LED Lighting Tubes

These look like fluorescent bubs, but they are in fact plastic tubes with 44 each of red, green and blue LEDs. Any number can be daisy-chained together and connected to a DMX controller. The light they give off is incredible - very pure and soft. Another eBay UK purchase (search for 'LED tube dmx'), I got a pack of six tubes and a controller for a bargain price.

There are quite a few models of LED tube available and they vary mostly in terms of how controllable the tubes are and how flexible the controller is. They appear to be made in China and are often rebranded by lighting companies. My controller is called a 'YG-LED101KT' and allows patterns to be selected via DMX, which then run on the tubes. You have things like static colours, chases, rainbow effects etc. What I don't have is the ability to address the individual LEDs or tubes and make my own patterns - however, it is possible to get controllers and tubes which support this.

I had thought about using these on stage, but I think their best use would be to illuminate gallery spaces. The Max/MSP patch below allows you to select a pattern and it's speed/delay via the pop-up and sliders. I found that DMX channel 1 controls the pattern, 2 appears not to be in use, 3 is the speed of the chase and 4 is the interval before the pattern starts again - all this is assuming that the controller is set to start at address 1. I don't know why, but these channel assignments are different to what the documentation said they should be!