Let's look at a little programming of a lighting mixer connected to some LED Pars to understand the role of the various faders and buttons on our control unit.
A _ fixtures (devices)
B_16-channel C_Fader scene for controlling headlights
D_Functions which includes the chase, the selection of scene banks and various buttons for programming which we will see later).
Once you have connected the output of your control unit to the input of the LED Par, enter the DMX address on the Par display (Fig.2.) This model of lights takes up 8 channels:
channel no. 1 It is used to adjust the brightness of the red color
channel no. 2 for the color green
channel no. 3 for the color blue
channel no. 4 for the color white
channel no. 5 is the general dimmer or general brightness regulator, n.6 is the strobe effect and channels 7 and 8 are for the auto, music, color wheel functions and for adjusting their speed. So we will set the DMX address n.1 to our first Par. Now select button number one in the fixtures (A); you will find the first 8 channels (C) of the control unit already assigned.
Try the colors now:
Raise slider no. 5 (general dimmer!) and then try raising faders no. 1 to no. 4 one at a time:
you will have a beam of light of Red (with the faders 1 raised),
di green color (with fader 2 up),
di blue (with the faders 3 raised)
and White color (with the faders 4 raised).
By leaving slider n.5 raised (the dimmer) and choosing a colour as mentioned before with a fader from n. 1 to n. 4, you can now add a further effect to the colour itself: for example, raise slider n.6 and you will obtain thestrobe effect: note that as you move the slider from bottom to top, the strobe pulse will go from slow to faster. Experiment a bit (even combining two of the first four faders to get further shades of color) and when you have achieved a good level of familiarity with managing the first 8 channels, add a new par.
Add a new par:
To communicate correctly with this new Par, set the DMX address to channel 9 (the first 8 channels are already occupied by the first Par, remember?). To do this, select the page B button on your control unit, thus switching from the display of channels 1 to 8 to the page of channels from 9 to 16. By raising the slider 13, you now open the general dimmer and consequently, following the logic of the first Par, open the desired colors, strobe and effects. If you add a third Par, you will therefore set the address n.17.
Important:
Remember that the addresses are distributed within the fixtures, and each of these (for this controller) manages 16 channels. So while you'll have managed the first two pars simply by switching from page A to page B, to add a third par you'll also have to change fixtures and move to fixture 2 (which will manage addresses 17 to 32). Here's a practical summary:
PAGE A – fixture 1: channels from 1 to 8 PAGE B –
fixture 1: channels 9 to 16 PAGE A –
fixture 2: channels 17 to 32 PAGE B –
fixture 2: channels 33 to 48 and so on…
SCENES CREATION:
Once you've learned how to address the Pars and faders on your DMX controller, you can start creating scenes. This simple controller contains 30 banks (D) that can be selected using the bank up and bank down buttons (Fig. 3).
Each Bank contains 8 scene(B).
Holding down the program button the control unit will pass in programming mode)
Now activate the fixtures 1 and 2 buttons and create a red beam for all the Pars, to save the scene press the button midi/ add (D) and go to select on which bank and scene (B) you want to save it by pressing the buttons bank up e bank down(photo 6) Now press (for example) scene button 1 (when you press scene button 1, the control unit display will flash, confirming that the scene has been saved). Now try creating two more scenes with the colors blue and green.
To recall the scene:
Then exit the programming mode by holding down the program button, – deselect the fixtures buttons, – select bank 1 and press the desired scene. That's it. You've seen a simple scene programming with LED PAR lights. In the next article, we'll continue our adventure by adding mini moving heads (LEDs) and you'll see how to create moving scenes (chases).
Let's stay connected…digitally
Mattia Bern
