About ten years ago, I was wandering the halls of the PLASA show in London when Peter Kirkup, who was then working for LumenRadio, excitedly called me over to his booth to show me something. Then he put a tiny IC chip on the tip of my finger and asked if I knew what it was. Top, left and right: The Circle has a diameter of 166.7mm. Bottom, left and right: The Square is 16.7 × 16.7cm. “It’s an IC chip,” I said. “That,” he proudly stated, “Is a wireless DMX receiver.” Click her

One of the trickiest things about powering a show is accurately predicting how much power we’ll need. If we get it wrong, we will either blow a fuse or blow a stack of money. Even the most experienced electricians sometimes cut corners by oversizing their power requirements, so they won’t be caught short. It might help them sleep better at night, but it might also unnecessarily inflate the cost. A more methodical approach might serve us better. Click here to read the article

DMX512 is 40 years old this year. In technology years, that’s older than the combined ages of The Rolling Stones. Yet, to this day, we still use it. Why? Because it’s reliable, and if there’s one thing we value in live events, it’s reliability. DMX is hard to mess up. It can be done, but you have to work at it. Still, it has its limitations. They were recognized as far back as the 1990s when lighting systems and devices grew large and sophisticated enough to need more than 51

It used to be that when you wanted to program a lighting console, you had to set up the lighting system before you could begin. Then along came previsualization software, and it was a game-changer. It allowed you to build a virtual stage with lighting so you could almost completely pre-program a show before you ever set foot on stage. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a similar way to set up a network? It turns out, there is. Araneo Studio is an app designed to allow you to

A Canadian company builds a special effect into an enduring business If you've been in the live event production industry long enough, you've witnessed an incredible technological evolution over the past 20 years. PixMob has been riding that wave of advancing technology while adding its own creative flair. While most lighting companies fought for a piece of the lighting fixture market, PixMob carved out a niche in an adjacent sector. Instead of looking to improve existing tec

It wasn’t that long ago that using batteries to power stage lighting, audio, and video was virtually unheard of. It was 2023 when I first worked on a show that used large banks of batteries and solar panels for that purpose. Posted online, this picture of solar panels and battery energy storage units elicited a range of responses from the live event community, mostly supportive, but some people were skeptical. We supplied the power on three stages at Willie Nelson’s Luck Reun

If you were live event production in the 2000s, then you witnessed, and may have taken part in, the Great Stage Lighting Transition from incandescent and arc lamps to LED fixtures. The promise back then was that, because LEDs were more efficient than tungsten lamps, we would use less power on our shows. That was true for a little while. Then we went from bands like AC/ DC and Van Halen touring with hundreds of 1000-watt PAR cans to bands like U2 and the Rolling Stones tour

NAMM celebrated 125 years of NAMM at the 2026 NAMM Show. Featuring five days of education, live concerts, and special events, alongside three days of exhibits and brand activations, this year’s show featured 1,650-plus exhibitors representing over 5,400 brands and more than 200-plus educational sessions for NAMM member communities. “The 2026 NAMM Show once again delivered an incredible week of unity and energy for our global NAMM members, showcasing products, partnerships, an

In 2026, DMX512 will turn 40. Because it was designed in 1986, it had to operate within the limits of the hardware available at the time, which, by today’s standards, meant extremely slow processors. One of its greatest strengths: It has remained backward compatible ever since. In theory, a fixture built in 1986 will still respond to a controller built in 2026. The KLSTR circuit boards fit inside a fixture and are inserted directly in the signal path. They act as smart switch

Designing a stadium spectacle for Netflix’s Christmas gameday special When Netflix marched into the live sports arena, it didn’t tiptoe. Instead, the streaming giant struck up the band with a headline-grabbing NFL partnership and an event meant to put points on the board. It kicked off with a halftime show designed not just to gain yards, but to go…all…the…way. The first installment in 2024, Beyoncé Bowl, set the bar high. They followed up the next year with Snoop's Holiday H

IN LIVE EVENT PRODUCTION, grounding and bonding aren’t always correctly understood, especially on event stages. When portable systems are assembled, the emphasis is typically on timing, and it’s not unusual for little attention to be paid to grounding and bonding the stage, even though codes and regulations require it and standards spell it out. Festival Stage Image description: A multi-person band performs on a stage with a large crowd facing them. They are under a tent, wit

In 1989, High End Systems introduced a new Xenon strobe fixture called Dataflash. It was unique in that it didn’t rely on a large capacitor to boost the output; it took its energy directly from the mains power. That made it extremely bright, and it was an instant success. The 8.5" diameter fixture was 10.5" long, slightly reminiscent of a PAR 64 fixture, except it had a clear plastic dome instead of an output lens. Dataflash 5000 with Reflector Dome In the second year of prod

Many years ago, I predicted that Dallas-based Vari-Lite, the moving light manufacturer, would be bought by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines and that they would develop self-flying moving lights. So far, this hasn’t come true, and I’m starting to think it might not happen. One of the biggest challenges in powering stages with batteries is managing the state of charge. Wireless power transmission could be the next breakthrough. I was thinking about it again recently because a qu

In the early 2000s, many people were uncertain whether LEDs could ever light a stage well enough to satisfy lighting designers. At the time, they weren’t quite bright enough, the dimming was steppy, they were expensive, and they didn’t render colors and skin tones well. One by one, all those problems were overcome, including, in my humble opinion, the color rendition issues. Rob Gerlach was one of the first to recognize how best to achieve that. In 2003, he wrote a paper call

It’s been over 20 years since Chris Kennedy and George McDuff founded ChamSys (short for Chameleon Systems) in 2003. Flying Pig Systems had recently launched the Wholehog 3, leaving a void in the market where the Wholehog 2 had been. If you knew how to program a Hog 2, you could likely program the MagicQ MQ100. Over the years, the MagicQ has grown into a powerful platform with all the features you would expect from a major league player. And now comes something completely dif

Claypaky’s Volero Cube is so versatile, it’s hard to pigeonhole. It looks like a compact, IP66-rated zoomable fixture with pan, tilt, and an RGBW light engine, although the square lenses are unique. Dig a little deeper and you find a modular building block that can be used as a pixel-mapping beam fixture, an audience blinder and strobe, or a component in a larger geometric display. Claypaky has always excelled in optics, and now the company is combining them with mechanics in

Inside the company’s strategy, people, and products GLP North America is reshaping how it serves the people who specify and use its products. That’s the clear message from recent conversations with Brad Schiller, who joined in June as director of lighting technology engagement, and Mark Ravenhill, who has returned to GLP in a new director role focused on global initiatives and, for now, also heading US sales and marketing. The picture that emerges from the conversation is a c

PORTABLE BATTERY/INVERTER SYSTEMS are becoming more common on stages and locations for a few reasons: they conveniently supply power where there is none, they’re quiet and reliable, and, when they’re set up correctly, they can be safe. Figure 1. In the event of a short circuit, the EGC/CPC creates a low impedance path for fault current back to the supply, thereby opening the circuit breaker. Image description: A line diagram illustrates a short circuit within a metal housing

In 2018, I was on the set of the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm, and I realized that, of all the live productions I’ve ever seen,...

Technology takes the stage in Co-Founders, the musical Co-Founders, the musical, which ran at San Francisco’s American Conservatory...