Getting Advanced with DMX Lighting ...

[WWDJ]

Having spent four years chopping and changing kit I'm actually down to less lighting than I have had in a long time but I believe with the right control I can put out a better and more versatile show than ever.

I take a lot of pride in the events that I do and I tend to use DMX to tailor lighting to the occasion. I do sometimes use Sound To Light for short teen events.

My kit list is
2 x Martin EFX500 9 Channel DMX
2 x Equinox Atria Laser 13 Channel DMX
6 x Par Cans 7 Channel DMX
... that's it

Control is a Transcension JC Baby 1 which is 64 channel in 8 Banks, 4 Chases.

With the limit on the chases i tend to programme all 3 types of kit into a single chase e,g
EFX500 Blue, Cans Blue, Laser Stars -> EFX500 Green, Cans Green, Laser Hearts -> ... and so on

whereas I really want to separate things out and have maybe 4 chases for EFX500, 4 for the Lasers and 4 for the Cans, that I can chop and change between and run either all (3 effects), some (pars and EFX500), or a single chase at the same time

I also want to be able to pick up on the 'Beat' so chases run to the music rather than at a preprogrammed speed, should i choose.

So I need new Hardware ... but what to go with ?

Well ... I like hardware control or a touchscreen as I like to feel / see what I am doing in a dark environment. That doesn't specifically rule out Laptop control as I do have a spare laptop, but I may need to control chases via some sort of midi controller rather than trying to find the 'A' button in the dark.

So what are my options ?

[Danno13]

I use daslight to do exactly what you want, only I break it down even further by having seperate scenes for gobo/colour/movement etc. for each fixture, so you can create thousands of combinations from minutes worth of programming! Or you can have scenes that set everything to blue, or everything centered on the dance floor, for example.

You can hook this up with a midi controller, or the DMX dongle has a DMX input too, so you can attach a basic DMX desk and map the faders to certain channels. So in the past, I've use the laptop to control movement of scanners/heads and just adjusted the colour/gobo/shutter etc. every now and then by nudging the faders on a desk.

Not sure on current pricing, but I paid £160 for a second hand dongle, and you can't get a DMX desk with the same amount of versatility for less than 4 (perhaps 5) figures, so if you already have the laptop, it's a simple choice!

[WWDJ]

I will do some investigation, but this seems like a good route to go down. I can even trigger some basic programmed from the unit directly it seems which could be handy.

[yourdj]

I use daslight


I will look it to this in the future as so many people have said how good it is.
just need to buy my girlfriend an ipad so i can use her macbook. :p

[Silver]

I tried Daslight but really struggled with programming it. I found VenueMagic, again it did take me some time to get my head around it but when I did ... WOW!

What I really like about it, is you set up a show for a particular track. I've done quite a few 'first dance' shows and it looks great. Might be worth a trial. :)

[WWDJ]

I will look it to this in the future as so many people have said how good it is.
just need to buy my girlfriend an ipad so i can use her macbook. :p

Daslight seems to be Windows only.

This isn't an issue for me as my spare laptop is windows xp.

It seems you can get software for an iPad (touch osc) which is a touch screen midi map to daslight so I will investigate this route. I can have pages of scenes and shows that I can trigger from the iPad wirelessly.