame-street-and-child-development/) has good things to say about it.
What I'm really happy about is never watching sponge-bob.
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No kids, huh?
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No kids, huh?
Not yet, no.
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Man, this is one tough forum! ;D Real name now applied.
cheers
Art
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Then I can say that for figuring out what channel do what the easiest way is most often to just patch up a bunch of dimmer on the lightingboard and test one and one but sadly I can't help much about the digital menu cause every make and sometimes every model has a different menu layout and different short names for the same stuff.
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Man, this is one tough forum! ;D Real name now applied.
cheers
Art
Arthur Clarke? Lol. May I call you John Grisham or Alfred Nobel instead?
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Then I can say that for figuring out what channel do what the easiest way is most often to just patch up a bunch of dimmer on the lightingboard and test one and one but sadly I can't help much about the digital menu cause every make and sometimes every model has a different menu layout and different short names for the same stuff.
Cheers. I wasn't sure if this would work or not. I'm waiting on a few bits before I can actually hook them up though. Thanks for the reply.
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Man, this is one tough forum! ;D Real name now applied.
cheers
Art
I'm rather burnt about this and would really rather just not help.
I have a completely unbranded LED batten, is there any way for me to work out which DMX channels do what?
I don't have a manual (i can't get one, don't know where they where bought from, or who owned them previously), but I'm assuming there must be a way for me to work out the channels?
It's an 8 x 3w RGB LED batten. It has been used professionally before (production stickers on the back). It also has a standard small 4 button digital menu on the back.
I can set it to 'Person' and then to Arc1 or Arc1+D. Am I correct in thinking these Arc settings are standard settings throughout all fixtures? Will Arc1+D always be 1-Dimmer, 2-R, 3-G, 4-B, or do these change from fixture to fixture?
Any help would be very much appreciated. Any help even with the digital menu would be great.
Mods, apologies if this is in the wrong place or been gone over many times before. Any directions would be great.
cheers
Snuffy
- Use features of the fixture to determine a theoretical max channel count.
- RGB LED par makes me think a few differen't modes. Search through the menu if it gives any indication of a dmx mode.
- RGB makes me think 3ch to 24+ch capable light.
- Put fixture on dmx address 001
- Use generic dimmer channels and test each channel individually.
- If nothing happens put all the channels at 50% and hope the light comes on/moves/does something.
- If nothing happens still then play with the levels until something does happen.
- Once you have the light doing something, again go through each channel individually.
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I'm rather burnt about this and would really rather just not help.
My sincere apologies, I didn't realise how seriously it was taken here. It wasn't my intention to upset anyone.
- Use features of the fixture to determine a theoretical max channel count.
- RGB LED par makes me think a few differen't modes. Search through the menu if it gives any indication of a dmx mode.
- RGB makes me think 3ch to 24+ch capable light.
- Put fixture on dmx address 001
- Use generic dimmer channels and test each channel individually.
- If nothing happens put all the channels at 50% and hope the light comes on/moves/does something.
- If nothing happens still then play with the levels until something does happen.
- Once you have the light doing something, again go through each channel individually.
Thank you for the help and insight, it really is appreciated.
Regarding the 'DMX mode', it does give me Arc1 or Arc1+D as options. Are these a universal standard of DMX channels / addresses?
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My sincere apologies, I didn't realise how seriously it was taken here. It wasn't my intention to upset anyone.
Thank you for the help and insight, it really is appreciated.
Regarding the 'DMX mode', it does give me Arc1 or Arc1+D as options. Are these a universal standard of DMX channels / addresses?
Well, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.
We enforce real name because it establishes a more professional forum where people have to stand behind their word instead of being able to say whatever they like with no repercussions.
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A quick google search of "Arc1" and "Arc1+D" gives me the following:
https://www.freestylersupport.com/wiki/fixture_creator:tutorial:led_parcan:arc1_d
https://www.chauvetprofessional.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/COLORado_1_Tour_UM_Rev_02_WO.pdf
I'd venture those are the different dmx addressing schemes/modes.
D = Dimmer (master intensity)
Arc = RGB
Put it in Arc1 mode and test ch1 = red, ch2 = green, ch3 = blue
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A quick google search of "Arc1" and "Arc1+D" gives me the following:
https://www.freestylersupport.com/wiki/fixture_creator:tutorial:led_parcan:arc1_d
https://www.chauvetprofessional.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/COLORado_1_Tour_UM_Rev_02_WO.pdf
I'd venture those are the different dmx addressing schemes/modes.
D = Dimmer (master intensity)
Arc = RGB
Put it in Arc1 mode and test ch1 = red, ch2 = green, ch3 = blue
Yeah, I got the same search results, had a read etc. but wasn't sure if they where an industry standard or the like. I'm not sure I can do much else now until I get them hooked up. I'll let you know how I get on as the info might be of interest to others in the future, and hopefully this will appear in search results etc.
Again, a big thank you to everyone for their help, it's really appreciated.
cheers
Art
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Will Arc1+D always be 1-Dimmer, 2-R, 3-G, 4-B, or do these change from fixture to fixture?
Sadly, they do change.
One company I occasionally freelance for has some LEDJ uplighters that use 1=R, 2=G, 3=B, 4=Dimmer for example.
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Sadly, they do change.
I thought they might, thanks for the insight :)
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I think "Arc" is nomenclature usually used by chauvet. So maybe search their archives for the fixture.
Other than that, I second the practice of just set it to address 1 and use a simple controller to map out the channels. Often times the dimmer channel is channel one.
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Sadly, they do change.
One company I occasionally freelance for has some LEDJ uplighters that use 1=R, 2=G, 3=B, 4=Dimmer for example.
My no name LED pars are 1=Intensity 2=R 3=G 4=B 5=strobe
Took me awhile to figure it out as I thought 1 would be red. Without ch1 up I get nothing on the lights.
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My no name LED pars are 1=Intensity 2=R 3=G 4=B 5=strobe
Took me awhile to figure it out as I thought 1 would be red. Without ch1 up I get nothing on the lights.
This is the reason I say: "directly after testing with single channels move to multiple channels starting at 50%"
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Arthur Clarke? Lol. May I call you John Grisham or Alfred Nobel instead?
I wasn't sure what you were implying, but Scott helped me out. Thanks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
Now that my good natured self as been duped thrice, I shall commence shutdown procedures.
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I think it's safe to say I am missing some fundamentals here.
I have the nameless batten hooked up to a ChamSys Mini Wing running MagicQ. I've created a head type for it, patched that in, tried the batten in a few of those different modes, Arc1 etc. and can't get a thing out of it.
When I run a demo show in MagicQ, certain fixtures, depending on the demo, get some results from it, so I know it is responding to DMX info at least.
I'm assuming all the DMX info that I need to isolate / find / programme would be done in the Head Editor of MagicQ.
Apologies, I know this isn't MagicQ forum.
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I think "Arc" is nomenclature usually used by chauvet. So maybe search their archives for the fixture.
Thanks, I'll have a look at them. Much appreciated.
cheers
Art
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In magicQ go to "view" and select "simple". (I think, working off of memory here)
New show and then patch 512 dimmers to the show. This gives you a basic dimmer per channel console to work with.
Try that and then bring up the first few channels and you can map out what the fixture does.
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New show and then patch 512 dimmers to the show. This gives you a basic dimmer per channel console to work with.
Thanks Tim, got there with this!
I can see R, G and B appear to be on the first three dimmers, but then nothing else, and I know it has a strobe mode on it, as it strobes on some of the 'auto' programmes accessed from the small LED screen on the back of the batten. I loaded 10 faders, as I was guessing it wouldn't have that many features, but is the strobe or any other features likely to be placed at 450 when R is 001, G is 002 and B is at 003?
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Thanks Tim, got there with this!
I can see R, G and B appear to be on the first three dimmers, but then nothing else, and I know it has a strobe mode on it, as it strobes on some of the 'auto' programmes accessed from the small LED screen on the back of the batten. I loaded 10 faders, as I was guessing it wouldn't have that many features, but is the strobe or any other features likely to be placed at 450 when R is 001, G is 002 and B is at 003?
No, it would be on channel 4, 5, or 6 probably. Some of the "DJ" lights like this will have several personalities (ARC1, ARC2, etc) to choose from. Some people seem to think that more channels=better so the manufacturers put in extra channels that don't make a lot of sense for most people.
Many fixtures will have RGB on the first 3 channels, then it might look like Ch4 dimmer, ch5 macro, ch6 strobe. Macro is just preset colors and maybe chases. Sometimes, and this can be tricky, when you raise the Macro fader it kills what the other faders are doing. So if you have your color picked via the RGB faders, then bring up the dimmer to the brightness you need, if you accidently raise the Macro fader the light will go off and start doing crazy color changes. This is frustrating to me. Most of the time I pick the personality which has the most basic functions. All I want ideally is RGB and dimmer.
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Also, post a pic of the fixture. I bet we can identify it or get close.
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As far as I can tell the different ARC setting accessed from the menu on the back of the batten aren't doing a huge amount.
ARC1 = R, G ,B
ARC1+D = dimmer, R, G, B
Tour = nothing until fader 7, which uses the fader to go through all demo settings
HSV = fader 1 is a choice of colour, fader 2 controls saturation, fader 3 is a dimmer
Pixel = faders 1 to 24 giving me individual colour control over each LED
So, er, no strobe anywhere that I can see at the moment. I'll be back to play with it in the morning some more though.
Big thanks for all the help so far!
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So...
Have gotten on okay, have a couple of battens hooked up and have as much control over them as I would expect to have.
Can't for the life of me find out where the control of the strobe is though? It's defo there, as it's on the demo. Any suggestions from anyone?
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I think that it doesn't have to have a channel for control over strobe just because it have strong in the auto program but it might be that you have to strobe using either a dimmer channel or the rgb channels but somebody with more experience and knowledge might correct me if I am wrong.
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Often one of the dimmer channels actually controls a bunch of functions. Example.. at 50% you get strobe, at 75% something else.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
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Almost seems like the fixture is stuck in 3 Channel mode. Many of mine have 3 CH, and something like 8CH settings. Not sure if you've figured out the fixture's control panel but it could be this.