Incandescant bulbs and Max MSP
Has anyone ever worked with old style incandescent bulbs, i want to control the brightness of 12 of them using signals from MAX but i'm not sure how
thinking at the moment i'd have to build an arduino based dimmer box with 12 dimmer switches that power the 12 lightbulbs and controlling those switches from max
is there an easier way than this? i have an audio interface with 12 + outputs so maybe i could somehow use audio signals to control something instead of actually building something?
any help appreciated
thanks
You would still need to build a box with a ton of wiring to get it to work with your 12+ audio outputs.
Best bet is a dimmer. You can get some decent ones on aliexpress, for instance. I'd go for a dmx unit, but that's because I already have dmx gear. Perhaps a specific arduino unit that can be controlled via serial?
You would need a lighting dimmer and a dmx interface. It all depends on how much light you want to control. I would go with some cheap RGB led fixtures that take a dmx signal.
I disagree. You don't *need* dmx, per se. And you can do some really interesting stuff with dimmers, especially incandescent light bulbs.
hello!
thanks for all the replies
after chatting to someone else on another forum i think i am looking at getting a bunch of these dc controlled dimmers
then running the DC input from arduino through a capacitor to smooth it off then into the dimmer
running individual mains though the dimmer to each individual lightbulb
sound right?
Doesn't sound right to me, no. You're looking at buying 180 pounds of velleman kits, and you'll *still* end up building a bunch.
+1 for @wetterberg
Last year i did a similar setup: a set of light bulbs connected to relay card connected to Sensorbox (a kind of MIDI controlled Arduino). Matching contolling currents was a real headache, so were building (a safety reasons - noone wants to be electrocuted or burnt), testing, transporting, setting up this fragile diy hardware... a lot of effort and time. If you are not an electric engineer do yourself a favour and get dmx interface and some dimmer packs...
I was suggesting something like this mainly for it's ease of use.
yeah simple dimmers are great. In europe this one is sensible:
http://www.thomann.de/dk/botex_mpx405v.htm
BUT you'd still need a dmx controller, AND you can actually get a couple of cool LED units for just a bit more than that single 4-ch dimmer.
If you go the dmx dimmer pack route check this very cheap usb midi to dmx controller I built:
https://github.com/natcl/dmx_midi
It's very easy to control from Max since it's midi and it's cheap to build...