Dimmer-O-Rama

TinkersALot

Here is a project I did for holiday lighting.

I was trying to "approximate the features" of a light-o-rama controller (which are great devices by the way, I'd highly recommend them if you have $$$ to burn for holiday fun).

My "dimmer-o-rama" is a 12 channel lighting-strand controller that is a great addition to commercial controllers because it is a roll your own controller. The dimmer-o-rama makes use of 3 of these (http://www.efx-tek.com/topics/fc-4.html) dimmer-controllers from EFX-TEK attached in a daisy chain (if budget allows, I'll add another 4 channels this year).

I managed to get 12 channels of output into 6 outlet pairs by "breaking away" the tab between the two outlets (this is a standard feature on outlets by the way) so that each of the outlets is independently powered.

Image0001 and Image0004 is a shot of the BS-2 controller and the three controllers. The black object in the upper left corner is a power cube that provides power to the BS2 controller and the fader controllers. The grey box at the bottom of the shot is a water-proof switch.

Image0002 and Image0003 is a shot that shows the 120 volt wiring going into the back of the outlet boxes that are direct mounted to the front panel of this box.

Image0005 shows the outside of the assembly with the waterproof outlet boxes showing the 12 independently controlled outlets.

The program that is attached is one example of how to drive the outputs. This program pretty much "fills up" a BS2 device (variables and program space) and because of that I had to get clever about variable re-use. The summary of that approach is that I "reserve the use of variables to specific call levels"

This was a pretty fun project and even my normally don't say a thing neighbors commented on my light show last Christmas. While it takes some time to hang up 12 channels of lights, the effect is worth it.

And while I use my light-o-ramas for some part of my annual light show, I like to use the dimmer-o-rama along with them because I get to play with the programming of the dimmer-o-rama (an option that isn't really available with the commercial products).

TinkersALot

sorry, can't upload the images. They are "too big" for this new forum. I'll try to add them later?

TinkersALot

until attachments here are working, the images can be found at:

http://www.efx-tek.com/php/smf/index.php?topic=1464.0

NOTE: This is EFX-Tek forum where I put up essentially the same post because, well, it uses their products.

TinkersALot

Here is a hook up diagram for the project. Please note, I give full credit to the fader controller board to EFX-Tek (this image is from their user's guide). The other images are from the parallax store.

tmart2007

do you feed the LOR rj45 line into the Basic Stamp so it responds to the light show information coming from the computer/or/director and/or through the previous LOR controller?

thnks
ted

TinkersALot

No. I did not do that. I asked the Light O Rama guys for their data format and they did not want to give me that information then. I just let the program in the BS2 "free run"