LED Pars

[Chris Beesley]

Soon... though it looks like I have got some work to do if I am to match Thomann!

 

 

Regards

 

Chris Beesley

Product Manager - CPC Plc

[russd1978]

Hi, thanks very much for all the information, especially niclights review and pictures.

 

One thing, I remember cheap Maplins lights with a speed control on the back, plus my other non-DMX controller and it is INCREDIBLY hard to work with, either way to fast or stops altogether. Can anyone tell me if you would need a DMX controller for these to get a slow gradual phasing of colours (not linked to the music, just for atmosphere) without a DMX controller? Also if the speed setting is as low as possible, does this stop on the colour its on (ie you can just leave it on Red if you need to without DMX)

 

I know this will sound like a newbie question, Im not bothered about DMX, I just like the idea of exchanging my normal cans for LED ones that phase through colours slowly (im a solo musician and have enough to worry about without operating a DMX system!) Thanks for your time :)

[Tom Baldwin]

Can anyone tell me if you would need a DMX controller for these to get a slow gradual phasing of colours

 

You'd definitely need a DMX controller for this. The built-in chase steps through the colours, never fades. I'm not sure from memory if the slowest speed is "stopped" or just very slow stepping.

 

HTH

 

Tom

[russd1978]

Paul from 10outof10 got back to me and was very helpful!

 

He said "It is possible to change the settings for each LED unit from the control panel on the back of the unit.

 

You can set it to slowly cycle through all the colours over a set time, work with the in built microphone to flash and change colour to the music, or set on a single colour."

 

So I dont think a DMX controller is essential. At least it would be easier for me personally if I could just set it to slow control, or just one colour depending on the situation.

[brianmaiden]

I have a couple of the showtech ones and you can set them to fade through the colours

 

each dipswitch sets a different speed....

 

I use two of them backlighting a see through curtain.

 

they look great

[niclights]

I currently am using a couple on slow fade, which works fine. They can also step through colours with speed set by an analogue pot. But as for setting on one static colour or using sound-to-light :P - sound-to-light is horribly sensitive and I doubt anyone realistically can use this. Static colours are simply not an option and are only possible by cheating the units, which is difficult and unreliable (at a push they will remember last DMX reception).

 

Nearly got my set rigged - damn shows keep getting in the way! I have all the frost/white acrylic panels assembled and they look lovely, but I have had some issues running so many HTP channels on the poor old Pearl :)

[russd1978]

Hi niclights, how slow is the "slow fade" can it be done really gradually or is it actually quite quick? I know thats a hard question to answer!! But for example does it stick to each colour for more than a few seconds?

 

The pics are great by the way!

[niclights]

Tnx. Glad they were useful! :P

 

Hard to say as I don't have any units here, but I'm fairly sure they will go very slow. I can let you know tomorrow if that's of any help.

[russd1978]

Tnx. Glad they were useful! :P

 

Hard to say as I don't have any units here, but I'm fairly sure they will go very slow. I can let you know tomorrow if that's of any help.

 

Thanks for being so helpful. As I work alone the slow fade would be fine. I wouldnt have time to operate a DMX controller, but I suppose if I needed to I could get some kind of foot control if they do one cheap enough, not sure. I was hoping to be able to set a couple of colours up and just leave them, but thinking about it the slow fade sounds pretty cool.

 

Paul from 10oo10 said it could be set on a single colour without a controller but maybe I read his email wrong. Do you know of any simple DMX controller that might let me choose a couple of colours, or have a little more control. I wouldnt want anything fancy, the simpler the better :)

[russd1978]

Been looking into this, wonder if the Light Factory Starter Pack would work with these lights off my laptop? Any opinions? Thanks.

 

http://www.enttec.com/dmxusb.php

[enbee]

ok

 

the thing that springs to mind with me is....

 

I know what colour certain gels produce on a stage when coming from a conventional lamp. These lamps do not produce true white and neither do the leds (as discussed) this leads me to think that the way in which an led par would reproduce a certain colour from a gel would not match that produced by a lamp

 

 

I know this is irrelevant to led pars with colour change facilities but I was just thinking...

 

does anyone know what sort of difference it would give??

[Tomo]

You're absolutely right.

The range of colours available from a given source/technology is known as the 'gamut'

 

The colour gamut available from gels is essentially infinite, as the manufacturers could in theory produce a piece of gel that absorbs any given selection of wavelengths that you desire - in fact, this is how new colours are made!

This transmission graph is shown on the card seperators in your swatchbook, or on the Lee website - eg 172 Lagoon Blue

 

The colour gamut available from an 8-bit RGB mixing source (eg LED Parcan) contains exactly 16,777,216 different discrete colours, including black and 'white'.

 

However, these colours will not map exactly to any gels, as they are produced by differening intensities of three sources, each with a particular wavelength distribution. So the 'transmission curve' will have three distinct peaks, rather than being a continuous curve.

The position and width of the peaks will be chosen by the manufacturer - LEDs usually have a spectral width of between 50 and 160nm.

 

So the gel I chose as a demo is actually impossible to copy exactly with RGB LEDs, as you'd have one peak centred on Blue, and one peak centred on Green, which would make it impossible to get the actual peak output in the cyan range as Lagoon Blue does.

 

RGB only works because the human eye has receptors centred on Red, Green and Blue, but materials don't just reflect those colours - most reflect colour in between, and some even apply a shift to the incoming wavelength, either up or down or both. So when you light these with an RGB source, you won't necessarily get what you expected.

In my opinion such materials are the most beautiful to light, as they are the iridescent and flourescent materials.

 

Have I confused anyone yet?

[Nick S]

the way in which an led par would reproduce a certain colour from a gel would not match that produced by a lamp

 

does anyone know what sort of difference it would give??

 

It's pretty noticeable. When I've used PixelPars (I havn't used the other types of LED Par talked about here), it's been in situations where exact colour matching isn't necessary. It's near impossible to get an exact match on some gels, but I'd imagine you'd typically be doing this for straight up drama, and I'm not sure why you'd want to mix LED Pars with a general cover in that case (and it's generally the covers that are the hardest to match - deep / rich colours are a lot easier to do).

[99benns]

Been looking into this, wonder if the Light Factory Starter Pack would work with these lights off my laptop? Any opinions? Thanks.

 

http://www.enttec.com/dmxusb.php

 

 

Hi, I actually used to use this, but it was before I got my LED pars, I used it with scanners. Im sure its the cheapest around, it did the job, the software had a few features. However, the software isn't user friendly at all, and the starter pack has a 36 channel limit so you wouldnt be able to control more than 6 cans with it. It's a cheap alternative to a controller and theres a variety of other software you can use with it, I found "Freestyler" was quite good, you can even use it with "Sunlite 2002" (you can download it from their website), but thats illegal and a crack is required for the driver. If I were you I would go on the Enttec website, they have links to other free software, check that out and just buy the interface and a 3-5 pin converter if your working on 3 pin DMX. I think freestyler is better than light factory starter and you dont have the 36 channel limit.

 

On the whole I would say it's worth getting, you may have to wait a few weeks because it's from Australia. In the end I just paid the extra £350 for the Sunlite controller because I think the software is fantastic, it even has a 16 million colour wheel ,you can choose a colour and it'll automatically set the LED's to that colour, I think its pretty accurate, but it obviously depends on your computer monitor settings, anyway I'm going off the subject now.

 

Hope that kinda helps

 

Si

[niclights]

Note that you only really need 3ch per unit (possibly 4 if you want the strobe) for DMX control.

 

Regarding matching LEE filter/tungsten source: I often like to try and colourmatch Chromapanel to Par washes and find most colours can accurately be matched, but some red/blue combinations just won't work. Notably classic colours such as 126. This might be unique to the Pulsar units or to do with the balance between the three components. However, aside from the difference in the light source itself I think the three colour combination is also a limiting factor. Just as with CMY flags you can't seem to get all the colours (ie. red). If a unit provides more than just the RGB LED's then there is a greater chance of 'simulating' all the LEE filters but of course even harder to control! Maybe?