Moving light
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Moving Lights or Intelligent Fixtures: Circa 1987, the first computer-controlled stage lighting fixtures, called Moving Lights or Intelligent Fixtures, began to gain widespread acceptance in the Concert Industry. These fixtures slowly started being used in a more 'traditional' theatrical environment, and are currently used in almost all major theatrical productions.
Usually relying on compact arc lamps as a light source, these fixtures use stepper motors contected to varying internal devices to manipulate the light before it escapes the fixture's front lens.
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Examples of internal devices are:
- Color wheels with dichroic lenses used to change the color of the beam.
- Pattern wheels with gobos used to change the shape of the beam.
- Shutters used to 'dim' or 'strobe' the output, automated lens trains used to focus the beam.
- Irises used to change the size of the beam.
- Gate shutters to 'square off' the beam.
- CYM Color-Mixing Wheels using Color-Subtraction technology to vary beam color.
- Prisms
These fixtures also use stepper motors to enable movement of the light fixtures output by either moving a mirror which reflects the beam, or by moving the entire fixture lens train. This allows the fixture to cover large areas by varying the X-Y coordinates of the beam.
Moving Lights are controlled in many ways. Usually the fixtures are connected to a lighting console, which outputs a control signal. This control signal sends data to the fixture in a usually one of three ways - Analog (which has largely been phased out), DMX (which is the industry standard control protocol), or ACN Control (an Ethernet based standard which is still in development by ESTA). The fixture then takes this signal and translates it into internal signals which are sent to the many stepper motors located inside.de:Moving Head