LED lighting.

[Chienmortbb]

On 21/09/2025 at 16:43, Chienmortbb said:

The remote had a spare battery and that also did not work.

 

I connected the light to my DMX controller and it works fine. I had to re-learn DMX too, as I had forgotten that the addresses go up in 16s. 

Doh. I was complaining about the lack of a DMX on the wall washer. The clue is RGB. Once you have the address set, the faders 1,2 and 3 on the controller control the Red Green and Blue LEDs. Doh

[Stub Mandrel]

26 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

Doh. I was complaining about the lack of a DMX on the wall washer. The clue is RGB. Once you have the address set, the faders 1,2 and 3 on the controller control the Red Green and Blue LEDs. Doh

 

It's a shame they don't standardise on the first five channels of every light being overall brightness/r/g/b/w.

[TimR]

I mentioned this in the DMX thread.

 

Although I have 4 par cans that are 4 chanel so I can run all 4 off two pages of faders by setting adresses to 1, 5, 9 and 13.

 

My mini spots are 5 chanel? Go Figure. To keep the desk simple I program 1, 9, 1, 9. Losing about 12 channels, but I don't have hundreds of fixtures and multiple universes. 

 

This is where software comes in handy. 

 

Useful to have a cheat sheet printed referencing each page, fixture and what chanels you're using. In case you want to alter lights on the fly instead of using programmed scenes. Essential when programming anyway. 

Edited December 6 by TimR

[TimR]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

I've always really liked these guys' lighting set up for a 3/4 piece band:

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR7JilxjEMB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

The static wash they use at every gig looks good. 

[Stub Mandrel]

54 minutes ago, TimR said:

I mentioned this in the DMX thread.

 

Although I have 4 par cans that are 4 chanel so I can run all 4 off two pages of faders by setting adresses to 1, 5, 9 and 13.

 

My mini spots are 5 chanel? Go Figure. To keep the desk simple I program 1, 9, 1, 9. Losing about 12 channels, but I don't have hundreds of fixtures and multiple universes. 

 

This is where software comes in handy. 

 

Useful to have a cheat sheet printed referencing each page, fixture and what chanels you're using. In case you want to alter lights on the fly instead of using programmed scenes. Essential when programming anyway. 

 

I figured out my PARS will be happy with 1,9,17,25 etc. But means page switching when programming them.

[Chienmortbb]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

I figured out my PARS will be happy with 1,9,17,25 etc. But means page switching when programming them.

What controller or Software are you using?

[Stub Mandrel]

4 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

What controller or Software are you using?

 

Cheap generic much like this:

 

 

Page 2 of each short address can be used to control a fixture with a long address 8 higher than the fixture on page 1 (if they both use 8 bytes or fewer).

 

Edited Saturday at 17:37 by Stub Mandrel

[Chienmortbb]

25 minutes ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Cheap generic much like this:

 

 

Page 2 of each short address can be used to control a fixture with a long address 8 higher than the fixture on page 1 (if they both use 8 bytes or fewer).

 

This controller is sold with slight cosmetic variation by many vendors, as well as being sold as an IEM by various companies, most notably Chauvet Obey 40. In fact, I have just downloaded the Chauvet Obey 40 Manual and used it to programme mine. . I bought mine for about £20 S/H. 

[Stub Mandrel]

5 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

This controller is sold with slight cosmetic variation by many vendors, as well as being sold as an IEM by various companies, most notably Chauvet Obey 40. In fact, I have just downloaded the Chauvet Obey 40 Manual and used it to programme mine. . I bought mine for about £20 S/H. 

 

More variations than you can shake a stick at on Temu. Mine was about £19.

[TimR]

Anyone knkw where I can get these cheaper than £20? One at £20 is fine but think 3 is starting to stretch my budget.

 

https://amzn.eu/d/5YMSWkE

4way IEC splitter. 

[Phil Starr]

2 hours ago, TimR said:

Anyone knkw where I can get these cheaper than £20? One at £20 is fine but think 3 is starting to stretch my budget.

 

https://amzn.eu/d/5YMSWkE

4way IEC splitter. 

CPC Farnell? V https://cpc.farnell.com/c/splitters/iec-splitters

 

Studiospares used to be good for this sort of stuff before the takeover, they used to do a sort of IEC daisy chain thing. Terralec are good for leads but nothing very useful listed there as far as I could see at the moment.

[Rosie C]

On 02/12/2025 at 06:38, gazhowe said:

Here's a short video of one of the t-bars in my new lighting setup when I was first testing the lights in my garage. Those four lights cost approx £150 in total (excluding t- bar, power and DMX cables).
 

One par is permanently set to white light to illuminate the guitarist while the other provides a stage wash. The two moving heads provide visual interest. The pars can be set up like that using their internal features however DMX control is needed to make the moving heads move slowly and keep them pointed at the band. 
 

 

 

All that for £150?!  Incredible. I remember when the original Martin moving head lamps came out and they were as much as a car EACH.

 

We only have 4 PAR type LED lamps, which have spent the last couple of years fixed to the ceiling of our practice space, but we recently brought them down ready for moving house and fitted them to a T-bar. They've been setup at one in built-in mode, with the other three following it. I didn't like it as a lot of the colours are cold - a bluish white, pale blue, cyan, lavender etc. (as seen in the photo actually).  But I've just ordered one of those £20 DMX controllers from eBay and I'm planning to set up a few scenes with deep, warm colours.

 

 

 

 

[gazhowe]

1 hour ago, Rosie C said:

 

All that for £150?!  Incredible. I remember when the original Martin moving head lamps came out and they were as much as a car EACH.

 

We only have 4 PAR type LED lamps, which have spent the last couple of years fixed to the ceiling of our practice space, but we recently brought them down ready for moving house and fitted them to a T-bar. They've been setup at one in built-in mode, with the other three following it. I didn't like it as a lot of the colours are cold - a bluish white, pale blue, cyan, lavender etc. (as seen in the photo actually).  But I've just ordered one of those £20 DMX controllers from eBay and I'm planning to set up a few scenes with deep, warm colours.

 

 

 

 

It's incredible how cheap the lights from Temu and AliExpress are, although you need to be careful as some ads can be misleading.
As an example, you can pick up four par lights for less than £90 but I've seen another ad where that is the price for one of these pars!

Edited Monday at 10:36 by gazhowe
Typo

[Chienmortbb]

8 minutes ago, gazhowe said:

It's incredible how cheap the lights from Temu and AliExpress are, although you need to be careful as some ads can be misleading.
As an example, you can pick up four par lights for less than £90 but I've seen another ad where that is the price for one of these pars!

I paid about that price from a UK supplier. 

[Rosie C]

On 06/12/2025 at 17:34, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Cheap generic much like this:

 

...

 

Page 2 of each short address can be used to control a fixture with a long address 8 higher than the fixture on page 1 (if they both use 8 bytes or fewer).

 

 

My cheap generic controller arrived today. £21 posted. It's good at creating scenes. Less good at programming chases as editing an error in a chase is awkward, and it seems to automatically play a chase then move to the next one, rather than keep repeating the same chases as I'd expect.

 

I bought it for a gig next week, though we only have 4 LED par lamps.  I'm thinking to not bother with the chase and just have 8 scenes in the first scene bank for colour wash.

 

[Stub Mandrel]

16 minutes ago, Rosie C said:

 

My cheap generic controller arrived today. £21 posted. It's good at creating scenes. Less good at programming chases as editing an error in a chase is awkward, and it seems to automatically play a chase then move to the next one, rather than keep repeating the same chases as I'd expect.

 

I bought it for a gig next week, though we only have 4 LED par lamps.  I'm thinking to not bother with the chase and just have 8 scenes in the first scene bank for colour wash.

 

 

I'm probably going to set up a couple of banks with colour washes, then program a few banks as short chases.

[Phil Starr]

On 06/12/2025 at 14:16, Al Krow said:

I've always really liked these guys' lighting set up for a 3/4 piece band:

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR7JilxjEMB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Interesting Al it's very close to what I am aiming for at the moment.There's a really strong colour wash on the stage. If you look at the steps at the front there is a strong shadow so you can work out that the lights are in front of and above the stage shining down. One red one blue,and both floods rather than spots. Pretty powerful too from the general colour cast. there are fills up by the mics and an uplighter on the banner at the back plus something behind the drummer lighting up that cornere where the bass amp is.

All the 'action' is on the T-bat behind the kit. Looks like four scanners and possobly a laser/strobe combination. Then four chasers mounted upright whcih look like the 24 segment bars you've ordered from Ali Express set to one of the chases. They've also got a couple of decent sized PAR's below the bar. It's doung some heavy lifting!

This is a decent sized stage which opens up the possibilities. I'm still playing the pubs where this sort of set up would have to be smaller for space reasons, so what I'm trying to do is this sort of thing but modular, so this would be my full set up.

 

For the red/blue stage wash I'm currently using a couple of the light bars like yours but mounted vertically on stands so the tops of the lights are at head height.  I've dug out my 200W floods though, which have a 40deg angle and when I get space I want to try them to get a more intense colour wash. They are about 6-10 times brighter than your 24 light strips so significant lamps you cant really use in small spaces. BTW I bought a couple of the 24way bars. I''m going to try them as uplighter/colour washes at the side of the stage on the slow fade and as static colour to see what works best. So at the moment it's bars for the small stages and the big floods if we get to play somewhere nice and spacious.

 

For mid stage I've got up to six of the generic strips they are using,  the refinement I've added are the stands which raise them to head height. The guitarist  brought them from his band and I bought them off him when he left. The height makes them more visible on a crowded stage.

 

I'm really interested in the T bar those guys have at the back behind the drummer. It looks to be nearly the width of the drum kit with five fairly bulky lamps mounted. I've looked at building a square arch behind our drums and ordered one from G4M it was damaged and not as described so I returned it but as well as weighing 10kg more than the one I ordered it was too big for the job. I've been toying with the idea of T bars there but the widest are 1.2m. I'm currently using a 4-way PAR bar in that position. Two lighting stands either side of the drummer would let me hang the banner cutting down on the frame for that so I'm looking for a hardware option that would be quick to set up. I should have gone for a banner like theirs.

 

This is all a pretty big investment and of time as well as money. Hopefully I can sell off some of the stuff I don't use once I've settled on a system.

Edited 7 hours ago by Phil Starr

[Rosie C]

On 06/12/2025 at 14:16, Al Krow said:

I've always really liked these guys' lighting set up for a 3/4 piece band:

 

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR7JilxjEMB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

 

Nice! I've just ordered one of the light bars (below) which seems to be a similar thing to the vertical light bars in the photo. I'm thinking maybe in the first instance to lay it on the floor by our mic stands, but I'll have to see how that looks.

 

p.s. please stop posting cool lighting photos, it has a real world impact on my bank balance!  😆 😆