Adding intellegent lights to our dumb system

[Mustangnaz]

We are having a special praise band lead worship Sunday evening and are wanting to do some special lighting. A church down the street will let us borrow 3 Chauvet MinSpots for free. We can daisy chain them together and use the sound activated mode, but I would like to be able to turn them on and off (go black, not actually power down) from our board. We have a dumb board right now that runs on 3-pin XLR that goes to a dimmer room that feeds our can lights. Is there any way to "patch in" another XLR cable at the board to control the MinSpots? And then how do I go about setting up the channels to control them? Thanks for all your help.

[six5tring]

Hello there, essentially yes and no.

It all depends on what dumb desk you've currently got. If it's a proper DMX desk and you have 13 channels spare then your laughing.

Daisy chain xlr between all lights and then....

Say that your using the first 12 channels then set the DMX channel on all the units to 13 count up 10 from here in this case 22 and set the fader in the range of DMX 136-255 aka about 75% up and your done..

Oh... and pull down to turn off. All the other faders can do other things but if it's just sound to light your after then that's all you need.

Magic all you need to know is on page 14 of --> chauvetlighting.com/products/manuals/minspot_ug-104.pdf

Hope that helps.

Ben

[Mustangnaz]

Okay, I'm pretty sure this is going to work. This is the board we have right now. We use have the top 32 channels filled up and use the bottom 32 for subgroups. Can we switch banks to access more channels for the new lights? Also, how do we hook up the new XLR in addition to the one already plugged into the board?

[bladeaudio]

Are you using the 3 pin or the 5 pin output from the board? The 3 pin is the micro-plex control, and the 5 pin is DMX. The 5 pin DMX is what you want to use to control the mini-spots.

If you are using the 5 pin DMX output from the board, then you will need to daisy chain your devices. So board to dimmer, dimmer to first mini-spot, first mini-spot to next mini-spot, etc. With appropriate termination at the last device in the chain.

If your dimmer is DMX and not micro-plex, then it will have an IN and an OUT DMX connection.

[Steve Vanciel]

You mentioned in your first posting that it is the 3 pin XLR from the board to the dimmers? That would make it the MicroPlex and not a DMX signal. But, that also means that the 5 pin XLR is available for a DMX feed to the movers.

You will need to review how your console is configured for output and for channel control. Sounds like you have it in a 32 channel plus 32 sub-master setup? There are also several parameters under the patch menu that will need to be checked. Do you have the output set for Both MultiPlex and DMX, how many "dimmers" have been specified, and what is the memory size. All of these will impact how you can control the movers. If you are using all 32 individual "dimmer" channels for dimmers, then you may need to switch to the 64 "wide" mode to have some channels available for the movers. Even though the unit is advertised as being able to control 512 dimmers, it can only do it via 64 faders. So that means a lot of patching if you have more than 64 dimmers or other devices that use DMX "slots".

Read both the console and fixture manuals carefully to see how they might link up.

SteveV

[EmilBarnabas]

If as SteveV said you are running your existing lights on the 3-pin output from the NSI controller and the five pin is available, you can connect the intelligent lights to the five pin output.

You will need a way to convert the 5-pin to 3-pin. Fortunately the first three pins in the 5-pin connector are wired to the same number pin in the 3-pin connector. Pins 4 and 5 are left open.