Funky Daddy-O Moving Heads

Floor mounted 'moving heads' and rig mounted 'scanners' are the classic rock-concert lighting fixtures. Just think lot's of sound-activated movement and synchronised colour changes and you'll get the picture. However, they also offer some interesting possibilities for digital artists.

I managed to get hold of a couple of Funky Daddy-O moving heads off of eBay UK (again!) for a show. They allow you to 'point' the light in any XY direction via DMX control. You can select the colour, gobo (a mask that goes in front of the light beam) and strobe effect.

The Funkys are pretty much the cheapest moving heads you can get (high-end ones can cost thousands) but they are great for experimenting with. The build quality is OK, although I managed to damage one in transit once - requiring a new bulb and some work with a screwdriver to fix.

The Max/MSP patch below lets you 'drag' the light beam around and change the various parameters via 9 DMX channels. I've always wanted to create a patch that would use a camera input via cv.jit to make the beam follow you around the room! When I do I'll post it here.