Take a look at my last year’s Christmas Lights display and controlling them posting to Home Automation discussion group. You can find many links to videos and information on computer controlled Christmas Lights displays.
Archive for the ‘Entertainment Technology’ Category
Christmas Lights
Friday, December 4th, 2009The tech behind U2 tour
Monday, November 2nd, 2009cnet News article The tech behind U2’s record-smashing tour tells about the technology used in U2’s 360 tour. It has been called the biggest rock tour in history, at least as measured by the size and cost of its infrastructure–more than $750,000 per show, according to Rolling Stone. The center of the show is a custon made 360-degree stage, which allowed huge numbers of fans to watch the show from all the directions. The 360-degree stage features a 90-foot-tall steel structure, topped by a center pylon reaching 150 feet in the air; the innovative 360 degrees video screen atop the stage. The video screen, according to information provided by the band’s publicists, is “broken into segments mounted on a multiple pantograph system, which enables the screen to ‘open up’ or spread apart vertically as an effect during different stages of the concerts.” The screen itself is comprised of more than a million pieces, including components to illuminate 500,000 pixels, as well as 320,000 fasteners, 30,000 cables and 150,000 machined pieces. The show employs a large number of computers and electric motors to control the motion of the screen, and there are large numbers of computer-controlled moving lights.
Show control system example
Sunday, September 27th, 2009John Huntington’s Entertainment Technology Site has an interesting posting Moving More Stuff Onto the Gravesend Inn Network that describes show technology used behind Gravesend Inn hounted house atraction. This system uses lots of industrial electronics (PLCs etc..) for a show control application.
U2 concert setup time lapse
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009YouTube video U2 360 tour hampden park time lapse is a time-laps of the u2 concert being set up in Hampden Park Scotland. According the video decription I took over 3000 photos 1 minute apart over several days to create this five minute video.
Cool 3D Projection on buildings
Friday, August 28th, 20093D Projection on buildings video at http://www.loodzwaar.com/2009/07/21/3d-projection-media/ shows amazing visuals that can be made by projecting 3D graphics to buildings. Take a look at this video.
Power and Grounding for Audio and Audio/Video Systems
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Power and Grounding for Audio and Audio/Video Systems – A White Paper for the Real World is a “White Paper” that attempts to cut through the confusion and set out a collection of good engineering practice that is both safe and effective. This 37 page technical document is worth to read for everybody who works with electricity and/or audio/video systems. it gives a good introduction to power system architectures used in North America and gives also brief introduction to systems used in Europe. The section “Some Useful Troubleshooting Tools” gives ideas what tools to use to troubleshoot the problems.
Router speed control to light dimmer
Tuesday, August 25th, 2009More than a year ago I was approached by an independent filmmaker about light dimmers. The problem fo them was how to get affordable light dimmers to control the film lighting. I was told that many independent non-commmercial filmmakers use a HarborFreight router speed control to dim the lights used for moviemaking. The reason is that they are are cheaper and far heavier (15A) than building our own from a 600W house lights dimmer. The problem with these router speed control devices is that they do not dim down enough to turn the lights off. They also don’t quite go to full brightness but that is a minor problem as they have a switch that bypasses the electronics and provides full power.
After some discussion I got one of these units mailed to me to see if there is a way to modify those to work as better light dimmer.First thing I did was to open the device to see how it was built out. Based on what I saw the circuit was pretty close to a traditional light dimmer. And there seemed to be also some adjustment trimmer for some adjustments. Looked promising.
The nest task was to test the device. The problem that those are designed to operate 110-120V AC 60 Hz power has a slight problem to me. In Finland the mains power is 230V AC 50 Hz. Getting real 120V 60Hz power and finding 120V AC light bulbs is hard here where I live. I got one 120V lamp with the router speed control device so I had suitable lamp. Getting real 60 Hz power would involve some expensive power converter or using 12V to 120V AC true sinewave inverter or something similar that I did not have at the moment. So I decided to do my first testing with 110V 50Hz power that I get easily with a suitable voltage conversion transformer (I used fully isolating transformer for safety).
I did some testing. I found that the controller trimmer potentiometer controls how dim the output can go. I was able to get lamp very dim. Here is the picture of the dimmer electronics with a well insulated screwdriver adjusting the trimmer (there is a hole on the circuit board that gives access to the trimmer). Well insulated screwdriver and isolation transformer powering the whole circuit makes it possible to do ajustments with live circuit pretty safely when you know what you are doing. I mailed the results back to person who sent me the router speed control and he tested the results with real 60 Hz power (they worked).
The adjustment instructions: Set the potentiometer lowest setting. Then adjust the trimmer so that you get as dim light as possible without noticeable side effects. When you set the trimmer to too low setting, turning potentiometer will cause the output to be completely off (lap turns off). When dimmer reaches this full iff state, the dimmer potentiometer need to be turned quite much (one third or one fouth) until the light turns back on, quite bright already. The ideal setting I think would be that the lowest dimmer potentimeter setting would just set the bulb to be just barely on (lamp filament dark red and does not make much light), so you have always full control range from it to full setting without problems.
In this way a relatively cheap router speed control device is converted to a relatively inexpensive high power light dimmer.
Learn how to roll cables
Monday, August 24th, 2009Learn how to roll audio cables to avoid tangling. There are several good videos on Internet which tech you how to do that. How to Set Up PA Systems : How to Roll Audio Cables video gives you instructions how to roll audio cables to avoid tangling and tips on PA sound system setup.V1 Cable Wrap is a classic tutorial video that teached me how to properly wrap the audio and video cables easily.Cable Wrangling video teaches you how to properly wrap all kinds of cables and pack microphones.
Magic Show Setup Time Lapse
Friday, August 21st, 2009Ryan Joyce – Arena Show Time Lapse is a video that shows how a magic show is built up. The video starts from unloding the truck and ends with the images from the show. This is how arena shows are built professionally.
Control Systems for Live Entertainment, 3rd Edition
Monday, August 10th, 2009John Huntington’s Control Systems for Live Entertainment, 3rd Edition book offers an in-depth examination of control for lighting, lasers, sound, stage machinery, animatronics, special effects, and pyrotechnics for concerts, theme parks, theatre, themed-retail, cruise ships, museums, special and other events. This is an excellent reference concerning what’s going on in audio control as well as what lighting techs, studio heads, etc. This book demystifies control systems for entertainment.
If you are interested in how control systems and computer networks are used in all areas of live entertainment, this is the book to read. Control Systems for Live Entertainment is considered to be the industry standard reference on it’s field. The author has done a great job of explaining all the details of communications protocols in a very readable form. The book is not only to show control technicians and designers. It is also very suitable for computer scientists, electrical engineers, interaction designers, and anyone who thinks they understand what network communications is all about. If it’s your business to make things talk to teach other, read this book.
