BMN Tusas Camp Stage-lighting, Wind turbine workshop
From Brian's Morning Newsletter
http://outfitnm.com/2010/04/15/bmn-tusas-camp-stage-lighting-wind-turbine-workshopGood Morning
Yowsa, yesterday sucked in one way, but thanks to my daughter Brittany, and her boyfriend Desi, I was able to recline all day, while they; her good good friend Vidal and his friend Adam, worked all day long on irrigating our fields. I'm talking dawn to dusk, restoring an old guy's hope for the youth of all America because they can get the farm taken care of when it needs the work. Thank you, thank you, thank you all.
My sciatica was killing me yesterday, making me rue my decision to wait until Friday morning at 9:00 to return to the Chiropractor. I was able to spend most of my time working on the computer, which is where all this exciting stage lighting information came from.
I'm assuming this information is what you want to hear, and not just exciting from a forced-to-sit in an armchair perspective. This certainly represents a dawn to dusk effort on my part so you know I want it to mean something.
So hold on to your seat and enjoy the ride.
I don't know if I mentioned that we were considering buying rope lights to brighten up the stage for the Tusas Reunion Camp. I ran the numbers over and over and it just wasn't coming out favorably for even the more expensive LED rope lights.
Yes, rope lights are awesome looking, but there is a downside, it only comes in 150 foot rolls as shown above. Calculating power consumption was simple. The specs declare there is 12 bright LEDs per foot, power consumption is .8 watts per foot, one simply multiplies feet times watts per foot to get 120 watts, then divide this by the voltage to get the current drain on our battery power system of 10 amps. Now don't get me wrong LED rope lights are way more cost effective to operate than the incandescent equivalent, which draw 3 watts per foot, which comes out to a whopping 450 watts at 150 feet. No way Jose. Just in case you are wondering if these numbers reflect favorably on your Christmas light usage, all I can say is be thankful we only use X-mas lights a few weeks out of the year.
I needed to switch gears, and give up on the rope lighting idea, no matter how ingrained I already had it in my head.
I still have a lot to discuss, as I was on my ass all day, researching if you will, the awe inspiring world of stage lighting effects. Being a major bells and whistles man I find myself gazing rearward at concerts, often just as dazzled by the light show as the music, wondering how the effects were accomplished. Sure anyone that looked could see the workers in the mixing booth sliding buttons and fiddling with dials. With my electronics background I was no different than the rest of the audience, except I suspected I was one of the few checking it out.
So now I know what I didn't a day ago, and I have to tell you it is incredible. The technology is called DMX 512.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX512. You guessed it, Brian wants DMX 512 for the stage at Tusas, naw, not really, yes I do, no just kidding, honestly yes. Okay, so I'm indecisive on this, nevertheless DMX 512 is friggin cool. In my usual fashion I went surfing the ups and downs of hobby grade DMX stage lighting, amazingly there really is such a thing. I also found out there are inexpensive USB to DMX adapters for sale.
http://www.opendmx.net/index.php/Open_DMX_USB There is a language to DMX lighting and I don't think I could learn it in a month, but for some reason this stuff really impresses me.
The bottom line with stage lighting is although the technician can be an artist, there are stage lighting devices which run on autopilot, so to speak. For example the device I have pictured above which I am convinced is perfect for Tusas, it is low power consumption, not too psychedelic, nor irritating like some, and best of all it is inexpensive at $129. This device is called Chauvet Abyss LED One roll of LED rope light was going to set us back ~$300 and suck up power like nobody's business. So using the rope light a a guideline for power and expense budget, I feel we can do well to either stay with just the water effect of the Abyss LED or go hog-wild and buy an inexpensive laser as well.
If you are like me and love special effects you absolutely must to watch these Youtube videos from Chauvet Check out this one Austin linked to me. American DJ Nucleus LED at $900 this one is out of my self-proclaimed budget, but damn, it is freaky cool
Oh my god deliver me from watching these videos so I can continue producing my morning newsletter.
Tear, rip, rend, whatever it takes, get me out of there.
Okay, so you see where I am at now with the Tusas stage lighting proposal, low power inexpensive American DJ lighting. I may buy the $129 Abyss LED tomorrow just to check it out, notice these are 12 volt power source? The stage will have 12 volts DC and 115 volts AC. I had already been looking at a circuit to limit the current to the LED rope lights for running off variable battery power, which I found at the all new axial flux wind turbine forum.
http://fieldlines.com/board/ the forum run by the guys from Otherpower recently switched to the same forum software Adam setup for us over at
http://outfitnm.com/forum/ Simple Machines Forums
Anyway, sure it is obvious that Brian has gone "off again," but at least it isn't one of his conspiracy theory rants, right? It's beautiful man.
Alrighty then, let me get onto the next subject this BMN is supposed to be about, Tusas Wind Turbine Workshop Summer 2010. Yeah, if I ever get well from this fugged up sciatica, I will be building a new wind turbine this Summer. Something Kevin and I had planned from the beginning was, Summer workshops. So far I can't seem to get Kevin interested, so unfortunately it may just be Brian. I have received feedback already, so I will move ahead with the wind turbine building workshop. If successful, perhaps this can be a annual Summer event here at Tusas.
For this first project, my thinking is the others might be interested in approaching our wind turbine one piece at a time just as I will. I can estimate the total expense so there won't be any major surprises, but to get the project rolling I plan to buy the metal kit from OtherPower for $150 plus shipping. Those who followed our progress last year building our first turbine already know there weren't too many areas that we didn't stumble through. In the end, problems became options, then solutions in a process that I found continually interesting and enjoyable. I imagine I can bring this enjoyment to the workshop, because I believe I've shown that I love this stuff, I might be able to make you love it too.
The only obstacle we really had trouble with was financing. Thanks to Kevin for coming through or we wouldn't have our turbine in the wind, he bought all the rigging and power cables, a not unforeseen expense is the tower after the turbine is done we still need to fly it or it is just another piece of yard art.
I want to build a larger turbine. Ours is rated at 800 watts, although we have seen it put out 1200 watts in gusts. I would like to take this to the next level and build a turbine with 17 foot blades, or perhaps a 12 footer to be more reasonable, our current turbine is a 10 footer on a fifty foot tower.
Whatever I decide, I know the next turbine will be better than the last, and this is the point: Forward progress.
I actually have more for you this morning, if you can handle more information, I'll continue. Tomorrow's BMN may be very short as I have that chiropractor appointment in town at 9AM.
Sorry about the quality, you know the routine: Sun wasn't up yet, not enough light for our old camera to get a good image, still, pretty neat huh?
Anyway, I did buy the water effect LED.
The plan is to use Wooferhound's LM317T circuit
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Using-The-LM317T-With-LED-Lighting.htm to protect the lights
I still like the inexpensive laser and may buy that in the following weeks.