Modify Cheap Strobes?

[colouredmirrorball]

I have seen something like that: LED moonflowers with strobe-function. It is not very cheap, and the beams can't rotate. But the effect should be the same.

[QUAZAR]

Taken about 8 years ago. This is 8 of the Pro Strobeflowers in a 5K pax venue.

[colouredmirrorball]

Wow! That looks bright! Pretty spectacular for not being a laser.

[Insanity]

Yes, Opti Strobeflowers and the more common Club Strobeflowers are great pieces of kit, I love 'em. They were state of the art back in the early '90s.

Unfortunately it's not a simple case of plugging in a Pulsar Rainbow controller to the Opti kit without some modification though.
Neil

I have to admit, I knew nothing much about them.. I just used to hit the button while I was Dj'ing...
They were at the time the greatest thing other than of course a laser.. Shame to hear they are now obsolete.. Looking at the picture reminds me of how awesome they are/were...
Like I said before, fill the room with masses of smoke and turn em on. All you could see was smoke flashing a dirty brown colour until it dispersed a bit and then they cut through it filling the room with coloured shards of light... And a dancefloor full of disoriented people...Ooohh the memories...

Mark

[majorlee]

"cheapy strobe lights from maplin"

hey they are REALLY cool units , comes with built in PYRO effect ...to see it in operation all you have to do is plug it into a Petrol Generator for power and watch ... Strobe , strobe , strobe , flash flash flash , strobe , flash , strobe , flash .. PUFFF ... smoke signals ..flames ..burn Grrrr

thats what u get from maplins - might be cheaper, but the old saying pays off there!

imagine they do laser product range next heheh (please dont tell me they have, aint been in UK for a while!)

lol at maplins gotta love em but gotta hate em too!

[Insanity]

They do.....

They have the lasercrab with a huge 5mw of amzing red light..

Having said that, my first laser was a crab with a 10mw green pointer stuffed in the back... But hey, it worked and from small acorns, huge overdraughts grow

Mark

[QUAZAR]

I once stuffed one of those laser crabs on the end of a blue ALC60X.

[colouredmirrorball]

I pick up this topic to say I have bought a music and DMX-controlled strobe. In case anyone wondered: when music controlled, the strobe flashes one or two times if there is rather loud noise. When the noise (I wouldn't call today's music any more than noise) comes louder, the strobe gives some sort of light show. I guess it gives a looplight effect when used in master-slave.
I DMX-controlled it with Freestyler, but this seems to be dangerous: the strobe has a blinder effect, and when you use it longer than five seconds, the bulb blows. I once did this in Freestyler, clicked somewhere wrong, the strobe became unselected and the macro "Off" dissappeared (this should sound familiar to anyone who uses Freestyler). Bless me I had my feet on the Blackout pedal...

My strobe: Velleman VDP1500ST, 1500 W, ?1?-10 Hz

[norty303]

I thought I'd posted this already but clearly not...

Here's a thread from BlueRoom which talks about cheaper alternatives to Atomic strobes, and the success I've had with some mods...

http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.ph...pic=23977&st=0


I used to use 4 of the large Strobeflowers doing dance events around Guildford in the early 90's, fantastic pieces of kit, but unreliable. Could never guarantee all 4 would fire up after transporting from the hire place, fragile boards apparently. We had one of the controllers that had the 'gyrate' function for the optional head as I recall.

Getting the rotate speed and flash at just the right speeds meant you could go from fast rotation in one direction on constantly, and then strobing the effect was a reversed rotation - very few parameters to play around with but you could still do loads with them!



Edit: Having looked at the links in ChaosIlluminations thread, that controller in the second link is the EXACT controller I used to use - from Mike at HR hire who was in Compton, Surrey (later moved to Hindhead I think) In which case those heads are also probably the ones I used to gig around the place! Small world, you can even see the 'Gyrate' button labelled there....


Edit 2: Have just found the site of Jellytree video visuals who used to do TV walls at our events and they have some pics on their site
http://www.jellytreetv.com/
If you go to 'video walls projections' the last pic on right is probably your strobeflowers circa 1994