Dmx.... Am I missing the point?

[djjon76]

Hi all.

Now don't get me wrong, I know lights can help turn a good mobile gig into a great one. But am I missing the point when it comes to dmx for a mobile dj?

For big gigs and permanent fixtures it seems to be perfect, but having it at a mobile gig... doesn't it just add another thing to try to control and manage?

Again, I'm not dissing it, I would love to get into it, but before I do I just want to make sure it's worth it.

On that note, for mobile gig, what lights and controller would be good?

Cheers all

Jonno

[andythemusician]

Depends what you want to do.

If you are happy with lights doing their own independent thing to the music, and just turn off different effects as you feel the need, stay with that.

If you feel as though you want to have more control over the atmosphere and mood, and match colours and chases with the music (fast chases and fast tempo, slow scrolls for slow songs, cool colours for relaxing stuff, warm colours for harder stuff, etc etc) then DMX is the way to go.

For stuff like weddings, you can set your fixtures to stay within the chosen colour scheme - something the bride loves. You can also use moving fixtures to spot stuff like the cake, people making speeches, etc. More flexibility if you need it. If you rocked up and the place where the speeches or cake was located was very dark, a mushroom light isn't going to help solve that!

In terms of equipment, up to you. You can get either halogen, discharge, LED, etc fixtures that will do wash or moving beam or special effects. Depends on what you are wanting to do. And controller also depends on this - either a cheap DMX hardware controller or you can buy computer software to control.

[djjon76]

Cheers Andy.

I have bought the Velleman usb dongle for the pc control, but this just seems to be confusing (software wise), I think I'll go the old skool way and use a dedicated hardware controller.

I think this gives you more of a hands on, easier to control, approach.

Re the lights though. Im going to go with a couple of LED effect lights, with dmx so I can do as you say and control the direction, colour etc, one small laser and either two wash lights, or a wash bar.

Jonno

[SourceRaver]

Pretty much what Andy said...

http://www.ausdjforums.com/modules.php? ... pic&t=1363

http://www.ausdjforums.com/modules.php? ... pic&t=1353

LED are great in that sometimes you never know how much power is available at a gig. Most of the big brands like Martin are now replacing lamps with high powered LEDs and you cant tell the difference.

[andythemusician]

Regards the dongle, each piece of DMX software comes with its own dongle. I've never heard of the one you just mentioned, so I couldn't say whether or not it works well, or if works with any software at all.

Software is good because it is a bigger "console" at a cheaper price. You can get hardware interfaces for hands on control, but obviously more. Depends how crazy you want to get with programming lights really. I'd start with a basic controller until you work out what direction you want to head in.

[djjon76]

It's a kit from Jaycar.

It does work, cause I can get basic control over a "cheap" (and it is cheap!) light I bought on ebay to play with.

Freestyler supports it as I can select it from the list of controllers.

My aim was to use Freestyler in conjunction with Virtual DJ, but until I learn how to actually control the light, this will have to wait.

[SourceRaver]

My Entec Pro died and I'm currently using the Velleman. Its a great little unit and is yet to screw up. Be warned that some cheap lights from China dont respond well to the output rate on USB interfaces. I have a strobe that wont work with the Velleman or my multi thousand dollar Jands Vista desk. It worked well with the USB Pro though? You can vary the output rate on the Velleman so I'll experiment with that.