Controlling Your Lights: The DMX thread

[Phil Starr]

I'm just starting to use a DMX controller to control our band's stage lighting. There's nothing wrong with using the built in programs but they tend to be disco orientated and literally a bit too flashy for band use. Good for the audience if they are up on the dance floor but nobody wants the lights to flash off in the middle of a tricky bass run

If anyone has any practical experience or tips to offer I'd be glad to hear them and I'll save the first post to try and pull together the best tips and build up a wiki/how to help people as new ideas are added.

[Phil Starr]

Saved for future development

[Steve Browning]

Personally, I never use chases or sound to light. I always look at how bigger bands use lighting and aim to replicate that, as far as possible. 

 

Trying to get too clever can backfire. 

 

I want to change from my current set up (two Kam partybars) to allow more flexibility from the 8 channel footswitch, which is useful for controlling the lights. 

[TimR]

I have a Chauvet Obey 40. It's only been used at home so far but I did use one in a band about 20 years ago and setting up 5 simple chases and using the 'rate' slider to vary the speed of the chases was all I needed. Select a different chase each song. 

 

About to buy some WiFi transmitter/receivers as the amount of long cables that have to be run and packed up. It'll pay for itself in cables and time. 

 

Currently only DMX control is 4 mini spotlights linked together with one as master (and sound to light) and everything else is just sound to light solo. It can look a bit manic. 

[Rosie C]

For years I worked on a mobile 'heavy rock' disco but we didn't want the disco flashing light thing, we wanted to created a mood. The lights were all DMX controlled and we had a PC in a flight case with a USB-DMX adapter. From memory the rig was

• 6 x PAR56 on dimmer packs with rainbow gel selection
• 4 x gobo scanner
• 2 x moonflower

Each PAR can was one colour of the rainbow and we worked out which gobos were which, I wrote simple programmes that were just red, or just orange. Some move complex ones that moved the scanners, flipping gobo as they changed direction. But it was all very low key.

 

We retired from that game a long time ago, but a couple of years later someone asked us to do one last gig. We didn't have the PC anymore and had to borrow back the lights from the local high school we'd donated them to.  I found that with only one scanner running a built-in pattern, the other three set to mirror it, we got 4 scanners all with the same colour, all moving in a sequence and it was fairly low key and not flashy. The dimmer packs let us put the PAR cans on a slow fade between channels - maybe a minute to move around them, and that worked OK. So looking back I probably wasted a lot of time programming fancy light shows - the built in stuff could be tweaked to be OK. Of course this is going back years to the days of single-colour halogen lamps.

Edited 5 hours ago by Rosie C

[Phil Starr]

Hi Tim,

 

Using wi-fi links sounds really interesting, winding up DMX cables every gig is already getting very boring on top of the XLR's. I'd be really interested to know how that works out.

[skidder652003]

Why is it always us who have to do the damn PA, lights, bookings and promo?

Thats what I want to know!

[gazhowe]

I’m not an expert on using DMX but have been using it to control my band’s stage lighting for approximately 10 years or more.  Rather than explain what DMX is and how it works (there are YouTube videos and other online content for that) I thought it might be useful to list some things to consider based on my personal experience.

 

Setting up and controlling your lights

Think about what you are trying to achieve with your stage lights. 

Are you happy with static colours and/or the same colour changing features throughout your set without the option to turn all your lights off (and back on) at the same time? If so, you may be able to achieve this with features built into your LED lighting fixtures without the need to use DMX to control your lights. You can always buy a DMX controller later if you wish.

 

Who is controlling the lights?

If you or another band member are controlling the lights from the stage area you will almost certainly need a controller that has some basic colour chase and Blackout features built in (or ability for you to create chase sequences) that can easily be started and stopped without impacting your ability to play your instrument.

 

PC/laptop DMX controller or standalone DMX controller

Standalone DMX lighting controllers can be the quickest and easiest way to get started with DMX lighting and be easier to use on stage than a PC/laptop-based DMX controller.  These controllers will have limitations that may mean you need to upgrade sooner than you want, e.g. limitations in the number of different fixtures they can control, the number of DMX channels that can be used per fixture and/or the number of DMX channels in total that are available. PC/laptop-based DMX controllers are less likely to have these limitations and, provided they are still supported by the developer, may be updated with additional features at a future date.

 

Future proof where possible

• Before choosing your lighting controller, look at the number of different lighting fixtures you have, how many DMX channels each fixture uses, and the total number of channels you need to control all of your fixtures.  If you are buying a standalone DMX controller, consider buying one that has much more capacity than you currently need.  If you are like me and often want to upgrade to better lights (particularly moving heads that use more DMX channels) it could save you the trouble and cost of needing to buy a better controller to use the new lights.
• Consider buying a PC/laptop-based DMX controller to reduce the risk of needing to upgrade your controller when you add or upgrade your lights.
• Some fixtures have multiple options for the number of DMX channels they use for control, e.g. 8 channel mode, 16 channel mode, 24 channel mode.  Look at what each mode offers in the fixture instructions and decide if you really need to use the maximum number of DMX channels for control. 
• Setting DMX addresses – it’s tempting to speed up your initial setup by giving the same DMX address to multiple lighting fixtures that will do the same thing (e.g. up lights) rather than give each fixture its own individual address. If you want the option to control each light individually to create more complex shows at a later date you will need to spend time reconfiguring all of your addresses, so I recommend save time in the long run by giving each fixture its own address when you first set it up.

Start simple?

If you are going down the DMX control route, consider whether you need to control every fixture via DMX, e.g. do you want some ‘always on’ lights. If so, could you use in-built control features for these fixtures, and use DMX control for other fixtures until you become more confident with DMX?

 

Cabling

• DMX leads and audio leads work differently and shouldn’t be used for anything other than their intended purpose. Assuming they are all black they will be impossible to tell apart so consider putting white electricians’ tape (or another bright colour) on your DMX leads.
• DMX cabling from your lighting controller is done on a daisy chain in/out basis from one fixture to another. If you have multiple lights on a T-bar, consider using short DMX cables permanently connected to these lights to save time setting up and stripping down.
• It’s recommended to use a DMX terminator (basically a XLR connector) on the output of the last fixture in your DMX chain.
• DMX connections via Wi-Fi can be prone to interference and dropouts.  Wired DMX connections are more reliable but can take longer to set up and strip down.

 

Troubleshooting

1.  If you’ve connected all your lights to power and daisy the chained DMX cables correctly but nothing works, try turning your controller off and on and disconnect and then reconnecting the DMX cable plugged into your controller, then wait a few seconds. This often works for the ADJ 4 Steam DMX that I use.
2. Before you start investigating potential cable issues, check whether the DMX channel on each fixture is correct.  I once spend 45 stressful minutes immediately prior to show time investigating cabling issues only to discover that a band member had inadvertently pressed buttons on several lights which changed their DMX address and caused them not to work.
3. If some of your lights are working as expected but not others, start investigating and swapping cables from the last light that it responding to DMX as expected.
4.  DMX connectors in lighting fixtures can fail although this is rare.  Don’t discount the possibility when troubleshooting but I suggest leaving this check until last.
5. Have a backup plan.  If your DMX lighting control fails altogether you can set each lighting fixture to a static colour or a chase using its built in features to get you through the gig.  Make a note on your phone or take the instruction booklet for each fixture to gigs to avoid the need to look for instruction manuals online at the last minute!

Edited 42 minutes ago by gazhowe

[Al Krow]

4 hours ago, skidder652003 said:

Why is it always us who have to do the damn PA, lights, bookings and promo?

That's what I want to know!

 

Ok if you really want to know... maybe it's because:

(i) just being expected to play root notes with the occasional 5th thrown in, gives us the headspace to think about other things, like gear, and to spend hours discussing it on Bass Gearchat? 

(ii) if someone else did it instead of us, the rest of the band would almost certainly find a better bass player who had the time to put into practising (instead of doing the damn PA, lights, bookings and promo), and

(iii) the likely end result is that no-one in the band would have any gigs to play at!

 

...now can we get back to discussing DMX please? 😅

 

Edited 20 minutes ago by Al Krow

[gazhowe]

5 hours ago, TimR said:

About to buy some WiFi transmitter/receivers as the amount of long cables that have to be run and packed up. It'll pay for itself in cables and time. 

 

 

5 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Using wi-fi links sounds really interesting, winding up DMX cables every gig is already getting very boring on top of the XLR's. I'd be really interested to know how that works out.

 

@TimR DMX cabling is a pain I could do without so I'd be interested to know which brand you buy, which lights you are controlling with them, and how well these work in practice please.

 

A friend of mine (also a bassist) is has bought the Chauvet wireless dmx system but won't have the opportunity to try it before the new year.  I'll report back when I hear how that went.

[TimR]

Learn Binary, you may find some fixtures still have dip switches for addressing. But it helps if you can visualise the assignments.

Try and assign each DMX fixture 8 channels (or one page) even if they only need 5 or 6.

Some may need 12 or more, but most seem to need at least more than 4 but less than 8. 

 

Then set them out logically before plugging any DMX cables in.

Parcan 1 - Address 1 - 00000001

Parcan 2 - Address 9 - 00001001

Parcan 3 - Address 17 - 00010001

Parcan 4 - Address 25 - 00011001

Etc.

 

Although if you are using software this is probably less important.