Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: House Lights Integration

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Posted by Justin DEntremont (Member # 10541) on 10-19-2018, 02:55 PM:

Hi Everyone.

I'm wondering if some of you can shed some light on what you use for house light control and automation/integration with the projection system.

Currently have a cinema with 3 screens, and the "lighting automation" at the moment consists of yelling across the lobby to get someone to open a breaker panel and flip the breaker to turn on the lights in a given auditorium.

For what it's worth, servers here are all Doremi, and projectors all Christie.

Ideally I'm looking for something that I can also integrate with the burglar alarm / access control system that will shut off every light inside the building upon arming the system on the way out at the end of the night, and be able to turn every light on in the event of an intrusion. But that's just icing on the cake.

At the end of the day what I really need is a solutions so that I can control the lights in the auditoriums using cues in the Doremi playlist.

Preferably I'd like install something that I can control via IP. Reason being, the circuits for the lighting are all run back to a central electrical room, and the 3 cinema servers are all quite far away (from the electrical room, as well as each other). Each cinema system is on the IP network, and there is connection available in the electrical room. This would save me from running hundreds of feet of communications wire for GPIO style contact closure, or rerouting the high voltage wiring.

I've looked into the Lutron Caseta, Lutron RadioRA2 and Lutron Grafik Eye QS systems. While they're technically residential type systems (with the exception of the GE-QS), each one of these appears to allow control via IP using Telnet, though I'm not sure if the Doremi's would be able to send the commands. Would using a "RAW" connection be able to accomplish this? If not, is there an external device that can act as a middle man that I can use to translate RAW commands from the Doremi into telnet commands expected by the lighting system.

Are there any suggestions on a better way to accomplish this, or better equipment that I should be looking at?

Preferably in a way that isn't going to bankrupt me, and won't require me to rip out and/or fish a whole bunch of wiring, but everything is on the table for now.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 10-25-2018, 09:15 AM:

There are house dimmers that have Ethernet control available, so I hear. I have never used one. That would probably be your best bet. Hopefully others can chime in here with recommendations for actual products.

Do you have an automation system (ACT, JNIOR, eCNA, etc...) for each auditorium? Typically the dimmer would be controlled from the automation, although the Doremi does have a GPIO and, yes, can send Ethernet commands by setting up a RAW devices in the Device Manager.

This topic is better suited for the Digital Cinema forum.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 10-25-2018, 06:06 PM:

What kind of 'lights' do you have in your auditoriums? I understand you do nit only want to control (ultimately, dim) the auditorium lights, but also the general house lights?

- Carsten

Posted by David Buckley (Member # 2600) on 10-25-2018, 07:42 PM:

Alternatively, you could put a Jnior where the electric panels are, and use conventional dimmers with contact-close control. The advantage of this is that it is a solution known to work, and no additional wiring needed.

Posted by Jack Ondracek (Member # 1466) on 10-25-2018, 08:01 PM:

We have Kelmar dimmers at our place. They work with contact closures or logic "grounds". Something like that would eliminate having to yell across the room.

As for the rest: Our indoor house had switches in the lobby that operated contactors. These operated contactors that would bypass the dimmers and put full power to the lights. The intent was for cleaning the auditoriums, but you could get creative with the idea.

I think most new construction or renovation requires that the fire alarm has some connection to bring up the house lights. Attaching a relay to the siren line of a burglar alarm could do the same thing.

Posted by Buck Wilson (Member # 5885) on 10-25-2018, 10:45 PM:

Everything you mentioned sounds quite do-able, my first thought was also the JNIOR. The owner of the company is on these forums and would likely be happy to help you set it all up

Posted by Bruce Cloutier (Member # 9615) on 11-16-2018, 11:56 AM:

I routinely check the digital Cinema forum and just happened to notice this post. The JNIOR has been successfully used to accommodate house light dimming as well as the integration of fire alarm systems. You can call Rick at INTEG 1-724-933-9350 and he can work through the details with you.

I think in a lot of cases where theaters have "upgraded" to LED fixtures the JNIOR with an expansion module is used to generate the 10V reference signal for dimming. That can be commanded by the media system. If you have incandescent lighting and have used AC dimmers Rick may be aware of the approach other integrators have used. I would bet that you can get drop in dimmers that accept the 10V reference signal. We should work on this with you as it is a capability that we definitely intend to provide.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-16-2018, 05:02 PM:

There is a company in Hollywood or Burbank that makes a DMX to relay interface that can be used to control a dimer requiring a contact closure. I have used their stuff in the past and it is fully programmable and it works well. I used a lot of their stuff back in the days of D-Cinema before there was any projector/server control over ethernet. It's an odd name and as soon as I remember it I will post the info.

Mark

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 11-16-2018, 05:07 PM:

Was it Doug Fleenor Design ( http://www.dfd.com/ ). Also, I used to design DMX products for http://www.dovesystems.com .

Harold

Posted by Bruce Cloutier (Member # 9615) on 11-17-2018, 10:03 AM:

I can show you how to put a JNIOR on a DMX network and then do just about anything but that is not what Justin is asking about.

There are some theaters that in replacing their incandescent house lighting chose to use DMX LED fixtures. It does provide a wide range of options for dimming and using color.

We run into people who have tried to replace their incandescent bulbs with "dimmable" LED replacements. They quickly find out that while the brightness of these can be dimmed with the standard AC dimmer it is not at all linear. I had a long conversation with a couple of guys at a recent trade show about that.

You can replace the fixtures with LED fixtures. Each of those has to have its own power supply which is designed for the type of LEDs. You need the version of those that take a 10V reference signal for dimming. The JNIOR with a 10V expansion module can then be used to dim the lights.

While not designed for recess mounting, DMX lighting could be a very interesting option. The 412DMX JNIOR is available for that. And, naturally, there are other products out there to generate the signals for you.

I am jut not aware of a standard AC dimmer that takes any 10V reference. That doesn't mean that it isn't out there. But we are not talking about your standard dining room dimmer. But if we need some unique solution to this, we could pull it off. Rick would know how others might have solved the problem. I'll ask him during the week.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-17-2018, 09:43 PM:

Kelmar makes a 10v dimmer option for LEDs. You just have to ask. I've installed a number of them and they work quite well.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-18-2018, 01:39 PM:

Eprad is coming out with an LED system for their dimmers. You change the output of the dimmer to their LED driver output (low-voltage) and use their lamps but retain existing wiring. The net result are seemingly pretty cheap lamps that dim to zero and use traditional cinema automations. And, if you have the EPRAD dimmer already, converts as fast as you can change the lamps and the output board.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-18-2018, 03:04 PM:

quote: Harold Hallikainen
Was it Doug Fleenor Design

Nope, but I have also used their products and they are very good.

Posted by Justin DEntremont (Member # 10541) on 11-10-2019, 04:21 AM:

1 year later.

I took the plunge and had all the switches replaced with Lutron RadioRA2 dimmer switches (http://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/Pages/components/radiora2digitalfadedimmer/overview.aspx?pgid=41), and got the wireless hub that goes with them (http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocumentLibrary/Main_Auxiliary%20Repeaters_369-227a.pdf).

So I've had some success, but hit a bit of a brick wall.

Attempt 1: Initially I'd thought I'd be able to control this directly from the Doremi servers via IP (the main hub supports Telnet), but I had no luck there as there's a login required via telnet before you can issue commands. No go.

Attempt 2: I have a JNIOR and this thing has a serial connection. Connected them together with a "straight through" serial cable, and configured the JNIOR to talk to it using "TCP-to-Serial". No go.

Attempt 3: Turns out that the "straight through" serial cable I was sold was packaged wrong, and was actually a "null modem" cable. Went out and got a null modem adapter to turn the null modem cable back into a straight through cable.

At this point, I can use PuTTY and login to port 9201 on the JNIOR and issue commands successfully. (e.g. "#OUTPUT,12,1,0,2" ). The dimmers respond as they should, and if I'm also telnet directly into the Lutron hub at the same time, I can see the commands being excecuted / it's response to the commands, which is the same I see via raw TCP from the JNIOR.

I have a device in my Doremi setup as RAW IP, pointing to the IP of the JNIOR, and port 9201. Now when I try to issue commands from the Doremi (e.g. "#OUTPUT,12,1,0,2 \r" ), not a damn thing happens. Doremi reports that the command has been issued successfully, but there's no response of any kind on the Lutron system.

I know the commands are right, as if I connect the Lutron box to a Doremi via serial, the same commands work without a problem.

I've tried prepending a \w (wait) to the beginning of the command like I've had to do with my JSD-80 when controlling it via IP and that doesn't help either.

Anyone have any ideas?

Currently just have it directly connected via serial to one auditorium, which is nice, for that single screen. I have two more I need to control as well.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-10-2019, 01:49 PM:

Is the JNIOR set up as a pass-through or something? If not, how is it supposed to respond to a Lutron command?

I have controlled a Lutron GrafixEye dimmer that has a QSE I/O module. Yes, it did ask for a password but I just concanted the command so it issued the password<cr> and then the command. In my case, I was using #DEVICE commands to recall scenes. I used an Eprad eCNA on my installation but it should work directly from the Doremi (and ALWAYS use the \w prefix on Doremi...it never hurts and seemingly always helps).

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 11-10-2019, 07:47 PM:

Like Steve said, if the JNIOR isn't set up with something that passes your commands through to the Lutron, I can't see how this is going to work.

Although I'm pretty sure there will be some way to make the JNIOR work that way, this is usually not the way you want to use a JNIOR. Maybe Bruce could chime in and point you in the best direction, as my experience with JNIOR is somewhat limited.

I generally don't like sending out passwords over macros, but like Steve indicated, Doremi's macro commands usually work fine with logins, as long as they're simple username and/or password strings and you provide a few 'waits' via \w. Sometimes it may even require more than one wait, depending on how long the operation takes.

Keep in mind that:

\r is a carriage return, the "enter for macs"
\n is a newline, the "enter for UNIX"
\r\n is a carriage return and newline, the "enter for Windows"

Many systems expect a \n for an "enter", some do expect a "\r\n", a single \r often doesn't register as "enter".

Check what your receiving end expects to end a command, otherwise it may be stuck in limbo, waiting for whatever timeout comes first.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 11-10-2019, 08:37 PM:

The JNIORs offer a serial/Ethernet bridge mode.

- Carsten

Posted by Bruce Cloutier (Member # 9615) on 11-11-2019, 08:12 AM:

Justin, give Kevin a call here at INTEG or email support[at]integpg.com. You really don't need to experiment with the JNIOR too long when we are happy to help you put it together. It is what we do. Not that we discourage DIY in any way.

Steve, there is a stock application that opens a pass-through serial connection between a TCP port and the AUX serial port.

If there is some login or other responses necessary we can write a quick application to do it. Kevin may already have a way to handle it.

Justin, from the command line you can use the IOLOG -AO command to view the communications over that serial port. So if you send a string to the TCP port and then execute that command in a console session you should see what you sent. You can see both directions differentiated with the '-' characters. That can be very useful.

Um... I am assuming that you are using a Series 4.

Posted by Justin DEntremont (Member # 10541) on 11-11-2019, 02:54 PM:

Steve & Marcel: Like Bruce mentioned, the JNIOR has a built in feature which can act as a RawIP-to-Serial bridge.

Steve: This is somewhat reassuring that you were able to directly control a GrafikEye using it's Ethernet module, as all the Lutron products use the same integration protocol. This would be the ideal setup for me.

UPDATE: As I'm typing this post, connected directly via IP, I've tried adding the login info, separated by using \r\n which didn't help. I then added a \w between the commands. That didn't help. I tried taking out all the spaces in the command string, and using \w combined with \r\n and it worked!

So for the written record, here's the string that worked: \wlutron\r\n\wintegration\r\n\w#OUTPUT,12,1,0,2\r\n

Thanks Everyone!

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 11-11-2019, 04:04 PM:

Yes...as disconcerting as it may be...extra spaces may not be interpreted as nothingness but as a character so often it is safer to just slam everything together (and that is what I did on mine).

Glad it all worked.

Reading the Lutron integration book can make one dizzy...I just want to recall the flipping light presets!!!!! I'll often tell the other company...just give me a contact closure interface, I don't want to be part of your overly complex lighting system! Of course, the site were I'm talking to the Lutron...they have something like 14 lighting presets so contact closure would get to be a bit ridiculous. One nice thing about "figuring it out" is that you have it for future installations.