DMX gear what do I need to make this work

I'm new to dmx lighting and i don't know what to buy. We don't have a lot of money to mess with so I need to find some realitivley cheap options we have a Element lighting console and i know that it's dmx capable but I was wonder if I want to be able to program each moving light individually would it work to get a dmx splitter and hook it up to the console and then connect the dmx splitter to the lights using the individual dmx transmitters plugged into the splitter and recievers plugged into the lights them self ? Any help would be great (were a school auditorium with an extremely tight budget)

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  • We want to hang 2 lights on  a fly rail and then another 2 lights on another fly rail so I don't really know what are options are ( and if it helps are whole auditorium is stage pins based)

  • OK so doing a guess as to what your setup is you've got a dimmer rack somewhere with a dmx cable back to the desk with its outputs to conventional (power only not dmx) lights at the stage.

    Assuming you've not already got DMX lights on the stage, you need to get DMX from the desk to the moving heads.  If there is anything at the stage with DMX then you can just daisy chain from there and each fixture in a chain is seperately controllable if set to a different (non overlapping address).

    As has been said already using cables to connect from the first fixture in the chain to the desk would be cheaper and more robust.  If you really want to use a wireless link then I've used https://www.amazon.co.uk/Donner-Wireless-Receiver-Transmitter-Controller/dp/B00OC4YC9K which if the distance is not far work ok.  I only use them to control wash washes in the auditorium on a mobile setup where running cables is not practical and I'm not trying to tell them to do hard things so latency is not an issue.

    The other thing to watch out for is you shouldn't try to power the DMX lights from your dimmer out sockets on the stage as even on full the waveform from the dimmer is likely to fry the switched mode power supply in the fixture (probably wont be immediate but will significantly reduce the life of the fixture), so get normal power to the dmx controlled lights.

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  • OK so doing a guess as to what your setup is you've got a dimmer rack somewhere with a dmx cable back to the desk with its outputs to conventional (power only not dmx) lights at the stage.

    Assuming you've not already got DMX lights on the stage, you need to get DMX from the desk to the moving heads.  If there is anything at the stage with DMX then you can just daisy chain from there and each fixture in a chain is seperately controllable if set to a different (non overlapping address).

    As has been said already using cables to connect from the first fixture in the chain to the desk would be cheaper and more robust.  If you really want to use a wireless link then I've used https://www.amazon.co.uk/Donner-Wireless-Receiver-Transmitter-Controller/dp/B00OC4YC9K which if the distance is not far work ok.  I only use them to control wash washes in the auditorium on a mobile setup where running cables is not practical and I'm not trying to tell them to do hard things so latency is not an issue.

    The other thing to watch out for is you shouldn't try to power the DMX lights from your dimmer out sockets on the stage as even on full the waveform from the dimmer is likely to fry the switched mode power supply in the fixture (probably wont be immediate but will significantly reduce the life of the fixture), so get normal power to the dmx controlled lights.

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