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LED Fixture beamwidth


randallr

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I got several more fixtures today to test, and also the iDMX1000....

I setup several ColorSplash Jr.s and I was suprised at how small of a beamwidth they have... Didn't really look at that spec before.. I placed them just out from flowerbed shining on house... They had a small, bright 3 foot diameter spot.. Moved them out to where I got about the same coverage as the old 100watt floodlight- it was about 10 feet out into yard, which made the light not very bright...

I was wanting at least as smooth of coverage of front of house as last year, but I can see it may not work with the LED cans..

Any input on this?

P.S. The iDMX is great, once you get used to mapping DMX channels to LOR. Made a quick sequence for minWash moving yoke fixture.. Pretty nifty!

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The Colorsplash 200b has about twice the beam angle according to the specs. Of course it's more than twice the price also. So the question would be, for the money, would one rather have twice as many lights or the 200b's for similar coverage?

-Tim

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G'day,

I noticed the same beamwidth issues with some of my RGB LED spotlights.

To broaden and soften the beam I used plastic lighting diffuser in front of the lights and this made a big difference.

I've got some pictures of my early tests at www.dazzlinglights.com/2007-news-dmxspotlights.htm In particular the image top row, middle column is the standard spotlight, and top row right column shows the filtered output. The images on the middle row are all filtered and the images on the bottom row are all unfiltered.

I used 4 spots to cover an area approx 30' wide and 10' high at a distance of approx 15' from the house. Mine were mounted in boxes, made to look like presents, only about 6" above the ground, so it was also important to tilt them on an angle so that you didn't lose any light washing the ground.

Hope that helps.

davidt - Australia

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That was my thinking, but I've played with a couple of the Jr.s tonight, and a ColorSplash 196 that has a little more width... The Jr.'s have a very defined and round image on the wall- plus the colors, especially the red, has a noticable ring pattern. I have to move the can out about 12' before I get any kind of smooth image, but it's getting pretty dim at that distance. The bigger can has a much smoother wash on the wall, and noticably brighter...

I'm thinking now about going for some different effect with the Jr's (as I've got 12 of them now) Maybe mount them on eve pointing straight down wall, instead of wash..

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I put mine very close to the house pointing up and they seem to wash my walls ok. You may try putting a piece of fluorescent light diffuser material over the light.

To the right of the door in my avatar pic. you can see a section of wall with a sort of purple wash on the wall. The light is a COLORsplash Jr.

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I cut a piece of a diffuser tonight and it worked great... Not so worried about my choice of the Jr's now... Thanks for the idea!

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Tim Fischer wrote:

The Colorsplash 200b has about twice the beam angle according to the specs. Of course it's more than twice the price also. So the question would be, for the money, would one rather have twice as many lights or the 200b's for similar coverage?

-Tim

I haven't mastered the tech yet, but I think it is not only twice the beam angle, but also twice the brightness (though I might be missing something obvious?). So you can have the same coverage with the colorsplash jr fixtures, but won't be as bright as one 200b. But after seeing those pictures of the par64's with the diffuser, I can see I'll have to add some of those to my fixtures as well ;)
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Tim Fischer wrote:

The Colorsplash 200b has about twice the beam angle according to the specs. Of course it's more than twice the price also. So the question would be, for the money, would one rather have twice as many lights or the 200b's for similar coverage?

-Tim

I haven't mastered the tech yet, but I think it is not only twice the beam angle, but also twice the brightness (though I might be missing something obvious?). So you can have the same coverage with the colorsplash jr fixtures, but won't be as bright as one 200b. But after seeing those pictures of the par64's with the diffuser, I can see I'll have to add some of those to my fixtures as well ;)
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medman2000 wrote:

I haven't mastered the tech yet, but I think it is not only twice the beam angle, but also twice the brightness (though I might be missing something obvious?). So you can have the same coverage with the colorsplash jr fixtures, but won't be as bright as one 200b. But after seeing those pictures of the par64's with the diffuser, I can see I'll have to add some of those to my fixtures as well :)


Like you said, I don't understand the tech...

If you have 2x the brightness over 2x the area, does that mean that on the average per square inch, you have 2x the brighteness, or about the same?

I'm so confused... ;)

Since my budget is paultry, I was considering that maybe a number of the jr fixtures would give me more overall controll... for example, being able to sweep colors across the house vs. just having one color at a time...

-Tim
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My understanding is it's two times brighter on the average per square inch. Lux is the measure of the intensity of the light at any given point. Since the lux won't change depending on what square inch you're on, I'd expect the 200b to twice as bright...or to take 4 jr units to cover the same space at the same brightness. (2 units to cover the same beam width and 2 units to double the brightness.) The 200b is 930 lux and the jr. is 411 lux. Does anyone own both of these who could verify this?

medman2000, do you mind if I post some of the information from your previous PMs? It has good information about both units.

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I've got 12 Jr's now.. Starting the enclosures- 7" piece of 5" PVC with diffuser on front. Planning on duct-tape on backend... Probably will mount to a piece of bent-rebar in ground.

Once I've got several of them, I'm going to plug in along side the floods I used this year for comparison... Will take some video and post.

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I grabbed one of the 4'x8' sheets at Home Depot in the lighting section... It's the crumbly-crystal stuff that's smooth on one side... I scored it with a box-cutter.. It breaks and crumbles easy though, so I made the piece about 7" x 7". I siliconed the smooth side to the piece of PVC. (drilled 1 hole in the PVC to insert a bolt to hold the can in place) the PVC came from a PVC-Pipe dealer- ended up about $3.50/foot...But it's well casing.. Next time I'll ask for basic Schedule40 and see if it's cheaper...

Next I'm going to try the blazing hot soldering gun to trim the diffuser close to the can...

I'll take some pics later today and post.

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J_Plak wrote:

Hey Robin,
this is for you :]

Robin wrote:
anyone have a link to this diffuser stuff

still have not seen it on other sites for some reason

Have you done some tests with this MR16 enclosure?.... Wondering what some of the 48 led MR16's from hongkong would look like.... A DC controller instead of the DMX....
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michael.farney wrote:

My understanding is it's two times brighter on the average per square inch. Lux is the measure of the intensity of the light at any given point. Since the lux won't change depending on what square inch you're on, I'd expect the 200b to twice as bright...or to take 4 jr units to cover the same space at the same brightness. (2 units to cover the same beam width and 2 units to double the brightness.) The 200b is 930 lux and the jr. is 411 lux. Does anyone own both of these who could verify this?

medman2000, do you mind if I post some of the information from your previous PMs? It has good information about both units.


My colorsplash jr's just arrived, I'll compare 2 of these per 1 200b side-by-side as soon as I can because I'm curious - the rest of my stuff is still frozen in my yard so I can get the rest of the tests done til we thaw a bit:

colorsplashjr vs colorsplash200b vs colorsplash196 vs new color palette vs colorbank 4 vs colorado3 vs regular 100w flood. The neighbors will be wondering what I'm up to again :)
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That sounds GREAT!

I moved my testing to the backyard.. I had the 1700watt foggers on in the front porch seeing what the Intimidator 2.0 would look like and got some stares.... It was a good test- pretty stiff north wind- I was wondering how fast it'd blow away, but when I turned the foggers toward the house, it made it swirl around under the porch and hang around for a few moments even in the wind.

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randallr wrote:

That sounds GREAT!

I moved my testing to the backyard.. I had the 1700watt foggers on in the front porch seeing what the Intimidator 2.0 would look like and got some stares.... It was a good test- pretty stiff north wind- I was wondering how fast it'd blow away, but when I turned the foggers toward the house, it made it swirl around under the porch and hang around for a few moments even in the wind.

I hadn't even thought about just turning the foggers towards the house, seemed counter-intuitive I suppose and I had given up on the idea - we're in rural Minnesota with our development right next so 100 miles of farmland - get some nasty winds and the foggers always just blow 30mph "away" whichever direction. I'd love to be able to use some for a few effects, and I'll toast to your name if it works this year :)
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