Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[C855B]

Lighting again. I have finally come to a decision on the effects lighting plan, and that plan does not include the fancy-schmancy wireless "smart home" lighting systems such as Philips Hue, GE/Quirky Wink, Belkin WeMo or OSRAM Lightify. This particular technology is fun but not mature, no matter what system I choose would be either abandoned or upgrade hell in five years, the gamuts are limited, and the color-capable bulbs are not coming down in price. Also, in some respects, as I said elsewhere this "smart home" stuff is VHS vs. Beta all over again. Just not going there.

What prompted this decision was today's test of a Chauvet (theater and DJ lighting maker) new mini PAR can. PAR cans are what you call the individual lights you typically see up in the rafters on performance stages. This new Chauvet light has three ultra-ultra-bright LED projector bulbs, each bulb having red, green, blue, amber, white, and UV elements. The gamut is amazing, it's blinding-bright, and the price of these lights from discounters is cheaper than two "smart" bulbs. In an A-B test for brightness, this light absolutely smoked the Philips Hue BR30 spotlights - if the Chauvet was on, you could not tell if the Hue lights were on or off.

The rub now is I was basing the Hue (or equivalent) lighting system design on conventional consumer/commercial track lighting systems, one track above each aisle of the layout, with heads illuminating each side. That's not going to work for the cans, which are 2.5 pounds each, and I need fewer of them - a lot fewer. The dilemma now is the mounting arrangement and location. Stage systems use use rows of suspended 1" pipe with clamps on the can brackets. Flexible, but the clamps are bulky and about $10 each. So up for consideration is suspended Unistrut or equivalent. Regardless of mounting system, I need to resolve the arrangement.



This is similar to the original per-aisle idea, but with only two mounting bars paralleling the layout peninsulas. The cans would be aimed so their combined illumination areas cover the whole layout.



This has the brackets perpendicular to the pensinsulas. Advantage here is the cans can be concentrated between the aisles, and aimed in a fashion similar to what was planned with the track lighting. Another advantage is the struts can be suspended directly from the roof trusses, saving some support engineering.



This is a hybrid, with quite a bit of flexibility on can location. It's the most complex to install. Incidentally, this is the arrangement used for the Greeley layout.

Overall lighting plan will be the "theater" lighting systems for spotlights and effects lighting, fill lights using small PAR cans with regular warm white LED floods, and "house lights" consisting of 6, 9 or 12 LED troffers. Control for lighting will be through a DMX network, including dimmable house lights through the DMX sequencer. Sounds complicated and expensive, but quickly running through the costs, this will be less than half of what the original "smart lights" and track lighting system was going to cost.

Discussion open to the floor.

[GaryHinshaw]

Sounds very promising.  Two concern I'd have with the proposed layout of the cans: 1) with the open plan, it seems like you will have some viewing angles where some of the lights are shining in your eyes, 2) you might have some deep shadows in some areas.  Perhaps I am not picturing the geometry very well though.

I'd love to see some photos of these in action.

[C855B]

1) with the open plan, it seems like you will have some viewing angles where some of the lights are shining in your eyes,

What? And not extend to my guests the joys of what I have to put up with at every concert I play?*    Yes, shallow angle is a concern with the lights around 13' off the floor, corresponding to 9' off the layout. This is something slightly in favor of the "X" mounting pattern. I have not dismissed the idea of three parallel runs in the vertical orientation. I could also have three runs in the horizontal scheme, but mounting the strut becomes a challenge - doable, just more complex.

* - In truth, this is something usually only noticed when you are first on stage. Once into the performance, eyes are on the conductor who in most cases is well below the lighting angle. In the layout setting, I'm less concerned about the conductor than the brakeman on the ground giving me hand signals. [ba dump dump]

2) you might have some deep shadows in some areas. ...

Yes, and exacerbated by the spotlight nature of these cans. Very sharp shadows. I'm hoping this will be softened by larger numbers of PAR16 or PAR20 white floods, which is what I meant by "fill". Also, for normal operation, the house lights are a bigger part of the plan now, given that I should be able to put those into the effects control mix.

I was planning to test with a diffuser, anyway, which doesn't have to be anything more complex than a hunk of fluorescent light fixture plastic. It might address both issues.

Photos... OK. I'll need to drag out the SLR. Phone pics don't do well illustrating lighting.

[C855B]

1) with the open plan, it seems like you will have some viewing angles where some of the lights are shining in your eyes...

Back to the drawing board... calculating aiming, based on your thought I have considered 45° at 6' above the floor as the least acute we can live with relative to viewing, where this 6' is computed at benchwork edge (where viewers are standing). This corresponds to ~7' from the hangers, so each row of hardware can serve a 14' band. As far as illumination radius, the fill floods will be soft and have roughly a 120° spread, so they will cover a lot of area and any given location should be lit by at least two floods, plus the house lights. That should mitigate shadows. Effects spots without diffusers have a concentrated focus, so I need to measure the spread @ 7' and 10' also considering ellipsis at 45°. I'll see if I can scrounge-up diffuser material to test with today.

Bottom line so far is there will need to be four hangar rows suspended in line with and directly above the peninsulas, not including the two wall sections. With the other schemes the illumination angle is too horizontal especially into the corners.

[GaryHinshaw]

Bottom line so far is there will need to be four hangar rows suspended in line with and directly above the peninsulas, not including the two wall sections. With the other schemes the illumination angle is too horizontal especially into the corners.

I assume you intend for a given hangar row to be illuminating the two adjacent peninsulas, and not the one immediately underneath?  That seems like it should work really well.  Fill floods should mitigate shadows just fine.

[C855B]

Yes, that's the thinking. Might be a fill flood pointed straight down when/if needed. I'm looking at parts already and am surprised/pleased at the reduced costs versus the original concept, although there is some increase in fabrication time. Nothing major, tho'. The Hue test bulbs? Hellooooooo, eBay.

[C855B]

Footnote... tested the Chauvet can a little tonight after doing wall framing (can't imagine life without a nail gun!). At 7' straight on, the illuminated area was a 4' circle - pretty narrow. I made a diffuser, and it did not help much. However and surprisingly, at 10' the diffuser helped considerably, softening the light and increasing the lit area to about 13'. Can't explain why, it just did, seemingly in violation of square of the distance. 

At 45° and 10' back from the surface, the pronounced hotspot went away and the lighting became very even, more so with the diffuser. I think we have a winner here. Per plan, the diffuser was a hunk of fluorescent light fixture plastic, cut out with a hole saw. This particular plastic was the common transparent prismatic pattern, I'm going to try another type tomorrow that leans towards the translucent.

No pics since it was a quick looksee before Robyn started to bug me about calling it quits for the night.

[Scottl]

Given how much space you have to cover, I would think linear lighting closer to the layout will give the best intensity and coverage. 

[C855B]

Not ignoring what you said, Scott... the plan has got to be overhead and implemented as part of building construction (versus layout construction). Hanging linear lighting over the layout would get into issues given the high ceiling and lack of backgrounds from which to suspend a support system extending up from the benchwork.

Progress has been a little slow in the past week, but progress is being made nonetheless. Studwalls and first layer (R-19) of insulation on the remainder of the north and first part of west walls:



I finished the rough electrical here just a few minutes ago, so we're now ready for the R-13 between the studs.

You can see in the lower left of the picture that we are still dealing with moisture in the new concrete. The second pour, behind where I'm standing, is much worse. I am reticent to drive the lift on it until I see more white, so can't do the remaining studwall section until then. Cold is moving in this week, so we're bracing for huge electric bills as we coax the furnace to keep up with the partially-insulated space. Up to this point it has been holding a 25-30° differential, so the pipes are safe for the time being. If we start looking at serious cold like last year, I have additional heat being installed in the workshop where most of the support plumbing is located. If push, etc., enough is finished to where I can get at least the closest heater to the pipes operational in about an hour.

[SSW7771]

The building is looking good. On the concrete it appears they used too much water, it will need a longer cure time, but the color to should even out. However, this will take longer with colder temps. Under normal curing conditions it is reasonable to anticipate full concrete strength around 28 days.

[Specter3]

My wife works for an large industrial contractor down here in the South(built part of Boeing plant in Charleston) she says that on large pours here that it can be 3-4 weeks before full cure so you are not behind the curve by much.

[C855B]

The guys did comment while they were spreading the second pour that there was more water. I'm just a little surprised that small of a change varied the cure/dry time as much as it did. They were only a day apart, with the first pour in the picture having that small spot of moisture and the second pour still about 50% dark gray. I need to sand and seal it, and it's not getting sealer until all the visible moisture is gone. One thing I might not be factoring here is the second pour was also thicker. Patience, I guess.

Railcam is back online: http://www.railfancentralia.com/railcam.html. Seeing that this meant "quality time" on a ladder I wanted to do this yesterday while it was 65° and sunny, but we stacked too many tasks trying to beat the cold front. It was 38° and starting to sleet when we were putting it up.

[C855B]

Red-letter day today. The last panel of studwall went up in the layout room, and we are about a half-hour short of having all walls insulated with at least one layer:



You can see the uneven color in the second concrete pour, on the left. I decided it was cured enough to run the lift on, and there was no indication of any problems. Tomorrow Robyn will do the last three bats in the upper left, and then start on the second layer of fiberglass on the right. I also need to do furring strips above the new walls since drywall needs to go up to the bottom of the trusses. There will be insulation on the left wall, between the layout room and the workshop.

Once the second layer of insulation is done I can start with drywall. The plan at the moment is to first do just a 2' strip along the top of the entire room so I can mount the grid ceiling molding and get that going soon since it supports insulation. Once the grid ceiling is in place and the temperatures in there become civilized, then we can finish the rest of the drywall in relative comfort.

[TLOC]

Congrats

Another milestone for you and the spouse. I do admire the patience you both must have. Great looking space, cannot wait for the real stuff to begin.

[packers#1]

Congrats on the milestone! I've followed along since the beginning (I think, it's been a while!) and it's nice to see the project continue along. Thank you for sharing the progress with us, it's been quite enjoyable to watch a layout evolve from just a concept when it's getting its own separate home