High Five High Bays. Dimming

[zactommo]

I'm interested to know if anyone has had experience working with high-five highbays or similar in the context of a performance venue. If you don't know what High-fives are, see: http://www.highfivelighting.co.nz/

My understanding from talking to the lighting consultant is they work in a similar way to fluro, with digital and analog ballasts available to make them dimmable. But they don't really have experience supplying them in a performance sort of context, to work with stage dimmers etc.

So my question is has anyone used fixtures like this before in a church like settings, and intergrated them with the stage lighting system?

[[Director] drew ryan]

My lighting guru has repeatedly said that he would under no circumstance ever put a dimable florescent fixture in. We use a High Bay fixture as a weekday light source so that we are not running the incancesdents all the time. We are looking at Affineon LED fixtures for our house lighting in the next campus. All the light, a lot less heat, no external dimmer, and a 7 to 10 year life on the fixture. More money up front, but lots of savings down the line.

[millamber]

From the website's catalogue:

Can be fully controlled using Servodan control system
utilising either dimmable ballast or 2 circuit switching.

I'm not sure what Servodan is, but it sounds like it is a proprietary control system and it is doubtful it could be controlled from a DMX console, at least not without modifications.

Dimmable florescent fixtures come in typically 3 varieties of ballast: 2 wire, 3 wire and 4 wire. A 2 wire ballast basically takes a hot and a neutral in and is dimmable directly from a SCR dimming system.

A 3 wire ballast has a different setup in that it has a neutral, one dimmed leg and one constant or "switched" leg supplying power. These type of ballasts require a special type of dimming module in order to be dimmed due to the constant switched leg required. In a ETC Sensor system, 3 wire ballasts are dimmed using a D20F module.

4 Wire ballasts are not that common. They use a hot and neutral like the 2 wire ballasts, but use 2 low voltage wires as well for control, either analogue or digital.

[cw4u]

I've used dimmable fluorescents before but they're not as great as they sound. The one theater I worked with has these chandelier type fixtures with dim fluorescents. They dimmed up 40, 60, 80, 100. But didn't dim down at all. Either 0 (Under 49) or Full. (>49) Energy wise I guess they're a nice touch, but sometimes the fixtures didn't respond correctly and you had to bring them up and back down again.

[zactommo]

So, I decided to contact the manufacturer directly, and what a surprise. They are made locally, in the same city as me. So I got talking to a very helpful technician and found out the following:

Both the analog and digital version are what Chris referred to above as 4-wire ballast. The analog version uses a 0-10v control voltage, much like the oldschool analog dimmers, and the digital version using a digital control signal called DALI. DALI is an open standard, so is not tied to any proprietary controller and boast some good features. Obviously, its no DMX, but for its designed purpose, it seems like a smart system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...ting_Interface

Obviously interfacing with the analog High-Fives is pretty simple. Get a DMX to analog converter and your away.

DMX to DALI converters exist also, but information on them is a bit more difficult to find, but if I could find a good DMX to DALI converter, it gives the potential to have a very smart house lighting system!

[millamber]

http://www.etcconnect.com/minisite/u...0-120V-DRd.pdf

DALI Ballast option (DRd-DALI)*
-- Support for 24 loops of DALI control in broadcast mode
-- Up to 63 ballasts per output
-- External DALI power supply required (by others)

If you are installing a new dimming rack along with these fixtures, this would be the way I would go about it.

[D.R.HADDOCK]

Why are you thinking of using them?
Energy efficency, heat issues or just curious?
I think they are still too problematic,
I will just stick with incandesant till some thing better comes along that doesnt cost the earth.
atmosphere wise floros just dont work.