Arduino Anyone?

I had forgotten the smell of burning solder until today. My soldering iron used to be within arms reach most of the time, and I knew the resistor color code by heart. But the last time I needed those things, I think I was wearing a leisure suit, or maybe bell bottoms and Beatle boots. Soldering is like riding a bike except the pedals (terminals) are much smaller and harder to reach (see). I dug out the old soldering iron and dusted it off for a new project. What is the project?


I've been curious about Arduino and Raspberry Pi since they came out a few years ago, and when Simon Newton created Open Source Lighting Control Software that runs on Raspberry Pi, I had to check it out. Little by little I've been piecing together the hardware and software, and eventually I want to be able to control anything with DMX and get feedback via RDM using Arduino and Raspberry Pi. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how ambitious of a project this is, and I won't know exactly where I'm going until I get there. The only requirement is that it's fun, and I hope you will come along for the ride.


I've already assembled an Arduino, flashed some LEDs on and off with it, and I just got some parts in from Adafruit, including an Arduino stepper motor shield (in Arduinoland, a "shield" is a daughter board or a PC board that attaches to the motherboard) and a stepper motor. The reason for the soldering iron is that I had to solder the headers onto the stepper motor shield to attach it to the Arduino. It was quick and easy, and I had my stepper motor running in just a few minutes. I haven't done much with it yet, but little by little I will take over control of the entire earth via DMX, RDM, and Arduino. Won't you help? What shall we take control of first? Please add your comments.

Tools of the Trade

by Richard Cadena
Last week, like many times before, an eager, young lighting professional asked me for advice about how to reach his goals as a lighting designer. And just like all those times before, I searched deep in my lexicon looking for the magic words that would inspire him and propel him down his path to the top of the industry.

In his eyes I saw the same vortex of hopes, dreams, and desires that I had when I was in his shoes. And much like the way I felt back then, I sensed an eagerness in him to dispense with the inconvenience of a long and arduous grind up the ladder of success. Where is the magic bullet, I imagined he was thinking, that will pierce the armor of time and difficulty, and to make all things great happen post haste? Why can’t I be knighted into a posh gig with a huge salary and all the respect and admiration it affords?

I wish that I could shield every person like him from the harsh glare of the real world and excuse him or her from all of the hard work and long hours that it usually accompanies. Failing that, the next best thing is to offer a set of tools that will give him/her the best shot at finding what they’re looking for. The kit of tools I’m thinking of would include some magic beans, some elixir, potions, salve, and other remedies. Read on.

1. The magic beans will shade you against the heat of the real world by sprouting a deep love for and a fascination with your chosen field, because work you love is no work at all. When it’s in full bloom, you’ll be in full stride and you won’t break a sweat. "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." - Rumi

2. The elixir will heal the blemishes of your failures and give you the courage to stretch your wings and try to fly, knowing good and well that you could crash and burn. Whether you fail or succeed, the elixir will help you to emerge at every turn as enthusiastic as ever. "I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge." - Igor Stravinsky

3. The potion will make you immune to the sting of your errors by erasing your memory of the mistakes you make without erasing the lessons you learn from them. It will give you the courage to take reasonable risks without preventing you from making mistakes so that you will have the benefit of knowing what does and doesn’t work. As Pablo Picasso once said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how not to do it.”

4. The salve will sooth the ache of following a crooked path. The unknowing seek the shortest distance between two points—where they are now and where they want to be—and the knowing know the shortest possible distance between those two particular points is a crooked line along an impossibly unpredictable precipice of a precarious career. "Rightly conceived, time is the friend of all who are in any way in adversity, for its mazy road winds in and out of the shadows sooner or later into sunshine, and when one is at its darkest point one can be certain that presently it will grow brighter." - Arthur Bryant

5. The remedy is a capsule full of determination. When you take a full dose, you’ll know that failure is just a milestone on the road to success. Everybody experiences failure from time to time, but successful people don’t let it stop them. http://bit.ly/create-persist

6. The infusion of mentoring is the best inoculation against an anemic career. You are unique and there is no one answer to all the questions you’ll have on your journey. Find a mentor who has been down the road you travel and seek advice when you need it.

What has worked for you in your career?

Greener Lighting for Greener Stages

by Richard Cadena

The typical 100-watt household incandescent lamp uses about a dollar’s worth of electricity to produce less than a nickel’s worth of light. The rest, about 97.4%, is radiated as infrared or pure heat, completely invisible to the human eye. Its overall luminous efficacy – the visible light output compared to the amount of power it takes – is about 17.5 lumens per watt compared to about 45 to 60 lumens per watt for a compact fluorescent lamp and slightly less for a typical LED profile luminaire. 

Coal Byproducts
About half of the world’s power plants are coal-fired, and they are the single largest source of carbon dioxide emissions on the planet. Some scientists believe that CO2 emission is the primary cause of global warming. Burning coal also releases other pollutants into the air. In addition to CO2, coal combustion byproducts include sulfur and many heavy metals like arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, radium, selenium, vanadium, and zinc. The sulfur reacts with oxygen and water to produce sulfuric acid, which falls back to earth as acid rain, and the mercury released into the atmosphere is the single largest unregulated source of mercury. 

To power a 100-watt incandescent lamp from a coal-fired power plant an average of three hours per night every day for a year, which is approximately 1000 hours, it takes about 110 pounds of coal and produces about 200 pounds of CO2. If, instead, we replaced that 100-watt lamp with a 24-watt equivalent with a luminous efficacy of 50 lumens per watt, it would take about 26 pounds of coal to operate and it would produce about 48 pounds of CO2, a savings of about 84 pounds of coal and 152 pounds of CO2. 

But wait, there’s more…
In a closed system like a building or a room, all of the heat generated by a lamp has to be removed by the air conditioning system if the temperature is to remain the same. Doing so requires the use of even more electricity. 

For example, a 100-watt lamp gives off 341 British thermal units (BTUs) for each hour of use, which increases the heat load by the same. The impact of that heat and the amount of air conditioning needed to remove it depends on the efficiency of the air conditioner. An air conditioner with a seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER) of 7.5 will use 34.1 watt-hours of energy to remove that heat. In effect, it increases the energy consumption of this lamp by 34%, adding to the cost, CO2 emissions, and pollution.

Efficiency Pays
A church in Houston was originally built in the early 1970s and the lighting was upgraded in the mid-1980s. It had three stained glass windows that were backlit with 190 1000-watt cyc lights and there were 168 1000-watt PARs used for the house lights. By replacing cyc lights with 109 324-watt T5 fluourescent fixtures and the house lights with 575-watt ERS fixtures, the energy consumption was cut by 55%. In addition, the lower power consumption results in a lower air conditioning load, saving even more energy and money. With a conservative estimate of 20 hours per week of use, an electrical cost of $0.0986 per kilowatt-hour, and a SEER of 10, in a year’s time, the building owner will save about $28,600.

Before:

Total energy consumed: 392,080 kW-hours

Total thermal load: 1,286,377 BTUs

Annual cost of electricity for A/C: $13,191

Annual cost of electricity for lights: $38,659

After:

Total energy consumed: 175,848 kW-hours

Total thermal load: 576,942 BTUs

Annual cost of electricity for A/C: $7,275

Annual cost of electricity for lights: $21,320

Total Annual Savings: $28,595

Amount of coal saved annually: 119 tons

Amount of carbon dioxide saved annually: 218 tons

Coal-burning power plants also release arsenic, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, molybdenum, radium, selenium, vanadium, and zinc into the atmosphere. Saving energy not only saves money, it also makes good environmental sense.

Sandy Espinosa wrote about a tragic accident in Los Angeles where 21 year-old Jose Lucero Jr. fell to his death at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Studios. (http://bit.ly/KkRYIO) As long as there are fatalities and accidents on the stage, we need to work harder to get better at protecting ourselves and the people around us. There is not enough information about this particular accident to take away any lessons from it, but in general, we need to know where and when to draw the line between safety and danger.

Alan Rowe, the training director at I.A.T.S.E. Local 728 in Burbank, gets the credit for hipping me to something called "imminent danger." In our industry, we always say "The show must go on." But if it can't go on safely, then it's not only your right, but it's your obligation to make it safe or stop the show. But what is "safe?" And where do you draw that proverbial line we mentioned?

The answer is in the definition of "imminent danger." According to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the definition of imminent danger is ".....any conditions or practices in any place of employment which are such that a danger exists which could reasonably be expected to cause death or serious physical harm immediately or before the imminence of such danger can be eliminated through the enforcement procedures otherwise provided by this Act." It goes on to spell out the criteria for an imminent danger and what to do about it:

"Requirements. The following conditions must be met before a hazard becomes an imminent danger:
There must be a threat of death or serious physical harm. 'Serious physical harm' means that a part of the body is damaged so severely that it cannot be used or cannot be used very well.

"For a health hazard there must be a reasonable expectation that toxic substances or other health hazards are present and exposure to them will shorten life or cause substantial reduction in physical or mental efficiency. The harm caused by the health hazard does not have to happen immediately.

"The threat must be immediate or imminent. This means that you must believe that death or serious physical harm could occur within a short time, for example before OSHA could investigate the problem.
If an OSHA inspector believes that an imminent danger exists, the inspector must inform affected employees and the employer that he is recommending that OSHA take steps to stop the imminent danger.
OSHA has the right to ask a federal court to order the employer to eliminate the imminent danger.

"Call (800) 321-OSHA immediately to report imminent dangers."

The expectation that you will go home to your loved ones each and every night is your right. That you will uphold the requirements in the OSH Act to remove or report imminent danger is your obligation. Have fun at your job but above all, be safe.