Let there be lights!

I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind the other day, and the climactic scene where the characters communicate with the aliens using sound and color reminded me of my stage lighting hobby. So I did some poking around to see what the current state of stage lighting is, and was pleased with most of the progress.

LED lighting seems to be really taking off, especially for mobile DJs. All the manufacturers, especially the perennial favorites American DJ and Chauvet, have LED color-mixing PAR and wash fixtures at extremely reasonable prices. LED moonflower effects and even some LED scanners have appeared as well. My only concern is with brighness, compared to traditional incandescent fixtures. American DJ does say that some of theirs are equivalent to a traditional 250 watt halogen, using a single high-intensity LED. Wow!

PC-based lighting control seems to have really taken off with a variety of USB-DMX and Ethernet-DMX adapters. Enttec has one, Martin has one, American DJ has one, Chauvet has one, and there are many, many others, including CDS Technology’s LanBox, which has been around for many years. The prices range from $60US to over $1,000US, and each comes with its own software, with the exception of the Enttec device, which is open and supported by many manufacturers. Of course, Ben Suffolk, continues to work on his USB DMX project.

My biggest disappointment is the continuing dearth of Mac-centric DMX control software. Enttec lists a few on their site, but I’ve been less than impressed by most of them. Of Windows packages, only American DJ’s myDMX really caught my attention. I booted Windows on my Mac, installed myDMX and was very impressed after just a few minutes. The thing that caught my eye was the live 3D view of your light rig. The 3D view reacts to your scenes and chases, including the position of moving lights. Programming scenes and chases is very straightforward, and much less complex than in Martin’s LightJockey.

The best thing I’ve found on the Mac is Ben Suffolk’s Chameleon and it’s open-source LightsOn framework for Mac OS X. Chameleon is a work in progress, but Ben has been using it in production already. I’ve played with it a bit, and it seems to be pretty straightforward. It doesn’t have the 3D visualizer like myDMX, but my few minutes of experimenting seemed to indicate that it was very easy to use as well. What excited me most is that it uses other inexpensive hardware to make the lighting designer’s work much easier. It controls the light rig with either Enttec’s DMX Pro interface or Ben’s own USB DMX interface. In addition to the usual keyboard and mouse Chameleon can use custom input devices, like Behringer’s BCF2000 MIDI control surface (with motorized faders!) and programmable keyboards like the X-Keys Pro.

Chameleon and LightsOn use XML for describing fixture attributes, which should make for a very flexible way of describing the myriad of lighting devices on the market. The spec is still under development, as well as the tools to create profiles, but the only big thing missing in the spec itself is a way of including a graphic of a fixture’s gobos in the definition.  I’m sure this will be addressed very soon.

I’ve got high hopes for Chameleon and LightsOn. This could be the answer to the Mac-o-phile lighting designer who doesn’t need a full-on media system like those from Arkaos, and could be inexpensive enough for small venues, bands, and amateurs like myself.

Link: USB DMX

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