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Hi, i'm completely new to lighting and DMX in particular.  At the moment i've got 4x Martin MX4 scanners which are set sound to light.  Also on the back truss we have 4 standard led par cans which are controlled by DMX.  I want to incorporate the scanners so I can also control them by DMX, I've read the manual but it's quite confusing for me.  I need to know how I have to set the lights and also do I run them on 1 channel mode or 6 etc.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

DMX driven scrollers, which most are, respond to DMX channel levels, and the position of the scroll changes with the channel level.

The scrollers themselves will probably have a four pin XLR connector on them, which gets connected through four pin XLR cables to the scroller power supply, which has a mains inlet, XLR4s to plug the scrollers into , and a DMX input connector, and probably an output conector too.  You need to connect things up so you have power to the power supply unit, DMX flowing through the scroller PSU, and the scrollers connected to the power supply.

On each scroller will be a dip switch which configures which DMX channel, its probably set in binary, if thats foreign to you, asjk a computer nerd to set it to a channel number.

Then, raise the fader on the lighting desk for the channel you've configured, and your scroller should move.

That should get you going.

A very good solution for operator-less band shows is the LanBox, [link]

Even better, you can control them from MIDI pedalboards.

Hello everyone.
I am new to the forums, and new to DMX, and was wondering if you could help me with my current dilemma....


my band (http://www.kingshorses.ca)  has just started to take off, however we still dont have a professional company doing our lights/sound, we are doing all of it. we already own an american dj revo III
http://www.americandj.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ItemNumber=1728&Category=L.E.D.

5 or 6 american dj led 64 pro
http://www.americandj.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ItemNumber=1650&MainId=2&Category=L.E.D.

a Microh Virus 30 laser
http://www.microhpro.com/virus30.html

and a american dj fog machine
http://www.americandj.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ItemNumber=1202&MainId=2&Category=Fog_Haze_Machines


what i need is a way to program these into a light show for my band. as you can see from our youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkzRF7W58Hk at about 1:10 you can see our lightshow and how erratic and uncontrolled it is. our revo and our laser are also capable of wayyy more things than we have them doing.

how can i program a lightshow for this situation. dont wanna have to bring in a light guy, i would rather program different scenes for different songs. and start the scene at the beginning of each song (or it would be better if we could trigger things with the kick drum/first beat of the song...)

can anyone reccomend any good solutions or boards/controllers???

Hey, so I run lighting at my school and I need to figure out how to change the gels in the color scrollers we have. I was told I need a DMX512, which I think I found one hooked up. It looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dmx_repeater.jpg . There are no buttons/sliders/or anything really on the thing we have, but the cable runs into the light board. We have an ETC Express 24/48. So, what I'm getting at is, how do I change the gels in the scrollers with the equipment that I have?

My company has always used 3-pin XLR cables, although the ones we use are optimised for DMX-512 signals rather than microphone use.  With this, we have never had any problem- any discrepancies that occur in our usual system set-up have been too minute to have any effect on performance.

However, I would strongly recommend an alternative to DMX-512 if you plan to use high-power lasers or pyrotechnic systems, to be safe.

I am looking for a simple way to inform my DMX signal with Decibel levels. as in: the louder the music gets, the brighter the lights, or the more bass there is, the more blue from an RGB output fixture.

Is there a small piece of hardware that does the translation?

thanks.

Yes, the board is active, and the mod cares, but man, those golf spamnmers are a pain.

I came for a quick DMX wiring answer, and found it.  But am dismayed that most posts in the past year are all GOLF related. 

Is this still an active board?
Are there any admin/mods that care?

Newbie correctly mentioned that many use mic cables for DMX512 and yes, they generally work. If you plan on migrating to RDM here's some thoughts: 1) DMX512 doesn't have error checking/logging, 2) DMX512 controllers generally leave slot levels set until overwritten by another value, 3) DMX512 is continually updated, so a light getting a wrong value for 1 scan time (40 msec) isn't likely to be noticed, but synchronized messages involving multiple devices may start getting 'out of sync'.
With RDM there is error checking on the RDM packets so poor/unterminated cables that cause the occasional error will be noticed. Mic cables are designed with a characteristic impedance of ~ 50-70 ohms and since it isn't a critical spec it often isn't even tested for - especially the 'bargain variety' cables, where the actual impedance will change over the length of the cable. If you do use them, use high quality ones. VERY IMPORTANT- most mic cables connect pin 1 (common) to the outside metal of the connector which when plugged into a mic is fine (desireable) but when plugged into two pieces of electrical equipment with possibly differenent earth ground potentials can lead to extremely high ground currents, erractic operation (ground boast) and most importantly - electric shock. Open the mic cable connectors and clip the wire going from the connector shield to pin 1.