Robo Spot Light

[RJ]

Didn't if anyone would be interested in seeing my progress on the robotic color spot lights I have designed and been building. but heres a picture of one that just needs the focuser ring siliconed on.

http://www.putfile.com/pic.php?img=6349636

Heres a video of the motrized control in testing as a proto. The whole project is running me around $100 for two and uses a 3 watt RGB led to allow you to point any color anywhere in your show using 5 channels in vixen to control it.

http://media.putfile.com/robo1

[wjohn]

very cool,

Can you mount a larger version with a 50 cal, and keep pesty door collectors away?

(joke)

well done,

John.

[RJ]

Maybe not that harsh but a tracking system and paintball gun for light show vandals would be too cool!

[stempile]

How are you controlling this? Very cool!

[Macrosill]

Matt,
The Robolight is controlled via DMX.

RJ,
Once again a fine job my friend.

[RJ]

Yes Matt, Thanks Bri

Should have said that. All my stuff is being developed for DMX now as I decided to use the professional lighting standard for everything. My whole show will run on a single cat5 cable run daisy chained. on dmx it doesn't matter what order the devices are on the cable you just program them, throw them where you want and then run the cable the shortest, neatest way you can to them. With the exception of my Ledtriks which of course have there own funky setup. This way if I see some off the shelf device I want to buy and use, it will just plug in and work in my show.

[stempile]

I know you have been talking a lot about DMX and I am interested in understanding the protocol in more detail and moving in that direction as I have a theater background for lighting. Almost went in to theater full time, but now I do computers...

What I am interested in specifically is the hardware control system, not the protocol. Currently my experience with servo control has been limited to the basic stamp and simple robot platform building. Since getting the PIC programmer I am moving in that direction now.

I have a blog but I am to busy working on things to update it... Am sure you are too. So no worries on the details. I can wait and see, I am just noodling it though.

ms

[FireGod]

RJ, Can you post a BOM (bill of materilas) for the robo and where to purchase the parts?

[RJ]

I will be doing a how to on the wiki for brian before long. I need to get the pcb done and test the final unit before I'm ready for that. Won't be very long.

[DynamoBen]

RJ, very cool nice job. I like how it is protected from the weather in its own dome.

[DynamoBen]

BTW I ran across this some time ago. This might give you are others some more ideas.

http://www.nomis52.net/?section=projects&page=fxlight

[rkhanso]

Has anyone developed this robo spotlight anymore? I'm interested in building one, but can't find anything recent about this.

[DynamoBen]

It looks to be a dead project or a one off. However I designed the PropController to help in creating something like that. (see my sig) You would be on your own from a hardware perspective.

[CaptKirk]

Based on past experience, I'd bet it had some sort of "fatal flaw" that made it fail as a project. Consider the source- I certainly have... :dry:

[davron12]

I'm going to be building something like this, this year. Trying to figure out what to use. Got the idea from this thread last year and didn't have the time last year to work on it. Most of all the servo controller boards out there don't seem like great options. Was either going to do Renard or DMX. Wanted a board that would control 2 servos and 3 light channels (RGB). Most of the boards are overkill, controlling more servos than necessary, or not enough light channels per servo (like the DMX bobcat 8 servos and 8 lights). The PropController sounds too expensive to have one per light. My lights aren't going to be close enough together to have one board control multiple lights without a lot of wires running around.

[DynamoBen]

Could write some custom code for this (http://www.parallax.com/StoreSearchResults/tabid/768/txtSearch/servo/List/0/SortField/4/ProductID/595/Default.aspx), it's got a propeller on board.