LED Lighting

[Port]

Hi,

I'm new to the lighting side of things, but have been asked to see what kind of LED uplights and spot lights can be purchased. Having looked into things it has been noted that the use of Luminair could be useful to be incorporated into the system. Just wondered if anybody had any experience with a simple setup using uplights and spotlights through luminair and if its worth the expense? Also wondered if people had any suggestions to some cheap (that doesn't comprimise too much on quality) LED uplights and spot lights?

[Esoteric]

Okay, so the only company named Luminair that I could find was a UK company selling residential LED solutions (not appropriate for your needs).

So lets move on to other possibilities. The best "value" wash lights out there, for my money, are from Elation/American DJ, ColorKey, Blizzard Lighting, and Weidamark.

From there you make the jump to Vari-Lite and ETC.

As far as spotlight it depends on what you mean by spotlight. If you are looking for an ERS then Robert Juliet makes the only usable LED ERS at the moment. But the price is way out of the budget of 99.99% of churches out there.

But the PL1 by Vari-Lite can be used as a PC spotlight (in fact that is what it is), and the ELED Fresnel by Elation is actually more of a PC spotlight than a true Fresnel.

Mike

[KieraAboudi]

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[Paris MkVI]

Port, for uplights we used these Elation LED 36 Tri-Bricks. We purchased four of them used, and like them. They can be controlled effectively with six channels, run quiet and cool, and are video-ready. This last is essential is you are shooting in the environment - many cheap LED's appear to "flicker" constantly on video.

[Esoteric]

Actually Paris, all but the cheapest brands on the market are now flicker free.

[mstone133]

Just for Esoteric: http://synthe-fx.com/products/luminairipad

While the Ipad and apps like this are the latest cool thing and the Luminair app is very well designed, I think you would be better served with Chamsys MagicQ software on a laptop as it has more features and costs less (MagicQ is free).

I did look into using Luminair for our youth and Kidz worship areas, but I was concerned about setting up fixture personalities since I was certain the lights I was purchasing would not have preset ones available. With MagicQ, I could download the program and play with it to determine if I could could make it work. With Luminair, I would have to purchase the program and an Ipad just to figure it out.

[Esoteric]

Interesting. I had never seen that. I am very....... timid about having that little control surface. But for very small rigs looks like it might be fun.

[ChazK18]

We use Luminair for our church. Its really worked well, nothing like a board though. A couple of years ago our Leprecaun board fried, ironically it was a week before Easter. So looked and found Luminair. We have 6 Elation Powerspot 250's, 2 Chauvet Q-Wash 560z's, and about 6 Chauvet LED Colorado. The user interface is nice and easy to figure out. It lets you create Cue sets which you can switch between very smoothly, we have been using it for a bout a year now and it's really done us well. The LED color finder is very convenient as well as the XY mover grid. And my favorite thing is its mobile, I design lights from the stage, front row, sound booth or anywhere. I'd recommend it for small room functions, they even have an iPhone app as well if you don't need to purchase an iPad.

[Esoteric]

On my phone righy now, but how does it actually output the DMX?

[JoshGuerette]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

On my phone righy now, but how does it actually output the DMX?

You would need a compatible DMX interface with a Wi-Fi or network connection. The phone would connect to that device, which would output the necessary DMX info.

[Esoteric]

Ahhhh.... I do not like wireless DMX at all.

[RickR]

There are many such systems, not just Luminair. Most that I've seen are remote apps for consoles where you have the full capability of the console and the phone/tablet is a minor sub-set.

They are all pure ethernet applications until they hit a DMX gateway. So no wireless DMX at all. It's up to the gateway/console to maintain the DMX signal. The week link is still the wireless part with latency the biggest issue. For non critical jobs they seem to work well.