Upgrading Lights

"Don't be afraid to start over again. This time you're not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience."

-- Unknown

"Do as I say, not as I do"

-- John Selden

Those two quotes are so relavant to where I'm at right now that I wanted to start the page with them. I LOVE the USB powered lights that I have and highly recommend them (Do as I say...). However, I've reached a point where they don't work for me anymore which means that it's time for me to upgrade my lights (not as I do). I'm not to the point of throwing away my lights, but let's me take a moment to talk about why I'm doing this.

The USB light all come with remotes and the challenge starts as soon as you have two different remotes. I have a box of lights and remotes, but I don't know which remote goes to which device. The reason this isn't an issue is because I rarely use the remotes. I just push power into the devices and let them do their thing. The remotes are all infrared transmitting remotes and unfortunately, there is a lot of overlap between the signals.

What this means is that when I push red on one remote, the light it came with will turn red, but another light might go to strobing. I can't easily change the light settings once things are started. Anything that I do to one light has a cascading affect to the other lights. I don't think this is an issue for most people and still would recommend the laser lights to get started. What I would change now is that I would have bought 4 of the exact same light.

The Budget

I'm setting aside $300 for this round of light upgrades. My plan isn't to spend it all at once, but to test the waters first with $150 and then spend the rest once I know that this will work well. My goals for the lights are to be able to have much better control of them while I'm playing. I can't even turn them on or off currently as a starting point. I also want to be able to have groups of lights that turn on and off at once.

The Plan

Anything I buy has to support DMX control and sound activated. If you haven't heard of DMX, all you need to know is that it's a way to control one or more lights. My thinking was that I would start with the new lights in sound activated mode. Somewhere in the future, I'll make the leap to DMX.

I don't understand DMX or how to use it, but once I have some lights I can figure it out. I've looked at legacy DMX Controllers and they aren't obvious on the surface to me but my plan was to figure this out when I crossed that line in my setup.

Surfing Amazon, I came across my first light. A "Moving Head DJ light". itwas on sale and and I ordered 1. I received it a few days later and it is a game changer. At the default mode, it adds such a unique light to the room. It's directional and really gets attention when it's moving.

Something that struck me instantly was that I was leaving myself vulnerable to the same potential situation where when I move to DMX, I'll be in the same situation of two lights that look the same but the signals aren't consitent. I ordered a second light immediately.

The next find was a "Spider Moving Head DJ light". The difference between a Spider Moving Head and a plan Moving Head is that a spider has 2 banks that move back and forth. The plain Moving Head light has all lights pointing the same direction.

The lights on a spider are fixed in one axis and only move on the other. So if you mount it in an upright position, the red light will always be shooting down as it swings left and right.

Even after I picked up the second moving head light so I had two on the same controller configuration, when I received the spider light, I didn't feel compelled to order a second one. It's a fun light, but not nearly as impressive as the moving head light above

With the lights above, I felt like I was in pretty good shape, but then I found a LED PAR light for pretty cheap and I picked up two of those. I have to say that these produce so much more light than I was expecting them to.

The PAR lights are just fill. They don't move or anything special, it's just light and fill light meaning it covers a lot of space vs the two lights above that both are closer to beams of light.

What they do have that was unique for the price is the traditional Red Green Blue (RGB) lighting AND also UV lighting (Black Light). I thought that would be a neat effect to be able to shut down the lights above and only have these spray UV light across the kids. Especially when they have on their Black Light Reactive Temp Tattoos.

A quick check in, I'd spent about half my $300 budget at this point and once I could see these lights in my hands, desperately wanted the ability to control them. I didn't want an old school light controller. I wanted something digital that would be easy to use and I came across Q Light Controller + (QLC+). My idea for where to go really started to crystalize at this point.

I wanted to be able to put a device on my network that could signal all the DMX lights and be able to have a simple interface to manage it all. For a dance party, I can have 5-10 scenes pre-set and then bounce back and forth between them with a tap on the screen. It will also allow me to turn off all the lights if I want to. I can create more scenes over time and pick up more lights

Looking through the supported hardwarde for QLC+ They called out strong vendor support from Pknight so I decided to go that route. I purchased a CR011R that I can put on my network and connect all the new lights to it.

My next steps are going to be getting everything configured and tested out before the next party. I don't expect it to be difficult to get the basics running but getting all the moving lights working together and looking good. I've got a day off coming up to work on it and get everything done.

Once I get these connected and functional, I might try and send out some offers on various lights on Facebook marketplace to see if I can add a few random lights to the collection.

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

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