3KV test of cheap disco light with circuit analysis.
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- Опубликовано: 30 мар 2020
- This light was generously sent by Aramus for our edutainment. It's a classic eBay/aliexpress/amazon special and actually usable for some applications, but does have the usual hazards associated with cheap imported products.
The unit is a very good demonstration of cost optimisation. It took a lot longer to analyse than a better designed product because of the many tricks used to allow a small cheap processor to run the whole show. The software in these is a miracle of multitasking.
My lighting desk is a small unit used for testing. It is only really suited to small simple lighting rigs and not for a full theatre type application due to the low number of channels by modern standards (24). It has a very odd programming interface compared to many other desks and a lot of the people who hate it do so because they bought the wrong desk for an application or thought they'd just walk up to it and "run a show". That doesn't happen with ANY desk.
I find it useful for two specific reasons. It can instantly be set up as a two scene preset which is ideal for testing lights with a small number of control channels. It can also have scenes programmed in as a sequence and will then replay them at an adjustable speed, and most importantly boot straight into that mode at power up. That makes it useful for stand-alone applications.
It's manufactured by a company called Behringer who also make very interesting and affordable audiovisual stuff, but is hated by musicians who measure their ego in equipment cost and size.
The electrical separation and testing of these products is not up to Euro-American standards. If using them with other DMX lights I'd strongly recommend isolating them on their own buffer to avoid the risk of damage to other lights in the event that mains voltage finds its way onto the DMX network.
As stand alone lights they have their uses. A single colour can be set by adjusting the RGB levels using the buttons on the back. To store each intensity setting you have to press "enter" before moving onto the next adjustment. If a colour is set and stored then the lights will automatically light in that colour at power up. The way they run the LEDs and the fact that they are all in series means that LED failure is almost guaranteed in regular use. But at the price they could be classed as disposable.
As with many of these lights that cram too much functionality into a small processor, they have their limitations. They often rely on the DMX controller putting out a full 512 channel frame to allow time to process their effects after grabbing their channels of data. If the DMX is not what they were expecting they can sometimes glitch or not work at all.
Many of the units are made by small manufacturers who buy components like cases and PCBs from other sources, so if you have 20 seemingly identical lights, some may have different software and behave differently.
It's not uncommon for lights like these to crash and glitch their memory settings resulting in data being spewed onto the DMX network causing a data conflict and knocking out an entire section of lights.
The combined capacitive current leakage from a run of these lights could potentially give a strong shock from a network cable and affect operation of other lights.
This light did pass a 3kV isolation test, but the construction of the transformer with low voltage windings laid directly across mains voltage windings is an issue. Ideally the transformers would be wound with double insulated wire or have sleeves where wires cross and extra separation tape.
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I love how the plug can be non compliant in so many ways.
The first spark was exactly where you said it would be at the 2.5mm gap :)
Hehe, when you pulled out the lightning desk, I immediately remembered my manager at work placing some brand of lightning panel at my desk mentioning something like "If you see some use for it, it's yours, it's broken and we are unable to fix it."
A colleague and I (the local television station that I had left as an employee still can use those things very well, even if only for replacement parts or when you inevatibly manage to repair stuff like that, that's a huge cost-saving kind of exchange of equipment between companies) pulled out a light from the studio and before connecting it made sure there was no mains voltage on the output, connected the light which, at first instance did not light whatever we did, so we opened up a small part at the back where we found the DMX-polarity switch, flipped it and hey-ho, lightning desk (even though a cheap kind of thing) turned out to be working absolutely fine with every function we were able to figure out from memory, and the local television station now has a pretty good lightning desk for their studio. :)
I have loads of these 7 LED flatpar fixtures. Two things:
- You need to save the changes you made by pressing Enter after making any changes. It doesn't just random start at any mode, it starts in the same setting you've saved last. Press enter in any mode and you'll see Save on the display.
- Only the mode you currently see in the display is active. Meaning that when you have the light on DMX mode, you don't need to "shut" the manual mode.
Usually good to set the manual RGB values to zero though.
Some of them do strange things.
@@shaunclarke94 These don't.
@@benedykt123313 fair enough.
I've noticed similar ones do strange things. Easy to suss out when they're on the bench, less so when they're in a hard to reach spot on a ladder!
Had one which I obviously didn't save the "be a slave, not a master" setting to EPROM, and after a power cycle it took down the whole DMX universe. That was fun!
My missus says your voice is so calming it helps her sleep lol
Yes me too but not on purpose.. drifted to sleep and RUclips autorins.. but it's a bit dangerous listening to this channel when asleep as I wake up 2am with headache as there a lot of information to process on this channel when asleep.. so meditation music is probably better...
Low key this is my cure for insomnia. No idea what a capacitor is (builds up and releases electrical charges?) yet I have many many viewing hours
At 27:40 there was a spark near the opyo-isolator. Great vid.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives for "menstruum", as well as the obvious gynaecological usage, "A solvent; any liquid agent by which a solid substance may be dissolved." Presumably that is what they meant.
Stuff like nail paint remover?
I noticed it can melt plastics.
@@SqualidsargeStudios acetone tends to do that
@@SqualidsargeStudios A hefty dousing of nail polish remover on a (hated) co-worker's keyboard is always good for a laugh.
So basically the good old "don't use aggressive cleaners", just with antiquated language?
@@michaelknight2342 many plastics, yes, but the acetone I've got is sold in plastic bottles. A very specific plastic I guess.
But the memstruum salesman assured me this organic variety was good for cleaning electronics.
Only the crust you dolt!
@@gmt-yt Mmm... salty goodness!
I use Behringer audio gear and I mix music professionally, they use Midas preamps, and TC Electronics designed circuitry etc. and when they clone something they add all the features that the original should have had.
my theory is that Behringer got their bad reputation purely from the fact that in the early 00's they were cheap to buy and as such people treated them like they would treat something cheap IE garage bands would buy one of their compressors and just beat it up, or pubs would use their mixers (due to cheapness), basically they'd end up in environments that you wouldn't find something like a Neve console and as such they were easily broken and abused by people who were drunk or stupid.
so yeah, the only audio people who you'll hear complaining about Behringer are either cork sniffers or the people who bought a autocom pro back in the 00's and are still sour over the fact that a couple of the knobs broke off after years of flinging it into their car with no front panel protection.
I have a soft spot for Behringer products, they definitely give you a functional and pretty neutral sounding product for affordable prices. I started my career as an audio engineer using some of their analog consoles and outboard processing. My only grievance are the faders they used in the eurodesk and xenyx line of mixers, they tend to attract dust and grime and get intermittent after a couple years, regardless of keeping the board covered between shows. I do love the x32/m32 console though. Pretty much an industry standard for medium format event service.
@@Wiresgalore most things have that problem, people just don't tend to bother servicing Behringer stuff which is a shame. I still have my very first autocom pro, however I lost the first Behringer desk I had to a flood. you're right about the neutral sounds though, I hate it when audio gear affects a signal in a manner that I can't control, (I'd say "except microphones" but I kind of consider them a musical instrument in and of themselves). I just want it to do what it's supposed to do so I can focus on capturing the instruments/vocals etc. without having to worry about harmonics overstacking on everything and turning it into a muddy mess that I have to spend ages EQing out.
@Dave Micolichek lol - a bunch of pro guys on prosoundweb.com did a blind comparison test right after the X32 started first shipping and the x32 overwhelmingly was their pick - to the consternation of several of the “old timers” who were convinced B was crap.
BTW for anyone curious, this post from the man himself explains why the X32 was indeed a game changer for them: soundforums.net/community/threads/uli-behringer-of-the-music-group-q-a.4396/page-5#post-51622
You can pay more if you want, but it’s stupid IMNSHO. We got talked into buying a soundcraft board. It’s shit. No functionality - you can save all or none of your settings. Might as well be taking a picture of an analog board. One of the huge advantages of a digital board is if I have a singer swap in at the last minute I should be able to load my Mic and channel settings in for just that singer. I can do it with an X32. Can’t with a Soundcraft (and a surprising number of other digital boards). It didn’t even occur to me that someone might ship a digital board that couldn’t save/restore partial sets of settings - that’s one of the best features of a digital board, especially with moveable faders. No more having to take pictures and then manually reset crap. I was floored. Yet people still act like it’s a good board for live sound. Unbelievable.
The Soundcraft apps and PC support is shit too. The X32 is open (OSC support is amazing - you can control any function on the board via an OPEN protocol), has a HUGE enthusiast community, and at this point there is little you CAN’T do with it. We got screwed, royally, by buying a “real” board.
But it gets better! Samsung bought Harmon who already had sucked up Soundcraft. Before Samsung bought Harmon, Soundcraft already had a reputation for being glacially slow. Since Samsung bought them almost three years ago not one update. I take that back - maybe the update to enable 80 channels. That you still have no automation in organizing or controlling; as if 32 channel management manually wasn’t hard enough.
So yeah, dis Behringer all you want but for overall features they kick the snot out of over half of the established guys and have functionality that even some of the “big boys” don’t have. If they ever started releasing higher channel versions of the X32 you can kiss off companies like Soundcraft (no way in hell I would buy another soundcraft board period). They will just be toast.
Behringer gear is fine as long as you look after it, like everything else. An Allen & Heath desk will stay nice because they are an investment, people treat them with respect and will service them, an equivalent Behringer desk will generally have a hard life because its bought cheap and never serviced, also usually they are entry level so get abused.
I remember working in a pub that had a 4 channel Behringer DJ desk, everybody moaned that used it about the sticky faders which to them was a build quality problem, to me it was a beer spillage problem and I solved it by taking the top off, cleaning it up and giving it a service.
@Dave Micolichek that's where you'd be wrong - you take something of Behringers apart and you'll see proper brandname electronics, very well laid out PCBs that aren't all covered in flux residue and one of the best things they've done - they have "coolaudio" ICs in them which is their own silicon respins of classic ICs such as the mn3205 and all the other BBD trans-amp etc. ICs that were made obsolete decades ago. they have never compromised with the circuitry, they got the price down by simply making things like the enclosures out of plastic rather than metal, using cheaper connectors which seem to have a longer life span than for example, marshall amp input jacks.
I really dig these teardowns of the not so easy reverse engineering, videos, and the Carnegie doesnt hurt either.
Thanks for the video! A short tutorial series on these dmx lights/controllers would be fascinating to watch.
There are sound engineers who swear by cheap Behringer mixers for recording metal guitars, because the pre-amps work perfectly for that and let you pre-mix dark and bright mics before pulling it in to a DAW.
I just use one at home for combining the audio from my PCs and stuff.
@Dave Micolichek yeah, a lot of people thought that when they introduced the X32 and then they proceeded to promptly turn the entire low and midrange industry on it’s ear.
@@DocNo27 I own a X32 desk, rock solid! Midas pre amps.. Love it. Earlier Behringer desks were indeed rubbish.
@Dave Micolichek They have that reputation- but are quickly losing it. I have a few more recent Behrs - a couple mixers and a Model D analog synth. Couldn't be happier.
They have their places, but reliability usually trumps them out of the game.
Congratulations! For simple explanation of function and quality product you are happy.
0:00 "Which was very kindly sent by Aramus."...
4:08 "Cheap sh!tty lights..." lol
One of the most honest reviewers on RUclips. Keep it real, Clive. ;)
27:22 "Corona discharge." Demonetized! lol
Thanks Clive. I have been building an ESD generator on my channel and it’s alway nice to get tips on how to destroy stuff with high voltages. Regards Chris.
For the no-brand (and some brand as well) chinese LED-PARs you have to press enter after changing the values. There are no confirmation, but they won't store the values without doing that. That's why blue was at 7 for both the resets, it was the last stored value (not selected). Strobes/shutters usually reset the clock along with adjusting the Hz. Because of that they will usually black out when you change the value for a lot of fixtures (Martin/GLP/CP etc).
Behringer have really been upping their game lately with analog synths.
apparently the Kirn, cork sniffer is very good.
They seem to have hit a sweet price point with the 32 channel digital audio board for a reasonable entry level console for bands and small clubs.
Their stuff offers huge bang for the buck. The people who dislike it are mainly the type who measure their skills in equipment cost.
@@bigclivedotcom lol - or how much gold plating it has :)
@@bigclivedotcom A lot of music industrustry people don't like them as a company because they've stolen a great deal of I.P. developed by small companies. Uli has a body guard I've heard.
Apropos of this, thinking about past cases of maxing out a chip; an early '90s disco light called (if i remember correctly) the Apollo Paradox. It used a PIC16C54 chip to read DMX, drive three steppers (with gobos) and a synchronous motor with some mirrors on it, switched the lamps, did sound to light and also read the DIP switches all without breaking a sweat. That was back in the day when people knew how to code in assembler and squeeze the maximum performance out of their micros lol.
I like to think of tight coding as a challenge.
Thank you for sharing with us in this difficult time. Your brain food is much appreciated!!!
Those machine translated Chinglish manuals are always hilarious.
Chinglish 🤣🤣🤣👍
Ji plug pu - melon nai...
@@PunannyFace it's a real thing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish
Frankhe78 engnese
BAP (BigClive's Apprenticeship Program) You mention how you were taught things like using the back of your hand due to muscle contractions. I feel like there should be some sort of BAP to help spread a more concentrated video(s) to teach a proper apprenticeship style/quality program to keep society from falling into too much electric ignorance. You're definitely someone I would have loved to work with within the industry. Great advice on just doing what you love and being natural when creating a RUclips channel! You're not the only one to say just be yourself and then to inturn become popular.
Ahhh DMX512 protocol...it's changed my DJ life. No more running crazy cables, u limited fixtures and universes...if I had power at my gravesite I'd have par cans surrounding me....great stuff you should have put some dance music in the background....now u blew my mind pulling out the controller.....I've paid thousands for my lighting rig and love every second from purchase to design to touring....u didn't terminated the DMX out that will give u false data
I have several of these lamps, they are set to slow colour change using the internal circuit on the master then the others are slaved via DMX. They work well and have been in service several years now. The only thing I changed was I swapped the fans out for low noise ones because they are in ear shot.
I like your video's about lightning fixture's. ;-) Make more of these.
I've use an arduino, RS485 level converter, and a bunch of fixtures at work to make light shows for some of our attractions. Had some help from friends in our discord group.
Now that LED board has no home, maybe it could be Clive-customised with some new blinky light software?? :D
Many many moons ago I did stage lighting, it was simple. I generally used Strand gear one dimmer per lamp. If you wanted several lights to change together you used a long piece of timber on a bank of Junior Eights, or clamped the dimmers using rotatable handles on a wheel board, forget what they were called. You could use colour change wheels with synchronous motors or a different colour gel for each lantern.
The 62-ohm resistor on the 78M05 input and the capacitors to take the edge off the PWM outputs to the LEDs seem like decent ideas, even if some of the rest of the design is crap. Very interesting.
Clive, a very good successor for the good old PAR64 are Showtec "Spectral M800 Q4 Tour" lights. Every rental company have these in large amounts here in the Netherlands. They are IP54 splash proof and even IP65 waterproof is optional. (but much much more expensive) I own only four, but it's amazing what you can do with just four !
I love the videos where you tear transformers apart. I like to see the windings and hear a professional oppinion why it's shitty.
Then you should check out "Diodegonewild" on RUclips.
I'm quite fond of the LC2412. For a small stage with no moving lights, it has just the right amount of channels and functionality. Its biggest flaw (and it's big!) is that DMX channels assigned to a memory don't go all the way back to 0 when the memory fader is pulled to its lowest.
This doesn't matter for incandescent lighting (which I assume was the thing when the LC2412 was developed) but cheap LED fixtures are quite bright even at DMX level 1 or 2 (as seen at 5:43).
This light may not be suitable for professional use but I think it would be a neat light for home use or maybe doing small gigs and using it as a standalone unit. Of course something would have to be done with the loud annoying fan. Either put a resistor on it to drop the voltage down a bit or find a 24 volt one of the same size as they are probably running it at almost double the rated voltage of it. I have a very old light setup that uses 3 regular light bulbs that once were flood style bulbs with a control unit that lets you either change the speed of the lights or can flash to music with a sensitivity control. If you choose to you can do both at once. I bought it at a Meijer store I worked at in 2003/2004 but now just has regular 25 watt color bulbs in it. It is still cool to use even now days.
entertaining and educational as usual.
I used to save all the old power supplies from computer that I worked on Then every few months I would go on a tear down binge I saved all the regulators and unrolled all the transformers keeping the wire. I use the wire to make rubber ducky antenna's for different projects by coiling them and putting shrink wrap over them. I also use the medium size wire to put rails on my project boards works great. If I think it needs better current capability I clean the wire first then run solder over the entire length to give it high current capability.
I think you should do just like This Old Tony and instead of outright asking for subscribers, do it on the sly.. like put a label on your pliers that says "subscribe" on it or maybe on your desk somewhere, and change it up every time. That way its like a game. You gotta sorta hide it where its not immediately obvious. Tony does it amazingly.
I toyed with having a flashing subscribe button on the bench
Jess said are you okay and take it easy xxxx
I use an LC2412 to mess around with new lights before plugging them into expensive desks/computer interfaces... it's not a bad little console once you get used to programming the chases etc
Clive, I saw a spark at 27.40 in the video. It seems to be at the southern side of the Opto-coupler (closest to you) arcing across that tiny isolating gap.
at 27:39 there is an arc across the optocoupler between the HV negative and the left leg (low side)
I have a similar unit to this. The power supply lasted about an hour and the mains wiring was the thinnest I have ever seen. I now power it directly from 12V. Only required for testing DMX software I'm working on, there's no way I'd use one of these for anything serious.
Found a lamp very similar to that in a school while P.A.Testing but with a metal case. Plug had a fuse so not a problem! After trying all over to get earth, realized the bloody earth pin is screened and socket touched on the insulation only. No problem new plug, 10 more in the next case! Damm you amazon. And don't get me started on there deathly Christmas tree lights.
About Behringer:
I have a bit if experience using the Behringer X32 rack mixer, and it is very nice! Behringer stuff is alright in my opinion
Until you have opened one of the smaller panels up for the 10th time because of loose connections. Why mount potentiometers or even faders to the front while you can have the design be so that you exert all the forces on the potentiometers on the pcb-islands (cheaper, more prone to failure).
Uli Behringer was literally one of the first people to bring his manufacturing to China, seeing the value in their cheap labor, although at the begining he contracted with other factories instead of building his own and thats where all the quality control issues came up from in the beginning, and of course all the blantant ripoff and reverse engineered products. After being there for a couple years he cut ties with the various factories he employeed and started his own, which eventually snowballed into a place called "behringer city" There are a few documentaries on behringer city china, as it is so large it almost is really its own city, all the workers actually live in dorm rooms on campus. Uli behringer is a very interesting guy as he started out building illegitimate products in the pursuit of actually eventually making very legitimate affordable products. I've owned numerous bits of behringer gear over the years and its all served its purpose and did very well for me!
This got smug, self-satisfied and 'holier-than-thou" in only five moves.
@QED I absolutely agree with you, with the exception that the mixing board in question was stationary on a desk and could not handle regular usage as a voice-over-station piece of equipment. After having resoldered some of the parts for like the millionth time we replaced it with (I think) a Yamaha one.
@QED True (my experience is that the couple of times we worked with religious groups those people were usually a lot more careful).
now you know why I like restoring old tube type radios massive steel chassis and lots of heavy iron in the transformers like my main listing radio is a 1936 philco tombstone 80 plus years
Bought 4 of these, 2 are dead within a year - they're reasonable for small stages, but super brittle plastic meant that after a few uses the screws for the legs snapped very quickly. If you can get some of these with a name slapped on them (mine are Equinox) they'd do for lights for a small club where they're not moved. Mine didn't have an issue with DMX processing though, so maybe slightly better internals?
The only bad piece of Behringer equipment I have ever used is the old 48 channel in line studio desk that is a copy of a Mackie, I have found thier outboard gear to be really good, and also thier mics, the vocal mics were really good especially considering they were less than 20 quid for 3 and not much different to an SM58, I remember using thier DMX lighting desk at college and it was pretty good to be honest.
If it's anything like the lights I have have if you press the enter button it's the one on the right it will keep whatever setting you choose
Behringer certainly aren't as bad as they used to be. Some of the old live sound equipment was quite shocking. I think they own Midas now who make some nice inputs, so their interfaces aren't too bad now. Certainly could do better, but there's certainly worse out there!
I have a few units like this, albeit branded ones from American DJ and they don't seem to need a fan. They also look like they'd be a lot more powerful.
Love the sheathed earth on the 13A plug. 🤣
Another great vid! The reason we don't like Behringer is because they unabashedly steal designs from other makers like Yamaha, Mackie, Roland, etc., to include making virtually identical copies of their competitors' products with bargain-basement components. Not all of their stuff is shoddy, but much of it is. They are pirates.
Nasty transformer! I use the transformer kits where you get the bobbing and the 2 ferrite halves and have the sense to wind the primary first and insulate it with pvc tape before winding the secondary. I cant believe whoever made that transformer couldnt afford a piece of pvc tape between the windings!
The Flash Tester is very cool. Me likey!
34:20 . . . Clive, one of the few video creators to state "If you think the video is shyte, remember to give it a thumbs down."
As some other creators say "thumbs up or down, the AI is only interested in interactions"
Oh my lordy lord. Best tanslation ever.
You mean transration?
Just re-watching this and my eye did catch the flashover - it was visible on the back of the PCB for a couple of frames at 27:40 - the arc is visible on the right side of the PCB between where the two wires are attached to the flash tester. I couldn't see another comment mentioning this, and it's an old video but it was interesting to see it happen.
Skill :D I once took a slight chunk of my thumb out by trying to ferociously disassemble a laptop battery...
Lol love your commentary keep it up.
Always good.👍 👍 👍 👍
Make the fuse go bang!
I'd guess V+ on the Vcc connectors are against each other because the V+ trace is common for the two V+ connector and the V- pins are switched (xstr/fet/ic).
Yes I absolutely hate Behringer, that's why I have an XR12, Model D, VC340, MS-101, RD-8, TD-3, UFO202, UMC204HD, a couple of DSP2024P's, and convinced a local church to get an XR18 after I showed them my XR12. Plus the new WING console and the Midas DP48/HUB4 look very good esp. if you use wireless IEM's.
I also had an LC2412 at one point but it got damaged in the garage. One issue with them was that they were never designed for intelligent lighting which caused a few issues, not just with intelligent lighting but with normal dimmer packs when an intelligent lighting fix was implemented.
There is a reason why the biggest selling brand at the worlds largest music instrument retailer (Thomann) is Behringer, if they were unreliable crap they would stop selling Behringer.
As for quality, ask anyone who owned an original Presonus Studiolive console that upgraded to an X32 what they think of the quality, plus presonus' attempt to claim that they had a better product, well they did if you ignored the extra features of the X32 (motorised faders, AES50, head-amp recall Etc.) and the SL reliability which was supposedly shocking.
There is a reason why the X32 has become an industry standard desk and price is but one factor.
Oh and for people who really hate Behringer and decide to buy from a competitor, some of them use Behringer/Coolaudio IC's in their products, the new Boss Waza Craft chorus uses Coolaudio BBD's!
Don’t forget OSC support on the x32. The show control software and other apps that are out there because the console speaks an open standard language is utterly amazing. Don’t like how it works out of the box? There are probably dozens of other ways the community have discovered to do what you want.
DocNo27 Yes, the X32 was a winner from that start and that combined with it's excellent firmware updates is why it's remained in the market so long. There is still noting that can beat it fir sheer price/features ratio!
my laptop has one of those pockzey plugs!! got a nice zing off it once,(& thats enough) would the fan effect that mic inside??
No Clive, this is NOT shit. THIS is why a deal of us are here. Please do not denigrate your self or what you do.
That lights LED array looks the same as the Equinox Maxipar Quad. The housing just looks like a standard Chinese/ADJ MegaPar/Equinox Maxipar case.
the power supply sparked over where you said it would were the tracks more close together. sent you a picture on fb
Carvin made a light board at one point. It's pretty much a clone of the scene-setter 24, which behringer cloned. I got away from using physical based controllers and went to software. My controller is a webpage I can move faders up and down on.
How hard would it be to make a two compartment bobbin?
Hello. If you put the transformator in hot water from a water kooker for about 1 min., The parts of the core will go appart very easy.
27:23 "corona discharge" .... and demonetized!
No doubt due to COVID-19. Stay safe out there, RUclipsrs!
na he didnt say virus he's good
Or is it corona menstruum?
You can't have physically separate windings in a flyback converter because the leakage inductance will be too high.
would be brilliant if you could source a high end version of this kind of thing for the comparison :)
00:54 I wonder what the manufacturer's were trying to say
I find it interesting how because these lights make horrible colors to cameras they never really leave the DJ space.
There is a company called DMXIT that make some really cute 12 and 24 channel boards, while they aren't big enough for theater work they are popular for small film shoots where rarely you need more than 4 channels a light. Assuming you don't want effects they hold up well and they've even got an option for Lumenradio wireless DMX.
Sounds Nice to me, Clive
Clive thanks for all you videos they are are great viewing.
I have a couple of questions. 1) where did you get those 2 led lit magnifying glasses. 2) what do you think from your experience is a good but cheep led PAR CAN LIGHT ? Chauvet DJ ? perhaps 3) Behringer made cheep Chinese copy's , of poor quality IMHO, then having made big bucks bought up all the good company's they had copied. I hope someone does it to them. A Midas mixes is a cheep X32 in a flashy case.
I noticed that after you changed the settings (RGB) you did not hit the "Enter" button...could that be why the unit did not remember the setting for the next boot up?
Had to replace the power supplies in some of the same, but more expensive branded ones of these. Lucky I had some 24v power supplies in the office that fitted perfectly. The ones that had blown had killed their bridge rectifier.
That's common. If the main chip or transistor fails short circuit it often causes the bridge to go short circuit.
It would be good to examine how manufacturers can state that the Y2 type capacitors coupling the secondary side to the primary side for interference suppression can possibly be failsafe, how can you design a capacitor so that it will always fail open?
As an aside, if you want to salvage ferrite cores that have been glued together, as is the practice in consumer equipment, you simply place the transformer in a can of water and boil the transformer for say 10 -20 minutes and the glue will soften to the point that you can pull the core apart with your fingers, don't use pliers. I have recovered many ferrite cores this way for reuse, it does weaken the bobbin though.
The reason that the transformer primary and secondary windings are so close is to increase the coefficient of coupling given these supplies are usually operating at somewhere between 100KHz-300KHz with MOSFET switching transistors the "leakage" inductance needs to be in the low microhenries for adequate regulation. With 50Hz mains transformers you can get away with split bobbins and tolerate leakage inductance in the mH range which has the added benefit of limiting peak diode current for simple diode capacitor filter circuits.
The proper classY capacitors are often a thick ceramic disk with a conductive layer on both sides. They seem to rely on the size to prevent bridging even if the capacitor cracked.
If you get the chance you should check out some of those dirt cheap generic atx power supplies for desktop computers.
What would happen if you were to add extra copper windings to a working unit?
3kV sounds high, but after a while in service when its dusty and a bit damp from bringing into a nice humid venue from the back of a van, 230V is quite enough to flash over and kill you or your lighting board..
in dmx mode the rgb values are not importante, what youre missing there is giving it an enter after
you select it.
Flying Pig Systems used to make good small lighting desks. And they made DMX isolators. Very nice to protect the desk
I've moved away from using any direct DMX connection to the desk for both capacity and protection. A 4 or 6 universe Streaming ACN (E1.31) or Artnet over ethernet provides excellent protection as all network switch connections are transformer isolated. A fault in a light can not damage the console. Most MA consoles support multi universe DMX streamed over ethernet. Distribution is using existing venue LAN or well place network switch for distribution. Ethernet is high speed, reliable, and less expensive to distribute. I am currently configured to run a full 12 universes of DMX over ethernet, but don't have that many fixtures. A cheap 8 port network switch provides the DMX isolation at a fraction of the cost when running DMX over ethernet. Most people have no idea network switches provide isolation too.
@@isettech monoprice has a pretty nice DMX splitter that’s all optically isolated. Powered off the same supply so it’s not as isolated as you would be if you had fiber between the switch(es) for your lights and the rest of your network. Depends on how paranoid you want to get. I try to buy the higher end of the cheap stuff so such things needn't be as much a concern but unless you tear it down like Clive it’s hard to be certain with any of this stuff these days. I’d like to think Marin or ETC wouldn’t skimp but I’ve been let down by “gold star” vendors before.
I find what Behringer is doing in the synth world to be great. It's reasonably priced and does the job.
It's the opposite of the boutique stuff and bafflingly over priced products from Teenage Engineering for example.
Let's go aramus
I've made it
As far as the algorithm goes, thumb down is just as good as thumb up. Somebody watched the video long enough to form an opinion, that makes it worth recommending it to others.
My guess is that the power supply connectors are NOT swapped, but in fact identical. The fan is reversed wired to control it's airflow direction.
I spoke too soon.
I actually have a spool of lacquered copper wire. Just some basic soviet era magnetic wire.
I wonder if a zener diode at the input will be fast enough to protect a device from mains voltage.
Some Pro lights use a PTC fuse and tranzorb style voltage clamp.
😆 The fan sounded like it was being over driven to sounding like an open water valve/tap - over heated/bearing failure
You can't beat a good old fashioned transformer!!.
You sure can't. I have a few that came out of a 1950's Vacuum Tube TV. The power transformer has an iron core and the winding's are separated with some type of paper. Since it's a high voltage transformer with multiple winding's i'm sure it has excellent separation between them. Even the small transformers are very well made. I even have an old Honeywell 24 volt transformer that was probably for a furnace that surface mounts to a 4x4 junction box with screws for the low voltage connection on the top of it and even that is very well made and probably weighs 2-3 pounds. Now days it has an easy life just powering two 1157 bulbs in series for a lighting display.
Those hunks are good at mains frequency with traditionally accepted power losses. They tend to be less useful at SMPS frequencies (about 100kHz to 10MHz) with low power losses. Unfortunately, the common way to assemble ferrite core transformers makes it too easy to hide sloppy work and ship out dodgy units. I vaguely recall seeing some older designs that could be checked non-destructively.
A BNC for a swan-neck lamp! I've never seen that before, but it's a good idea.
A socket for a gooseneck lamp is pretty common on many theatre style control desks.
So many of these are using the novotron ic. I am hoping someone will create a firmware that makes it strictly DMX and have a simple gamma editor. A 6n138 would fix the DMX opto for cheap, but the dc-dc isolation is $1 USD, so that’s far too much for the primary market.
Crusty organic menstruum 🤢
Can't think what they meant
Let's just say we don't want it on our pizza.
@Dave Micolichek From the country that brought you the "Kung Foo Flu"....
Acetone is from ...I dunno...see if it melts in acetone, I used it cleaning fresh made eyeglasses...waxy crayons , an a plastic y. Ink , came off easy
Behringer makes lighting consoles too?
You should give that mixing desk nothing but praise to troll the music people ;-)
Since you have taken that distructively to bits, do you still ha:e the optics?
If zo, i am intetested in them. Greetings, Neovo.
The optics are cheap, common, and can be found from the same China sites selling fixtures. You can buy different spreads to change beam to wide flood depending on needs.
www.banggood.com/10pcs-30-Degree-Soft-Light-Bead-Surface-Lens-For-1w-3w-5w-LED-MR16-GU10-E27-p-1642212.html?rmmds=search&ID=6286691&cur_warehouse=CN
10 for a less than 5 bucks delivered free.
I have a particularly nasty cheap light, quite like this one, with a really loud fan, that was damn weird with DMX. Only ever use these things with cheap wireless DMX so damage is limited.
i saw it arc across the optoisolater in the vid
You can see that the first time it arced through the "separated" traces