Richard Brown

In the end, I got half the money back, and half the postage, so yes, I’ll keep the cheap lights and maybe just set them to ‘sound’ or to DMX with whatever slow-moving colours I can set, as you suggest .. For a tenner each, they’re OK.

Another LED parkan I bought off e-Bay (I must be glutton for severe punishment) didn’t work on DMX at all, although it was advertised as being fully DMX controllable. It’s a 75 watt LED Parkan and quite bright.
I shall keep that on the floor beside my stage monitor, and also keep it on a static colour..
I got a full refund for it, and only had to pay the four quid postage, from China. So not bad. That’s 44.00 quid I’ve laid out so far 🙂

So, apart from now owning a few crap lights, and having made a lot of stupid purchase mistakes, thinking I could get a half-decent lights setup on the cheap, it hasn’t broken the bank so far. 🙂
I live in hope 🙂

regards and thanks for all the great advice..

richard
bg

Hi DJ Vintage..
Thank you very much for your help and patient explanations.
I think I have found the problem.

The spec that you copied for the parkans from the e-Bay ad, is not the same as the spec included with the lights.
(Yes, I realise that this is because I bought rubbishy & cheap LED parkans) Probably they are ‘seconds’ or old stock.

The supplied spec sheet designation is as follows; (copied verbatim)

CH1 Total dimming
CH2 Strobe
CH3 Voice
CH4 Speed
CH5 Red
CH6 Green dimming
CH7 Blue light

In this format faders 5 & 6 do not bring up either red or green, presumably because the Chauvet Obey 6 is trying to send controll data to white, and to UV on those channels.
It seems as if the addresses are mapped incorrectly on the LED address board inside the lights, and the RGB receive codes will never be correctly addressable.

regards
richard
bg

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I did all of the setting of all fixtures to one DMX channel many days ago. It is still not possible to address red , blue or green or access any of them by any fader combination.

Then I set them up to 1, 7, 13, 19, 25, etc. (and have done so dozens of times since) as well as repeat the ‘all to one channel’ mode.
It is still not possible either to address red , blue or green or access them by any fader combination.

All I get, as the original poster Charlee noted is random flashing, occasional strobing, and a lot of nothing.. No colors are assigned to the first three rgb faders when in simple manual RGBAWUV mode, and none are accessible by pressing the buttons above the faders.. I can go from zero to full intensity with the above fader buttons, but that only gives me uncontrolled colour and no option to change or set it.

All I get in manual mode is occasional uncontrollable mixes of LEDs After that, and coming out of RGBAWUV mode, it only gets worse.
I am aware how the channels should be addressed and blacked out, and how a channel can have blackout assigned to it until I hit and clear the blackout on the respective channel. etc.

That the addresses that the controller sends and is mapped to don’t match RGB colors or switch on anything much at all. (often) and then if I do get some colour, it’s not controllable, because I have no access to even the very basic RGB standard.

regards

richard
bg

Thanks Charlee.
I now have 11 X LIGHTS in total, all of which are unusable by the Chauvet Obey 6 in any of the ways that I wanted (if at all).
I really wish someone had posted on the net the difficulties and hazards of trying to get simple DMX lights to respond to a DMX controller.. and I wouldn’t have wasted many hundreds of pounds.. Unfortunately I can’t control mine with a simple footswitch although I looked at the QTX foot switches.
It seems I’m going to have to throw a lot more money at the problem, just to get some very simple results..
My wife will justifiably go mental..

richard
bg

Hi Folks..

I’m new here, (just registered today) and also just bought an Chauvet Obey 6 controller. (Extremely Bad Move!)
I also bought 2 x Beamz UV lights, and 5 flat LED parkans. (4 from one manufacturer)

I have the same problem as the previous poster, except that my lights won’t even map to RGB in its most basic or simplest form. (that would do as a basis, but unfortunately not possible)

The faders in RGBAWUV mode on the Obey 6 do totally unpredictable things, and presumably, for the same reasons as those of the previous poster..
I shall make a DMX terminator tomorrow, and see if that helps, but I doubt it…

The main reason I see for all this frustration (and severe waste of money) is because there is no General DMX mapping standard.
Wouldn’t it make sense, (like the General Midi standard) for all controller manufacturers to map their products to fixed addresses?

Now, I’ve invested in not so cheap lights and a cheap controller, only to find them all useless, and nonsensical.
I can’t even select any basic colours, and I have to fiddle about for ages, until I get anything at all (which is not usually what I want, even remotely. ) Not good, when I’m supposed to be playing guitar and singing!

The fact that usually most LED light manufacturerrs don’t print their DMX addresses anywhere (until you take the spec sheet out of the box) means that I (and loads of other folks) are taking a huge chance in buying anything.. (because the likelyhood that it will work predictably when connected to DMX is extremely remote..)

For me, a standardisation and General DMX address protocol, adopted by all manufacturers for all of their products, is a matter of extreme urgency..
(I don’t think I can even take my lights apart and resolder the RGB led connector leads to different positions on the circuit board connectors, because fader 1) will never ever be red. or fader 2) green etc.) I’s not that the colours are just unpredictable, and in the wrong order, it’s that I can’t even select the bloody things with a fader, at all.

ritchie
bg