Flood Lights?

[TaylorFox]

Hi everyone! Last year I tried to use PAR 38 outdoor colored spots to provide a wash on my house, and lets just say it didn't work out too well. I need something brighter I suspect. What do you guys use to create a wash? Thanks in advance!

-Taylor

[Denny]

I just used regular colored flood lights that I got at Home Depot to create a wash on my house. Alot of watts though, so this year I am experimenting with the 12V DC MR16 LEDs.

[TaylorFox]

Interesting; I tried that too with not much success. Particularly darker colors (such as blue and red) would not show up as well...

[DaveK]

I have used colored flood lights to add accent color to the house also, but this past year I used Chauvet Colorsplash Jr’s. They are DMX controlled LED spot lights so you can have LOR change adjust the red, green and blue LEDs. The colors are nice and vivid.


You can find them online for as low as $69 each. Not as cheep as a colored flood light from Home Depot, but they can be adjusted to any color (mixing the intensity of the different LEDs thru LOR) and the they use a lot less electricity…plus they won’t burn out for years!


Now for the downside: They aren’t waterproof. I kept mine covered when not in use last year with no problems. However, there are a couple of threads from people who have made housings for them. One guy used 5” PVC pipe another used plastic flower pots. Each had glued clear or opaque plastic on the ends. There is another option for you.


Here are links to youtube.com where I have a couple of videos of my last year display. The video isn’t great but you can see how the Colorsplahs’ do a nice job of illuminating the house.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=nXsOII8U-lk

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jX4TFDIcmB8


Good luck!

- Dave

[michael.farney]

TaylorFox wrote:

Hi everyone! Last year I tried to use PAR 38 outdoor colored spots to provide a wash on my house, and lets just say it didn't work out too well. I need something brighter I suspect. What do you guys use to create a wash? Thanks in advance!

-Taylor

PAR 38 can be used with good success if you have enough of them. The front of my house is one story and 36 feet long. If I had to guess, I probably had 12-13 PAR 38 of each color. I found one light didn't quite cover a story top to bottom, so I alternated every other light to point higher and lower to ensure total coverage. Since there was a flood light every 3 feet or so, I got good, continous coverage of the entire wall without hot spots. If you have two stories, floods probably won't do it. You might want to look into par64 which i believe is 500-1000 watt. Don't forget you will need major amperage to power these. 500 watts is around 4 amps per bulb! You should also look into DMX, which can be considerably brighter than a flood. If you go this route, I'd look for a RGB device so you can produce any color.

This year, I am moving to DMX not because it's brighter, but because I can get one light that can make any color.

[Brad]

I know very little about the DMX stuff. How many channels does LOR use to operate one Chauvet LEDsplash Jr. And how would LOR tell the light what color to shine, I understand the RGB mix to produce a specific color. Would you be using three channels?

[toymakr000]

On this page you will find pictures of my house highlighted in green and red . This was done with 5 red and 5 green 90 watt spotlights . They were standard white painted with red and green glass paint. The lights were pointed at the ground and the light is reflecting off the snow. It actually worked quite well and it turned out nice and even. http://www.bazillionlights.com/History/Lights2007.html

[zman]

Brad,

You worded your question a bit backward. LOR does not use the Channels, rather, the Device requires them to function.

You have to understand a bit about DMX. Effectively you have to have the LOR iDMX controller to communicate to any DMX device. Using the iDMX, this gives you access to 512 DMX channels, but those are strictly for DMX use. The iDMX sits inline with all your LOR controllers.

I went to the Chauvert site and looked at the Users Guide for the LEDsplash Jr. It has 4 channels to drive the fixture. CH1 is a Dimmer/Strobe, then Ch2-4 are your RGB. IF you used all 4 for effects, you would need to control this light with 4 channels in LOR. You could opt to ignore Channel 1 for dimming, as you could assign an intensity to your color. The strobe effect you might want to use.

DMX devices have functions they perform. Those functions are referred to as channels. Those channels do directly correlate to LOR channels. It takes a bit to get acclimated, but once you mess around with it, it starts to make sense. I did a DMX presentation at our local Mini here in the PNW. I would be willing to share it to hopefully help you with your understanding. PM me if interterested.

[michael.farney]

I don't know if this will help or not, but I have a short video of a yoke light and a RGB device on my website. A second video shows the LOR programming for the first video. And, the sequence is availble for download there, but you'll need S2 to open it. Finally, I also included the manuals for so you can look up the exact DMX values and understand how and why I choose the intensities I did. The yoke can be a bit overwhelming for a beginner, but RGB would be pretty simple to program. Hopefully this helps more than it confuses.

http://lightoramasequences.com/content/view/17/48/

[Brad]

Zman, Yes-I would like to know more and I sent you a PM.

Michael.Farney, I saw your demo the other day when I was reading of the DMX thread trying to understand the DMX/LOR relationship. I guess what I'm missing, and I'm only focussing on using a spot, is what the connections would look like betweeen the contorller and the spot. And, the number of channels set aside to operate the aray of color.

[michael.farney]

Brad wrote:

Zman, Yes-I would like to know more and I sent you a PM.

Michael.Farney, I saw your demo the other day when I was reading of the DMX thread trying to understand the DMX/LOR relationship. I guess what I'm missing, and I'm only focussing on using a spot, is what the connections would look like betweeen the contorller and the spot. And, the number of channels set aside to operate the aray of color.

This is entirely dependent on what you buy. A typical setup would be this:

You buy DMX light ABC. You will hook light ABC up to a power source that is continuously on. You don't hook the light power cord to a LOR channel because DMX controls the light, NOT a LOR power dongle. Next, you hook the DMX cable from your iDMX (purchased from LOR) to the light. Finally, you hook your iDMX into your LOR network using cat5 or phone cable. So, the light is only hooked to your DMX network. The light is not hooked to a LOR controller. Are you with me so far?

You would have around 4 channels in the sequencer for light ABC. Each DMX fixure is different. Your manual will tell you what channels are available and what programming values to use. In general, you will have Red channel, a Blue channel, and a Green channel. When at 0%, the light is off. When at 100%, that color is on 100%. (Read your manual...the percentage values can vary from fixture to fixture. 100% does not always mean 100%.) So if you turn on Red and Blue at 100%, the light would shine a purple/pink color. If you turn on Green at 100% and Red and Blue at 0%, the light will shine Green. Turn on Red, Blue, and Green, and the light will shine white. You can get the light to shine any color by adjusting mixing of Red, Blue, and Green.

Clear as mud I suppose?

[Brad]

Between your explanation and finding the iDMX 100-Intelligent DMX512 Converter pdf. I now have that basic understanding I needed. Thought the iDMX converter is not in the budge for this year, I do appreciate the help.

[michael.farney]

Brad wrote:

Between your explanation and finding the iDMX 100-Intelligent DMX512 Converter pdf. I now have that basic understanding I needed. Thought the iDMX converter is not in the budge for this year, I do appreciate the help.

Save for next year! It's well worth the money just for RGB floods.