Fire Bowls

What constitutes "broken" or killed? Are you turning these things into bongs or something?

If its the fabric,then I'm sure a suitable replacement can be made after consulting with a theatrical lighting company or a seamstress.

If it's the bulb, then surely replacement bulbs can be obtained. It's not like any of these companies that make this DJ-type lighting go out of their way to create new lights that require impossible to acquire bulbs. I know it seems like that sometimes thought.

Are these things being dropped or crushed? There are a million ways to break this stuff.

I'm hoping that you've got enough Fire Bowl corpses laying around that you can make a "Frankenstien Fire Bowl" using parts from various dead units.

I guess this wasn't that popular. Good thing I never bought any then. I thought they looked neat though. My events at the time, it was not appropriate. But I seem to be getting some interest from some Pacific Islander groups, it would seeem these would be nice accent pieces.

Now, if an LED version comes out, you can almost guarantee that it may not match. I hope ADJ doesn't take this as a knock. I've learned from reading postings from SerraAva as well as talking to other people in meat space that it's not just about the filter, but color correcting the filter to the bulb to ensure a consistent color. Of course, this is critical in things like video and is even more critical with film.

I'm sure ADJ would probably use white LED's with colored plastic "filters" over the openings to simulate the bulbs and colors in the originals. It SHOULD be passable if they were to do it.

Hey Chris,
Killed is Killed. We cut our own silks and have a good relationship with a custom industrial lighting guy in the area for bulbs. I've even had to change out the sockets in a few. But, if you drop kick one during an attempt not to drop it on the ground, it flies and they bend up pretty nasty. I bend them back and have finally, actually made a custom case that holds the last 4. Ahhhh, the days of "screw it, it's broken, pitch it", are gone, but man, I wish I'd saved all the parts from all the stuff I once called junk.
Well, if there are new ones, and they are LED, etc,,,, I'm thinking I can either do the Vista back to XP thing or upgrade mine to LED. Never know until we actually get some news.
Thanks for the reply!

Well, here's to marketting jumping in and making some sort of statement either yes or not.

Marketting can be sneaky people. They tend to stay quiet except among themselves. I think they think they are plotting to take over the world or something like that, until an upper manager reminds them "hey, we're selling lights here, get over your illusions of grandeur!"

I wouldn't expect an answer though. Best bet is to see their latest updated catalog.

Another option might be if you've got a few damaged units is perhaps sending them back to ADJ for repair. I don't know how cost effective that will be for you, being out in the islands and all. I think technically this becomes an international shipping issue. Might Ebay be a viable option?

I do commend your inventiveness with DIY and already having forged a good relationship wiht a local lighting guy. Even to the point of making those custom cases.

Upgrading the current fire bowls to LED isn't as simple as you might think. However, I bet a good electrical engineer who has experience in LED lighting and stage lighting should be a good person to get to know. That might be your best first step short of shipping dead units back stateside or Ebay. Just keep your hard costs under control to ensure you don't screw yourself over on this venture.

Hey Chris,
We're in Virginia Beach most of the time, so shipping is no big deal, the big deal is that the old broken units got "gone" in a whirlwind clean up a couple months or a year back.

Retrofit would be an adventure for this LED guy I know. He said he'd look into it, but, life gets in the way, if you know what I mean.

here's the deal, and it's off topic, so i guess I'll go start another thread with a more suit
able title.

We're a sequenced duo. Steel drums, vocals, congas, guitar, and BACKING TRACKS.

Everything is sequenced but the lighting. Guitars, pans, congas, etc are played live. I'd always been an NSI 508 guy or a lightronics guy, but lately it's just been firebowls and 38s plugged in direct. The show got better, the lights got lazy.

Now, I want to have the lights sequenced with the backing tracks. Not just pulsing to a beat. I do all of our sequencing/ live recording/cd-ep work, etc, in stereo, in sonar 6 and then render them as wavs for ease of use onstage.

I don't need moving heads and lazers, etc, just subtle color changes and quick crossfades that coincide with our tracks.

We're ready to buy stuff, but can never get straight answers about what we may need. Opinions are strong when it comes to lighting because it's just as much an artform as playing an instrument or weilding a paintbrush.

I gather that DMX is not a true timeline per se and that smpte striping may be the way to go, but the minute I mention that, people start screaming thousands of bucks.

Lights coming up when the song starts/ fading or blacking out when it ends, and color changes on cue is what I'm looking to do, but it seems that every duo, solo, trio, big band, would be doing it if it were simple. Being a duo, (I) have to do the startinging etc, so foot controlling would be nice, but thatinvolves midi and that's a pain in the butt live.. I'm willling to learn and take my lumps along the way, I just don't want to spend a bajillion bucks on stuff that I end up finding I never needed.
Any direction or directions to the right areas of the forum or direct threads would be appreciated hugely!!!

Hey again, sorry to run on.... We always carry 2 or 3 laptops with us. One always controls, playback, one always is ready for live recording and one sits around waiting for call to duty.
So,,,,, using a second laptop for the lights is way ok with me and just a GO button that when pushed with downbeat one would be fine if i can insure that things will run at the same time/ framerate/ etc.

I'm not a lighting guy, I'm a live sound guy, with strong studio roots and post production chops as well.

There's no striping involved, you're not running tape. This may be linear, but it's not that liniear.

You have choices. You can use software such as MyDMX to help automate some of your lighting show. Your MIDI sequence which can be tied to your performance backing tracks, can be used to trigger the MyDMX software. You want to put MyDMX on its own machine. MyDMX would just sit waiting to hear what it's been told to listen to, and your MIDI sequence does the rest. It would for lack of a better term, behave like another MIDI device. Now, if you really need to synchronize moving head sequences to time, you're gonna need a calculator to calculate time between step points.

There's really no "absolute" right answer. You can go controller based stuff too, using a controller with MIDI input.

MyDMX CAN do the job if you dedicate a laptop to it. That could be something sitting on the third laptop. All you need is the MyDMX dongle and a MIDI interface to tie multiple machines together.

But, you might not want to just dive right in. I'd say talk with Jingles, who is support for the Compu Live software(by Elation) and see if either MyDMX or Compu Live may be the better solution based on how you intend to work.

DMX, like MIDI, is an instruction set. WE don't need to drag time code, SMTPE, MTC, blackburst or wordclock into this. We don't need that type of control.

I heard my name...wassup? haha

Hey now, time code and SMTPE are things of beauty for some shows I have to program .

If you're syncing something to a tape or other typically linear source, SMPTE is just fine. But if I don't have to have tape involved, it makes life a lot easier.

These days, we don't slave up audio tape decks to video decks too often. Even less so, syncing up video decks to things like ProTools and other DAWs. Now it's almost all in the computer.

Or maybe you prefer the older film bisync days? Ah, that fun!

Since I can import video into ProTools, along with MIDI files, I don't have a whole lot of need to do much with SMTPE anymore. Now that I'm using Sony Vegas, I can also streamline a lot more of the video post. Lots of flying back and forth between ProTools and Vegas though, lots of time wasted in rendering for now as I learn more efficient methods. I'm not a video guy.

Yeah, I'm not a video guy. I'm force-teaching myself multi-camera editing via Sony Vegas. I'm sure my video friends will laugh at me later.

But, going back to a live show....

Since I can't pop a MIDI track into Vegas(that I am aware of), I can in ProTools. SHOULD I need MIDI, I'd be boned. Why might I need this? Let's say I want to trigger MyDMX....

In ProTools, I have less issue, but my video routing sucks, as it's a DAW, not a video package, but I can incorporate MIDI. But I can integrate multiple displays, so I can route the video to a second display and resolve my issue, fully incorporating video, MIDI and multi-channel audio.

I guess we could slam a good robus video format through a TBC and stripe SMTPE, then sync up the video to multi-channel audio on a DAW and some other goodies, but I'm just trying to avoid tape. At least I know I can sync up if I want to. My facilities for that aren't totally "modernized" since I'm using older Opcode Studio 4 and Studio 64 XTC interfaces on a Mac, but I can use that to distribute out additional MTC as necessary. Between the Studio 4's in the drum rack, the keyboard rack, and then a Studio42 XTC in the old Pro Tools rack, I forget where the other Studio 4 resides, it's been so long, but I know I have spares.

Right now, the biggest issue is that users don't understand the difference between MTC, MTC with SSP(song position pointers, what SMTPE converts to via most MIDI interfaces with SMTPE), and MIDI clock are all about.

For most users here, they don't need timecode sync, all they need to do is add in their trigger commands to a dedicated MIDI track and channel. Even so, timecode isn't going to help them unless they're slaving to some external source that is probably linear. Since MyDMX doesn't have anything to do with timecode, timecode doesn't enter the picture.

Time code is actually still extremely popular on larger shows. If anyone has been on a cruise and seen a show, those all use time code to trigger everything, from videos to lighting and cueing the actors. A lot of track acts are also done with time code. Time code and SMTPE are pretty much standard on larger dance shows since everything is generally track based. A dance show I did a couple of years ago was two 30 minute acts with no blackouts. The first act was a bunch of Coldplay songs edited together and second was all Seal. 2 tracks total, and I linked the lighting via SMTPE. I hit go once at the beginning of both acts and that was it. Actually got to enjoy the show for once.

Is it relevant to MyDMX, no. But it is relevant to DMX and the industry. If someone wants to learn all the possibilities and options, time code and SMTPE are two of those options in this case. If using backing tracks, depending on format, SMTPE and time code are very real possibilities if CalypsoNut is looking to upgrade lighting wise, but most likely will not be cost effective for CalypsoNut. Never hurts to look at all options and learn new things, CalypsoNut might decide that time code/SMTPE is for him/her or might look at it as an upgrade option later on.

How was your drift issues with SMTPE? It's often a big problem with things over 8 minutes. But that could be a long dead issue that followed analog multi-tracks...

Ah, 2 inch tape, I so miss that stuff. Give me a nice Otari MX-90 and some 14" reels of 2" and I'm a happy engineer. Then I'll track it and transfer it to ProTools. Love that analog compression!

Back to your show:

These days, using CompuLive, you could easily play the audio tracks and tricker something like MyDMX with little to no problem, no additional stuff needed. With MyDMX you'd want a second computer for reliability.

There's just so much easier access to multi-function technology than there was even 2 years ago. Timecode ain't going to die anytime soon, but it's having less and less of an impact these days. Since we can do it all "in the box" these days, only the higher end facilities are using time code and even then, only when necessary.

I just don't enjoy working on very rigid shows. Then again, the people around here don't want to pay for anything, so there's no point in delivering much. Even so, I still provide the best I can for what I can.

Not too bad actually. I tricked the console into thinking it was three roughly 10 minute tracks instead of one track, so it basically reset 3 times during each act. I had it setup so it when one sequence finished, the next started right away. The lights simply tracked thru. This also happened during breaks in the music, giving me time to correct an issue if one arose. The other thing is I was there if there was an issue and could manually over ride. The Hog also lets me trigger other cue lists when firing off a cue, so if I had to take control, I was hitting go on one stack and not having to follow about 10 different stacks. Some more trickery with fade/delay times, and it was a thing of beauty to watch a show for once.

That story is also a great example of, while not an ADJ or Elation product, is the type of features you get from the high end consoles.