The SeaChanger Color Engine is an electro-mechanical device that is used to control light color in entertainment-industry

lighting Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylig ...

applications. The unit employs four overlapped color filter wheels, inserted into a light beam near its source, to produce colored light. This is in contrast to color scrollers, which insert color filter ribbons into a light beam. The color engine, which was released by Ocean Thin Films in 2005, is designed to fit into the

Source Four The Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) Source Four (also known unofficially as Source 4 or S4) is an ellipsoidal reflector spotlight (ERS) used in stage lighting. First released in 1992, the Source Four was invented by David Cunningham and feature ...

lighting instrument made by Electronic Theatre Controls.SeaChanger Introduces Wash Color Engine

Technology

The SeaChanger Color Engine is designed to fit between the reflector assembly and lens barrel of a Source Four ellipsoidal, replacing the gobo slot and accessory slot. It is designed to be installed without tools. The unit is available in profile and wash versions. The profile model uses the lens barrel and reflector assembly of a Source Four, while the wash model uses only the reflector assembly. The manufacturer provides a lens assembly for the wash unit. There is also a

high-intensity discharge lamp High-intensity discharge lamps (HID lamps) are a type of electrical gas-discharge lamp which produces light by means of an electric arc between tungsten electrodes housed inside a translucent or transparent fused quartz or fused alumina arc tu ...

(HID) model available wherein only the lens barrel from the Source Four is used in the profile fixture. The wash version of the HID fixture is a completely stand alone unit, not using Source Four components at all, although the same color engine technology is used. The color engine contains integral power supply and communication interface. The unit mounts between the lamp housing and the barrel assembly of a Source Four fixture, meaning that it is placed directly in front of the source, or lamp and before any optics or beam shaping devices. Inside the unit, four micro-lithographed

dichroic filter A dichroic filter, thin-film filter, or interference filter is a color filter used to selectively pass light of a small range of colors while reflecting other colors. By comparison, dichroic mirrors and dichroic reflectors tend to be characteri ...

s are gradually saturated from 0-95%. The optional Studio Dichroic color filters are gradually saturated from 0-100%. Wheel colors are standard CMY, having one wheel each for cyan, magenta, and yellow, as well as one green wheel. The SeaChanger profile is unique in that its green color filter increases its color gamut to include deep blues, reds and greens that are difficult to create through dichroic color mixing. The green wheel may be replaced with black for mechanical dimming purposes in HID fixture applications or other applications where dimmers are not available.

Stepper motor A stepper motor, also known as step motor or stepping motor, is a brushless DC electric motor that divides a full rotation into a number of equal steps. The motor's position can be commanded to move and hold at one of these steps without any posi ...

s turn each of the wheels to create colors, with wheel position and speed controlled by a four-channel

DMX512 DMX512 is a standard for digital communication networks that are commonly used to control lighting and effects. It was originally intended as a standardized method for controlling stage lighting dimmers, which, prior to DMX512, had employe ...

or RDM signal from a

lighting console A lighting control console (also called a lightboard, lighting board, or lighting desk) is an electronic device used in theatrical lighting design to control multiple stage lights at once. They are used throughout the entertainment industry and a ...

References

Stage lighting {{stagecraft-stub