LED House Lights???

[tonyf]

Has anyone looked at using LED's for house lights? I noticed an article about some from Affineon & am curious if anyone has experience with these or some similar. We have a situation where our sanctuary was built in the 1970's & still have the incandescent lighting from then. We don't have any dimmable control over the lights. They're mounted on the ceiling & are from 25-40 feet in the air. When the bulbs go out, we have to bring in scaffolding to change them & it's a major hassle. We wait until a bunch of lights are out before doing this. One of our church members has recommended fluorescent lights but I have some concerns with the quality of the light & issues with flickering as well. We also need lighting that will work well with TV as we broadcast our services. I noticed from the few posts on here, that some people are using dimmable fluorescents. Do you video/broadcast your services? How happy are you with them? Can you use DMX boards for control of them? Thanks for any input that you have.

[theatre4jc]

Fluorescents that have a dimmable ballast can be controlled via DMX when they are connected to a dimmer. I personally hate fluorescents. The light just hurts my eyes. Personal thing totally. If you bought the proper color temperature tubes it could look just fine for your broadcast.

LEDs for house lighting is becoming more common. A couple weeks ago at WFX I saw some LED house fixtures that were extremely bright. If you are looking into that route don't go cheap! Get quality fixtures. I would suggest getting a white fixture or something that has white LEDs in it so you are not having to mix RGB to white for your light. Having the ability to light the room in color would be nice, but really how often are you going to do it? To get a good white and the brightness you will need will cost $. I would stray away from performance based LEDs and go with units specifically designed for house lighting.

I was doing an install at a theatre yesterday and the TD of the facility had some cheap LEDs on the walls for accent lighting. Said they were purchased because the president of the school they are at didn't like the fluorescent house fixtures. Followed it up by saying that he hated these even more and said they were a waist of money. Had he bought a quality LED instead of an AMDJ unit he may have been pleased. So my advice is if you are thinking LEDs for house fixtures, low end DJ or even low end production fixtures will not do the job for you. High end production LEDs might, but at that cost, maybe even a little less you could buy house lighting LEDs that are specifically designed for your task.

[tonyf]

Thanks for the info. I'm interested in the LED's that are designed specifically for house lighting. I've heard about the ones from Affineon. Do you know of other companies that make quality house LED's?

[Gracetech]

I've been tracking LED advances for 8 years now and they just keep getting better and better. I got a chance to check out a 500 watt LED lamp the other day and was absoulutly dumbfounded by the shear brightness. No that's not equivilent 500watt brightness but actual watts the little bugger eats. The 250 watt lamps looked like they could keep up with most house lighting in auditoriums. I would probably have to go with 500 watters in my larger space just because of the ceiling height and getting enough spread without having a thousand fixtures. The only issue right now is dimmers for high wattage LED's They don't sell a drop in dimmer replacement for ETC blades to be able to dim LEDs. I think this will be the next big hurdle or someone will just put together a fixture with dimmer inside and all you have to do is connect power and DMX.

Here are some links but remember most of this stuff isn't mainstream yet and the process for making these is not refined enough in my opinion.

http://www.eleclight.cn/power_led_50w_500w.htm
https://www.magnalight.com/pc-46371-...190-flood.aspx
This light has the 50 watt LED array that is found in the first link
http://www.elationlighting.com/Produ...LED%20Lighting
I'll post more as i find the links.

crt

[Ebroach]

Hello Tony, I too have been curious about house led lights.

I have been looking for just some led light bulbs.
Still looking.

Is this the article you read.

http://www.churchproduction.com/go.php/article/9588

I found it very interesting. not sure on the cost

[tonyf]

Ebroach, that is the article I was referencing. It sounds interesting but I'm concerned about the costs involved & how well it works. Their website doesn't show any other installs & they seem like a small company (not sure though). Have you looked at their downlights? According to their website, you can get built-in DMX interface, different color temps, & wattage for LED's.

[tonyf]

Gracetech, the links that you've included don't seem to be for house lights. I'm sure you could make them work but the downlight from Affineon is designed to be used in large open areas like a sanctuary or office building atrium (according to their website: grain of salt, etc.). I appreciate the links & any others that you find that might be useful. I've thought about using stage lights for our house lights but we have a very nice wood ceiling with large wooden beams supporting it & I would love to find something that can blend in with it.

[Gracetech]

Actually there are alot of fixtures being made with the LEDs i referenced, i just couldn't find the particular links to the fixtures.

For the time being the Affineon DL series are the only market ready fixture that has an option for dimming built in. Their are other fixtures out there just not with a dimming option. Now you could build your own dimmers for the LED but it would eat up alot of time and probably not be worth it.

I'll keep looking for the links.

crt

[D.R.HADDOCK]

Originally Posted by Ebroach

Hello Tony, I too have been curious about house led lights.

I have been looking for just some led light bulbs.
Still looking.

Is this the article you read.

http://www.churchproduction.com/go.php/article/9588

I found it very interesting. not sure on the cost

If you go into E BAY and type LED LAMPS into the search box, you will see hundreds of types and sizes of led lamps, most come from china or hong kong and are pretty cheap, its a good way of getting some led lamps to experiment with. I am going to get some and experiment with them in my church.

[theatre4jc]

Check out this site. It has some pictures of an install of some of these fixtures.

http://theblueshiftgroup.com/Home_Page.php

I've seen these personally. Bright little boogers. Granted I only saw a display unit but I can tell what they can do. In these pictures they are the only lights on in the room.

Another option for dimming house LED fixtures could be this:

http://www.advance.philips.com/Produ...pcid=5&pbid=33

I'm not sure the full capabilities of these drivers though. I use them in my facility to dim the LEDs that are in the arm rest of my isle seating through my house dimmer system (ETC Sensor Racks). These are very low watt LEDs directly wired to the driver. I don't know and am very doubtful that these could be used with DMX units, but they may be able to work with higher powered non-dimmable LEDs just fine. Worth a look.

[D.R.HADDOCK]

Originally Posted by Ebroach

Hello Tony, I too have been curious about house led lights.

I have been looking for just some led light bulbs.
Still looking.

Is this the article you read.

http://www.churchproduction.com/go.php/article/9588

I found it very interesting. not sure on the cost

Try typing (led high bay lights) into google you will see plenty of led house lights.
interesting!

[Esoteric]

Hey guys, I am installing those Affineon units in a church in a few months. It is a 15000 sq ft sanctuary. Those units are not cheap but they are powerful and they are purpose built as house lights. I will post before and after pictures if they decide to go through with it. Looks like the house light bid is going to be around $250,000.

Be VERY, VERY careful about buying units that are not meant for the job you are wanting to use them for. This client almost bought some units from a company that does parking lot lighting (and not very well) and assumed that because they were told that the units were dimmable they were DMX controllable (in fact they used a 0-10v analog signal).

Mike