upgrading Mighty Scan Intelligent Lighting to LED Bulbs
Posted on Dec 2, 2010 by
Paul WhiteOne of the more recent ongoing projects I have been working on is overhauling the Ritz Cabaret's Light Show. This includes moving fixtures, finding and buying used fixtures off ebay, replacing bulbs, and
programming everything to sync together with
Martin Light Jockey. However when you have 30
Intelligent Lighting fixtures that all take a 250 watt halogen bulb, you quickly do the math and realized that the Ritz Cabaret is spending a small fortune all to ensure its dancers look good on stage. My goal was to upgrade all our fixtures to LED bulbs.
The Ritz Cabaret's Light Show
The following are the fixtures we have on each stage.
The entire system is controlled by
Martin Light Jockey.
Main Stage
Second Stage
- 4 American DJ Mighty Scans
- 2 LED PAR Lamps (illuminate chandeliers)
Third Stage
How much electricity does our light show use?
During normal
business hours, both the main stage and second stages are running. The third stage is reserved for weekends and or when times are busy. We will focus on the power consumption of just the Main and Second stages which run from 11AM til 2AM every day ( 15 hours / day )
16
American DJ Mighty Scans x 300 Watts = 4800 Watts
8
High End Systems Track Spots x 300 Watts = 2400 Watts
2 LED PAR Fixtures x 20 Watts = 40 Watts
So the total power draw during
business hours is 7240 Watts
7200 Watts = 7.2 KWH x 15 Hours / day = 108 KWH daily.
108 KWH daily x Average 10 Cents / KWH = $10.80 / day
So on the
cost of electricity averages about $10.80 per day.
What about on going costs of replacing bulbs?
Each fixture has a 250 Watt 24 Volt Halogen Bulb that lasts an average of 1000 Hours.
Running 15 hours / day this means we will need to replace the bulb every 66 Days, or once every 2 months.
Fortunately the cost of replacement bulbs on the track spots are cheap. When buying in bulk you can usually get the price of replacement trackspot bulbs down to $1 each. The Mighty Scans are not as cheap. Each Mighty Scan bulb costs about $9 each. So if you do the math $9 x 16 Mighty Scan Fixtures = $144 spend every 2 months. Also don't forget the labor costs involved in changing out the bulbs. It takes about 15 minutes to take down the fixture, open it up, change the bulb, and then re hang it. It also usually has to be done after hours when customers are not around, as you want the customers focusing on the girls and not the light guy.
What are the benefits of Converting your Intelligent Lighting Fixtures to LED bulbs
Lower Power Consumption
An LED bulb is going to use anywhere from 5 Watts to 20 Watts depending on the application. This is of course assuming its a comparative bulb to the halogen you are replacing, giving you the same amount of Lumens. For years the output of LED bulbs was too low. Our Mighty Scan fixtures use a 24 Volt 250 Watt bulb that puts out 900 Lumens. After an initial search the best I could find was only 350 Lumens from a 5 Watt LED bulb. After some more searching I found a 700 Lumen Bulb that uses 8 Watts. This is the bulb I ending up going with. There are also LED chips that can generate up to 4000 Lumens, but these require you solder them into some kind of mounting package, plus you need to provide a heat sink. These are the kinds of Chips you see on fixtures like the
Martin Mac 350. Eventually I want to be able to mount one of these 4000 Lumen LED packages into a MR16 style bulb housing.
Longer Life
Your average Halogen Bulb in
Intelligent lighting fixtures only lasts about 1000 Hours. Plus they are very delicate. The filament can easily break if you bump the fixture while the bulb is hot. LED Bulbs on the other hand are very durable, plus they can last anywhere between 30,000 to 70,000 Hours. Many times LED bulbs don't just go out, they just gradually loose their effectiveness. Many state 70% @ 50,000 Hours. Meaning that they will only give out 70% of their rated output when at 50,000 Hours. But considering you don't have to pay a technician to swap out bulbs every 1000 Hours on the 20+ number of fixtures you have this could save you a lot of man hours.
Less Heat.
Typical LED bulbs generate little to no heat. Its important to remember that halogen bulbs and normal light bulbs are only about 5% efficient. This means that 95% of your energy is converted into heat. This is ok if you are running a night club in the dead of winter, but most clubs have to turn up the Air Conditioning even in winter to keep the club cool from the hundreds of customers and heat generating appliances. Even though most LEDs don't generate that much heat, The high output LEDs do generate a good amount of heat. One of the limited factors for these LEDs is packaging them on some kind of a heat sink. Else the chip will prematurely burn out. This is the reason its hard to find ultra bright LEDs in a MR16 package.
MR16 LED bulb Intelligent lighting experiment.
I decided before I went off and bought 20 of these LED bulbs I wanted to make sure they would be compatible to the 250 watt halogens they would be replacing. I found an online store ( based in china ) selling a 700 Lumen 8 Watt MR16 LED bulb. These in theory should be a direct replacement to our current bulbs. I bought a single bulb, and then waited 2 weeks for it to arrive.
When the bulb finally arrived I was eager to take it out of the packaging and inspect it.
The face of the bulb was made up of 8 LED chips, creating a cumulative 700 Lumens. The bulb is rated from 12 - 24 Volts making it ideal for
Intelligent lighting fixtures. Keep in mind this would be an ideal replacement for units that use Halogen bulbs, and not the HID bulbs. Most of the
Martin fixtures ( roboscans 218, 518 and 812 ) use HID bulbs that use much higher voltages. It might be possible to retro fit the martins with an MR16 style bulb but you would have to rework the wiring to support the 12 Volt - 24 Volt LED Bulb.
Overall the construction of the bulb looked good. Tomorrow I will be going to the club to do some more work on the lights, and I will test this bulb on one of the mighty scan fixtures. I know many people are interested in how these bulbs perform. I have heard from several people that the light output of LED bulbs just isn't high enough. Also I have heard that there are focusing issues due to the way LEDs spread the light.
Update 12/4/2010
So I had a chance to install the new LED bulb into one of our Mighty Scan Fixtures. The results were not what I expected. Even though these bulbs are bright, the angle of spread plus the layout of the LEDs make it a bad choice for Inteligent fixtures.
The above picture is the MR16 LED bulb installed into our
American DJ Mighty Scan fixture. The bulb fit ok, but the light output was not high enough.
Here is a direct comparison. In the middle is a Laser fixture. on the left a mighty scan with the original Halogen bulb, on the right the MR16 LED replacement bulb. The results are obvious. The only way I would recommend these bulbs is if you had a club that was pitch black, and had lots of fog. Else the beams and power of the LED bulbs would not get the job done.
SummaryFor those of you who are looking to try replace your
Intelligent lighting fixture's halogen bulb with an LED bulb, I would hold off on that idea. Even though there are LED packages that generate 4000 Lumens available, these packages require additional cooling, and have not yet been pre packaged into an MR16 housing yet. That and the cost of just the LED package would run about $150 / each. You still have to provide a heat sink, and housing for it. Even though I would enjoy engineering a custom bulb for night club applications, I don't have the time or resources available to make this kind of investment. Great
business opportunity for someone with the know how.
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Hey what about placing a magnifying glass in front of the bulb to focus all the leds in to one beam? It looks like all the leds are not focused. It should have enough light to do the trick but the bulb looks like it works as a flood light. I have 4 mighty scans and I am always searching for a way to do what you are doing.