DMX controller help

{From the off I'm rather clueless with lights specially the posh moving head things}

hey

Edited by kevinmcdonough - 30 April 2018 at 10:20am

personally considering the used price of Avolites Azure 2004’s I would be buying one of those :)

The trick to this is that a "unverse" of DMX consists of 512 control "channels." Each lighting fixture requires a number of DMX "channels" and can be programmed so it knows which of the 512 channels to respond to by setting a start address. So the Kanjo needs 8 or 10 channels and if you set the start address to 1 it will respond to channels 1 to 10 of the 512. If you set it to 2, it will respond to channels 2 to 11. It isn't rocket science. Each channel tells it how to behave in respect of particular factors. So one channel for how bright it is, another for what colour, another for tilt, another for pan.  Each channel has a range of 0 to 255 so, for example, if you set the dimmer channel to 0 it will be off and if you set it to 255 it will be at full. If you set the colour channel to between (say) 0 and 20, it will be at red while if you  set it between 21 and 40, it will be blue and so on. If you have 2 of the Kanjo units and set them both to the same address, they will both respond in exactly the same way. If that is OK then you need 10 channels for both fixtures, if you want to be able to control them separately (and you will want to sooner or later) you need 20 channels. The flat par cans use up to 6 channels so you need 26 or 32 channels.

Thing is that, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that it all gets unworkable very quickly. If you had desk with 32 faders it would take you ages to set them all to the things you want them to. So, all but the most basic of controllers are programmable. You set all the channels for a particular group of lights the way you want them then save it to memory. With Chamsys, that is called a "cue." Different controllers can control different numbers of DMX channels and have different numbers of memory slots. As they get more advanced, you can link the different cues together in various ways.

The reality is a lot easier than the explanation. As a good starting point I would download Chamsys MagicQ so you can play with it and explore some of the many tutorials. You might not keep it but it is similar to a lot of other systems so it will give you a chance to figure out how everything works. Most people will have things working in a matter of an hour or two. Then you can decide what you want to do from there.

Unfortunately, the controller you were looking at will only control 6 channels and isn't programmable so it is out of the window. There are any number of very similar units that control up to 12 fixtures with up to 16 channels each so 192 channels total that will cost around £100. Example from Thomann here.
https://www.thomann.de/gb/elation_dmx_operator_i.htm
If you get into it, you will run into boundaries very quickly but you won't lose too much money from selling it on.

There is a web site called On Stage Lighting that has a load of info, including for newbies, http://www.onstagelighting.co.uk/stage-lighting-guides-help/

Hope that helps!
Andy
 

Thanks and you are welcome.

Edited by Jasonstry - 20 April 2018 at 9:12pm

Yeah, I assumed the pars were for face lighting so looking at a band or similar situation. Internal s2s tends to be based on the assumption that the fixtures or hung over a dance floor and, in a stage situation, they spend a lot of time pointing at nothing useful. No harm in checking how they work though.