SRS Lighting*

Guarantee

The backbone of SRS Lighting has traditionally been dimmers and DMX splitters. This started SRS's fame and now so much experience has been gained in their production that the company dares to offer a five-year warranty on the dimmers and even a lifetime warranty on the splitters.

DMX dimmer and switchers

At the heart of using dimmers, switchers and other lighting control equipment is the DMX protocol. From the light or control desk, commands are sent in the form of a command to switch on or off, or to control levels. Over one DMX cable, 512 such commands can be sent. These can be intended for a device that can perform multiple commands, such as an LED spotlight whose colours you want to set, change gobos and control light intensity, but you can also use each of these commands for individual devices, such as, for example, a dimmer that controls the brightness of a fixture.

Functions

When you work with a dimmer pack, each 'circuit' of the dimmer pack thus uses one of those 512 possible 'channels', and if you work with moving lights, that fixture soon uses eight or more of those 512 DMX channels to be able to direct the spotlight, focus it, set the size of the beam, change colour or whatever else the fixture offers. Via one DMX cable, you can therefore control 512 dimmers or - for example - eight moving heads that each use 64 DMX channels for the various functions.

Dimmers are a must-have for all lighting fixtures.

Dimmers are therefore needed when you want to control the brightness of spotlights that cannot receive DMX themselves, and the same goes for switchers, the latter category being only switchable on and off.

Connections

When buying dimmers and switchers, at least keep an eye on the size of the inputs and outputs. Many luminaires, smoke machines and other equipment are fitted with schuko sockets (regular 220V plugs like you find in your household), but in theatre practice 16A-CEE is also common (with the characteristic blue colour and lid that immediately serves as a lock).

Safety

In general, it is very important to scrutinise the power supply when you get going with theatre lights. Because they are meant to produce high light output, power consumption is also much higher. Soon, then, the power supply of a household system falls short. You then need to switch to a serious system that can distribute power safely and reliably. Perhaps needless to say: working with a poor and thoughtless power supply is playing with your life.