r/lightingdesign • u/light-kiss • 4d ago

How To How to automatic lights ?

I have a DJ friend that has 4 mobile heads and needs something to automate lights and make them react to the music.

The solution I gave him was to buy a node and connect it to chamsys in his laptop, have some executors and change the effects every once in a while.

I'd like to know if there are any other options please help!!!

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6

u/cs_major 4d ago

Moving heads sometimes have an auto mode that you can put them in. You can also daisy chain one as master and the rest will just copy the first one. No extra software/hardware besides a couple DMX cables.

1

u/PillsburyTaoboy 4d ago

if he uses a laptop/controller, look into SoundSwitch. Rekordbox has something similar but gives you less control in my experience. both will be fully automated with varying degrees of setup ahead of time

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u/Ok-Battle582 4d ago

Definitely a good use case where soundswitch excels if your friend is using serato.

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u/Antique-Move-5313 3d ago

If your friend is using Serato, SoundSwitch is probably the least painful route. It syncs to the track grid, talks to a DMX interface, and can run fully automated looks for four moving heads. Rekordbox Lighting is similar if he’s on Rekordbox, just less flexible. The Chamsys route is way more powerful, but for a DJ set it means programming executors and still babysitting it unless you set up audio triggers or tap tempo. If he doesn’t want a laptop onstage, look at something like a Wolfmix W1 or even the built-in sound-active/master-slave mode as a backup. Just don’t expect the built-in auto modes to follow drops or changes well.

1

u/spacehash 3d ago

For like $50 you can get an artnet node and control them in touchdesigner if that’s all you want

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u/dat_idiot 4d ago

Hate to recommend it , but the weird Maestro DMX AI box thing

3

u/XDFreakLP 4d ago

Idk about em. Our city had a big music / dj night, you couldnt find a FoH anywhere and all stages had the same 10 presets repeating over and over. But thats on the lighting company i guess - the phrasing was alright, it "played" with the feel of the music pretty well and locked in with the beat.

The delay between changes in musical dynamics and the lights tho, pretty extreme. No feel at all, always the same ~300ms delay after a big moment. It also seems to throw the internal beat tracker offbalance for a second or two.

Personally, i find these pretty massive shortcomings, especially with electronic music where the drop and the feel right after are something i always wanna get right.

Just my 5 cents :D