DIY Imitation CCFs

[ericnagel]

For the past few years, I've had 6 flood lights on my lower roof, pointed up at my house. 3 left, 3 right: each set was R/G/B. Each set of RGBs are aimed at the same target on the wall. Last year, I converted them to LEDs.

The kinda look like this:
http://twitpic.com/rgpyb (2 years ago, now with LEDs & new gaskets to keep water (snow) out)

Yesterday, I was struck by inspiration and you're either going to say, "Eric, that's genius!" or "Yeah, we've been doing that all along..."

Instead of sequencing the lights individually, I added a single channel Cosmic Color Device (Advanced Settings > Resolution: 1 pixel) to my sequence (right-click on first channel > Insert Device > Insert Device Above), and set the unit numbers of the individual floods to the R, G and B channels of the fake CCR.

Now I can do color fades and even see the colors that I'm producing in the Animation window.

Some of the colors these fake CCFs produce can be seen at
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.180813885278694.52736.151520518208031

Hope this helps someone, or inspires some more creativity!

Eric

Attached files

[scubado]

In your pic, is the red one still incadecent and the blue is led?

There's a simpler way to do RGB in the sequencer, just right click on a channel and select 'insert RGB channel' and assign the the three channels to your lights.

[Surfing4Dough]

You're right...a RGB channel will work just fine for this. Nice looking display! You will definitely find sequencing to be much easier this route.

Just one thing that I usually notice with doing floods this route is that they usually create a "hot spot" in the center of the lighted area, and the color isn't consistent across the color wash. I used Rainbow Floods/spots http://seasonalentertainmentllc.com/productcatalog.htm and they don't do this. The color is steady and consistent across the wall of color. I found that the Rainbow route was a relatively inexpensive alternative to the future CCF, and a much smaller setup than 3 regular flood bulbs.

Also want to note that supposedly the CCF is going to be incredibly brighter than either of these methods (Dan has said "10x brighter" than last year's RF). This year the RF increased its brightness some, and supposedly there will be some sort of new RF this year that will compare to the CF. For most "average Joe" houses, I wonder if either of these will be too bright (if there is such a thing ) for the typical accent wall wash. For larger applications, I am sure they will be great.

Greg (RF creator) if you read this, any word on release of the new RF?

[ericnagel]

scubado wrote:

In your pic, is the red one still incadecent and the blue is led?

Those are my old incandescent bulbs. I've switched them to LED with gaskets on the outside & lots of electrical tape to keep the water out.

There's a simpler way to do RGB in the sequencer, just right click on a channel and select 'insert RGB channel' and assign the the three channels to your lights.

Yeah - I knew someone would have a better way to do it There's probably a lot more LOR has that I'm not taking full advantage of. I was half-way through sequencing my first year when I found the beat wizard - I guess I should RTFM.