Vari-Lite

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VARI*LITE is the brand name of one of the first automated variable-color lighting systems to be created. Their automated lighting fixtures are commonly used in theatre, concerts, television, film and corporate events.

Contents 1 History 2 Products 2.1 Control Consoles 2.1.1 Series 100 Prototype Control Console 2.1.2 Series 100 Control Console 2.1.3 Artisan Control Console 2.1.4 Mini Artisan Control Console 2.1.5 Virtuoso Control Console 2.2 Luminaires ( pre Genlyte ) 2.2.1 VL-ZERO 2.2.2 VL1 2.2.3 VL2 / VL2B / VL2C 2.2.4 VL3 2.2.5 VL4 2.2.6 VL5 / VL5 ARC 2.2.7 VL6 2.2.8 VL7 2.3 Other Products 2.3.1 VLM 2.3.2 VLD 3 References

[edit] History

Showco, an equipment rental company at the forefront of Rock 'n' Roll touring in North America in the 1970s, had a very active R&D department, continuously looking for new technology. At the time, many companies within this market were trying to solve the problem of a reliable and robust colour change unit for lighting fixtures. Many of these took the form of wheels or scrolls of Gel. However, coloured gel had a tendency to burn or rip if used incorrectly.

One of the engineers, Jim Bornhorst^[1][2], while looking at alternative methods of colouring light, had realised that dichroic filters have a strange side effect, so that when you twist them, the filter shifts frequency. This idea, coupled with the recent appearance on the market of the General Electric Marc 350 projector lamp, led to a simple prototype being developed.

At the time, Showco were regular suppliers to the British band Genesis, who were always looking for new ideas for their stage shows. A number of Showco staff, including Rusty Brutsché and Jim Bornhorst, flew over to see the band and their manager, and show them the prototype, now known as the VL-Zero. The prototype was so simple it was built on a wooden baseplate and had no hanging method, so the team had to nail it to a beam in the outbuilding that was being used for the demonstration. The band liked the idea.

Having gone over there with the idea of getting some advance rental fees for the next Genesis tour, the band's manager, Tony Smith instead offered to invest in the new idea, and when the team headed back to the airport, they had a cheque for $1M in their pockets.

On the plane home Jim Bornhorst dropped the bombshell: The twisting dichroic technology was not ready for touring. They were going to have to design a new luminaire from scratch for the band's next tour. This luminaire became known as the VL1.

By the time the "Abacab" tour started in Barcelona, on September 25, 1981, not only were there 32 active VL1's, plus spares, but also a brand new multi-processor control desk, with software written by Brooks Taylor. The electric and electronic hardware were designed by John Covington & Tom Walsh. The console operator for this tour was a young man by the name of Tom Littrell, who had been taken on for the summer during the college break, and never looked back.

By this point a new company had been incorporated. The company was called Vari-Lite Inc, with a dash. By 1984 the product name was actively being differentiated from the company by using an asterisk (VARI*LITE).

The first band that hired the equipment was Texas band ZZ Top, and slowly the business started to build. Over the next 4 years over 800 VL1's were built, and a number of distributor deals were made to introduce the product into the European (via Samuelsons), Australian (Jands) and Japanese markets. After the 6th generation of VL1's were completed, in the late summer of 1984, design started on the Series 200. A new console, called the Artisan, was designed, as well as two new luminaries, the VL2, a direct descendant of the VL1, and the VL3, a wash luminaire using the twisting dichroic system first used in the VL-Zero.

The Series 200 was launched in 1987 (date/location?), and over the years the range was expanded to include the VL4, a more compact and brighter version for the VL3, and two upgrades to the original VL2, the VL2B and the VL2C. A smaller backup console was also launched, called the Mini-Artisan.

In 1992 the first Series 300 luminaire was launched, the VL5 wash luminaire. Although not a technical leap in the same way previous versions were, it made a massive impact because of the low rental cost, reliability and versatility of the unit. It was also the first VARI*LITE luminaire to be dual protocol. It could now also be controlled by DMX512, (DMX512-A). Although not designed for automated fixtures, its use was becoming widespread.

Over the years almost every major band used Vari*Lites in their productions, as well as TV, corporate events and even films. The company has won 3 Primetime Emmy awards for technical achievement, in 1991 and 1994, and in 2001 for engineering excellence.

In 1997 the company floated on Nasdaq (NASDAQ:LITE), and started both to buy back the franchises it had created in previous years, and to create new rental offices in new markets.

In 2002, The VARI*LITE luminaire manufacturing and sales division ( brand, assets and intellectual property ) were sold to the Genlyte Group. The rental division of the company retained the console part of the company and continued to develop the Virtuoso console product line. The rental division (by this point called VLPS Lighting Services) was merged with the Production Resource Group in 2004^[3]. Subsequently the Genlyte Group owning the VARI*LITE brand has since been bought by Royal Philips Lighting.^[4].

[edit] Products

[edit] Control Consoles

From the very start, Vari*Lite consoles were computerised, using digital multiplexed signals to the equipment. The Series 100 used a patented protocol based on RS422, which sent positional, beam and colour information to up to 96 individual luminaires, at up to 30 times a second. The transmissions were unidirectional, and the error checking was quite rudimentary, checking each transmission bit 5 times and applying the majority result. As the information was retransmitted multiple times each second, the result was no noticeable errors by the luminaires. However, the refresh rate of a full 96 channel system was visibly noticeable if the low channels were near the high channels. In order to distribute both power and data 6 channel dumb repeater boxes were used. The cables contained both data and power. In order to do this safely, the data cable was rated at 600v, to allow it to be used in 3 phase applications. The channel was set with a thumbwheel on each lite, and a common crew practical joke would be to renumber all the lites :-) (NB "lite" became a common way of referring to a Vari*Lite unit on both sided of the Atlantic)

When the Series 200 protocol was developed the number of channels (In the Vari*Lite world a channel was a device, regardless of how many parameters it had) was increased to 1000, and the tramssion protocol became bi-directional. Each luminaire became "intelligent". It stored its own positional, beam and colour information, and reacted to a global "memory cue" command, so every luminaire reacted simultaneously. Manchester encoding was used to improve transmission resilience and a polling system was introduced to get feedback from each device. Damaged cables and "chattering" lites could cause mayhem in larger systems. The repeater gained more intelligence and became 9 channel.

The Series 300 wasn't really a new protocol, but a system that removed some intelligence from the luminaires, and moved it to the repeater, creating the "Smart Repeater". This smart repeater stored the cue memory and transmitted the raw positional and colour data to up to six luminaires. As well as this, the Smart repeater was also fitted with a DMX512 input, so that it could be used by control consoles by other manufacturers.

[edit] Series 100 Prototype Control Console

Only one of these was ever built, and only had 2 control sections, direct cueing, where a memory number was entered on the keypad, assigned to the direct window and triggered by pressing the go button, and cross-fade where two memories could be assigned to opposite ends of a pair of faders, and the luminaries would transition between cues. Although the cards were proper PCBs, the backplane of the system was hand wired, and eventually only one operator, Dave Berger, one of the technician who had built the unit, would take it out on tour.

[edit] Series 100 Control Console

The proper Series 100 console never had a name. It now boasted 4 control methods: Direct, X-Fade, Chase and Matrix. Chase allowed a consecutive number of cues to be run automatically, although eh speed had to be set by hand, and matrix allowed you to program some cues to have their intensity levels split into 8 groups. The total cue storage was 256 cues, with 16 assigned to the matrix. The remaining 239 could be used by any of the other control methods. As well as this there were 2 banks of 16 programmable colour buttons, called "Preset Colours", and the active control of the luminaires could be divided into two banks of 16 groups.

Later software versions allowed "Selective Store" and a quirk in the software allowed you to completely wipe a cue memory in a group of lites, and then only store the colour or beam information. Triggering a cue saved in this way would simply overlay the colour or beam information of a lite without changing its position. By 1986/87 it was be common to see a good operator using both direct and x-fade controls overlaid by a selectively stored colour or beam chase at the same time.

[edit] Artisan Control Console

[edit] Mini Artisan Control Console

[edit] Virtuoso Control Console

[edit] Luminaires ( pre Genlyte )

[edit] VL-ZERO

The VL Zero was a dichroic colour fading wash unit. The prototype is still in semi-working condition at PRG.

[edit] VL1

The VL1 used dichroic filter, mounted onto 3 wheels with 7 filters each, plus an open position. A 4th wheel was fitted with 5 beam apertures and 2 gobos. Pan and Tilt used servo motors, and intensity was controlled by an iris at the front of the head. 860 units were build between 1981 and 1984. Most of them were destroyed, but some 4 units are reported to still survive, two at PRG and two built from spares are in private hands. Some units were stolen, and may also still survive. This unit was found via google: [1].

[edit] VL2 / VL2B / VL2C

[edit] VL3

[edit] VL4

[edit] VL5 / VL5 ARC

The VL5 is a moving head wash light. It uses the Dicrho-Tune radial color mixing system. This systems gives the fixture the unmistakable black dot at the front of the fixture.

[edit] VL6

[edit] VL7

[edit] Other Products

[edit] VLM

The VLM (Vari*Lite Mirror) was a result of a brainstorming session to try and solve the problems of never being able to offer every possible luminaire in an automated yoke. Vari-Lite designed a unit which was basically a two sided metal mirror mounted inside a Series 300 yoke. The tilt end stops were removed giving the unit the ability to spin continuously on that axis.

The units were used with much success on a series of Belgium TV shows where they were used in conjunction with a series of Robert Juliat 1200w profiles. However, a limited number of units were produced and they never became a mainstream product.

[edit] VLD

The VLD (Vari*Lite Dimmer interface) was a 96 channel 0-10v analogue interface between a conventional dimmer unit and the Series 200 control system. Each unit took up 100 of the 1000 available control channels, which gave the Artisan control console considerable potential. However, in many cases at the time the Lighting Designer on a show and the Vari*Lite operator were different people, and so many designers opted to retain the conventional lighting console. As well as this, the Artisan had been designed to control moving lights and did not provide many of the tools that conventional lighting desk operators had come to use.

The final nail in the coffin for the VLD was the mass migration of the lighting industry to the DMX512 protocol.

[edit] References