# Cue lights...?



## Diarmuid (Dec 10, 2005)

Has anyone had any experience with using cue lights? Our theatre is now changing the rules so that for the first time, people backstage will be calling the show, and we were wondering if it was worth getting cue lights...
Also, whereabouts could we get them from, or could we even make them?

Thanks in advance for your help and input!


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## ship (Dec 11, 2005)

Cue lights could be useful for providing cues such as for the Pinrail if they are not on the headsets or others of the crew in remote locations that need a visual Go signal but are not in site of the stage manager. It's also useful in moving a mass of people on stage such as for a chorus of them. The Chicago version of the Rockettes Christmas show in past years has used cue lights for instance no doubt for this purpose.

Such a "go" light could especially be useful for less practiced casts or chorus's who might not know what lines to be listening for or have not been following the show. Short of having a "people mover" having some visual "stop light" off stage would be useful.

As for buying or making them, it's fairly easy to make dependant upon how bright, focused and intense you wish to have. Such things are possibly just as cost effective or required to be bought dependant upon your situation. Most theatrical supply companies worth their salt can probably either make or find a source for such things and there would be a number of options from A-Lamps with shatter proof covers on them to some form of LED system. Otherwise if you have surplus lighting fixtures, one gelled red and another gelled green/blue would be sufficient when installed and focused in an easy to see place to be used as a cue light.

Control of them can either be as a switch at the stage manager's podium, or run by the light board as per a lighting cue.

Possibly good to have one lamp (Red) as "standby", the other (Green) as "Go". There is other options such as leaving the red always on other than when in "go" mode. Could do red/yellow/green also in having both options.


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 11, 2005)

One possible idea if you are making one is to get a 2 way switch. When the switch is in the center nothing is on, push it up and its ready as ship said, and bring it back down and it sends the power to the green. Make sure you never have two on at the same time at any rate. 

I actually have a question though as well. For a Cue light , which I have never heard of before, is it a light that is like somewhere onstage or near the arch and everyone out in the audience can see, including say followspots that can't use a headset, or is it in a location where only people offstage or something can see. It sounds rather usefull however.

~Nick


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## ship (Dec 12, 2005)

What makes sense to you? Would it be a good idea for someting that the audience can see, or if tasked for the follow spot (not normally a us for such a thing but in going with it) something that instead might be better fitted as per a LED above the fixture so it's only the operator that sees it?

Same with back stage be it mounted in a porthole, or dropped in behind a leg of some sort.

Lots of ways to do it by way of origional theater's Q light system were even if removed, there might be a duplex box with conduit near the fly rail if the theater is old enough and you now know what it's there for, or if it's just some box dropped in just above head height that shows some lamps. Perhaps some reverse focused Lekos etc. Something noted as a cue.

On the two way switch, a on/off/on switch would certainly work for having only one phase of power and rated for the amperage. Not specifically as a threeway switch rated for this purpose, nor would a two phase switch when jumped between phases for dong this. Thus is in part the question of making something that is acceptable within the authority of those that make rules for what your theater can and cannot do, verses that wich even if the same at times is made and more factory in construction.


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## SketchyCroftPpl (Dec 13, 2005)

I guess that depends on what you need to get done. I know that it doesn't make very much sense to place it where the audience can see it, if its only needed for backstage, but more of the application I was thinking would be like at my school where we have two followspots and not always enough working headsets. Something like a go light like that places in an area where it wasn't very noticable unless looking would be rather nice. 

Other than that, I was thinking just a really simple system with a 9v and a switch with a couple wires. Nothing to complicated. The idea was that it could be easily put together for a show (in my mind not much has to be more perminant than a week because thats all our shows ever run for) and then able to be dismantled or changed readily for the next show. 

~Nick


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## Diarmuid (Dec 19, 2005)

Thanks for your help.

Now I just need to go and convince the TD.


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## JahJahwarrior (Dec 19, 2005)

Now heres a question--a system with a control box that has an on-off-on switch in it and a 9volt battery. One could run that through XLR cable, possibly? I know some people use edison cables and adaptors for their speakers, which is dumb, but this is 9volts, so even if someone plugged a mic into it, well, phantom power is DC, right? if it is, then all you are doing is giving a mic 9 volts of "phantom power." And, if you are using it with LED's, you probably only want about 3 volts, so you'd knock it down...infact you coul djsut use two AA's. Anyways, connect one lead to each "hot" side of the switch, and the third to ground, and there is a 2 light cue light system which can be used through a snake. 

It's very possible that it won't work, please tell me though, so I'll know. Otherwise, I might build one. My intercom system doens't work well for some shows, and I'm increasingly finding myself running shows that I do not know at all. A cue light would make it rather simple, and avoid having the director who's sitting in the audience whisper me cues (she tends to not talk nearly loud enough!)


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## bdesmond (Dec 19, 2005)

XLR and a nine volt battery isn't going to work so well. Remember the cable is a resistor. The very low current from the 9V battery will be 0 at the end of any significant run of microphone cable...


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## JahJahwarrior (Dec 20, 2005)

ok then we run the entire thing off of phantom power. Through the cable it stays at whatever voltage it comes out of the board as, at the light we knock it down to 3 volts.


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## Diarmuid (Dec 20, 2005)

I will definetly atttempt to try to set up a cue light system like that, thanks for the advice; to be honest I don't know too much about phantom power so i may well mess it up, but i will at least try.


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## JahJahwarrior (Dec 20, 2005)

sorry about the crappy circuit diagram...





again, don't build or use that until someone says it won't kill your board!! I have no clue if it will think you are giving it an input. It might work if you put diodes on each lead in the first box, but I don't know!!!!

edit: another thing I forgot!! Somewhere somehow you need to make sure you use the right voltage. You could install a chip that regulates the voltage, preferably at the end right by the LED, to get it down to 3 volts.


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## avkid (Dec 22, 2005)

I was thinking about doing something involving a remotely controlled outlet such as this one: http://www.target.com/gp/detail.htm...2?_encoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B00008X5D5


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## JahJahwarrior (Dec 22, 2005)

yeah, but..... well i think it'd be more fun to build it yourself...


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## Mayhem (Dec 22, 2005)

bdesmond is correct in stating that the cable will add its own resistance but you would have to use a fairly long cable run to reduce the power form a 9V battery. 30’ of 22AWG cable is going to have a total resistance of less than 1ohm (copper cable resistance for 22AWG is 0.0162 ohms per foot). 

Just remember to use (Length x Resistance x 2) to calculate the resistance in your cable (as a 30’ cable is really a 60’ cable as power has to flow to the LED and then back to the battery).

To run a LED from 9V you need to place a 390ohm resistor in series with the LED. 

There are charts available that will tell you the resistance of copper wire per foot or if you have access to a low ohms meter, then you can measure it yourself. This is the chart that I have:

<table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6">
<tr><td>AWG</td><td>Resistance in ohms</td></tr>
<tr><td>10</td><td>0.0010</td></tr>
<tr><td>12</td><td>0.0016</td></tr>
<tr><td>14</td><td>0.0026</td></tr>
<tr><td>16</td><td>0.0040</td></tr>
<tr><td>18</td><td>0.0064</td></tr>
<tr><td>20</td><td>0.0102</td></tr>
<tr><td>22</td><td>0.0162</td></tr>
<tr><td>24</td><td>0.0257</td></tr>
</table>

I would stay away from trying to harness phantom power are there is a possibility that you could short it and cause damage to your board.

In your first proposal, you were going to attaché the positive (hot) leads to the switch as well as the negative (ground). Be careful with switches as it sounds like you may have caused a short. Some switches are dual pole and others are single pole. Dual pole switches are two separate switches in the same package. You will commonly see these used in situations where you want to reverse the polarity feeding a motor, like in the power windows, sun roof etc on your car. Push the switch one way and the motor turns clockwise, push it the other way and the motor turns anti clockwise. Other uses are where you want to turn off both the Active and Neutral input on a device. For your purposes, you only need a single pole switch.

When wiring your ON/OFF/ON switch, take the positive lead from the battery and solder it to the centre terminal of the switch. Next, connect the positive lead for one LED form one of the remaining terminals and the positive for the second LED from the remaining terminal.

Your switch should look something like this:

Terminal 1: Positive to Red LED
Terminal 2: Positive from battery
Terminal 3: Positive to Green LED

This way, when the switch is in the centre position, neither LED is illuminated, Push the switch up (connects 2 and 3) illuminates the Green LED and pushing the switch down (connects 1 and 2) illuminates the Red LED.

If it were me, I would power it from a plug in power pack as it will supply a constant power supply. You probably have some kicking around home that don’t get used or were left over after the appliance it use to power or charge was thrown away.

[edit - I have no idea why there is so much space above my table]


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## JahJahwarrior (Dec 22, 2005)

Mayhem said:


> [edit - I have no idea why there is so much space above my table]




Mayhem, it's really quite simple. If there was no space above your table, you'd have trouble sitting around it to eat. 


and I think my diagram has it wired like you suggest--positive to the switch, switches between two leads from there. Ground is not wired to the switch, only to pin 1 onthe XLR's. 

And yes, I have TONS of wall warts  

The cable in a snake...any idea what AWG it is? I don't have a snake with me, especially not the snake I use the most. I do have a few mic cables lying around but I think wiring in a snake is a smaller wire...


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## Mayhem (Dec 23, 2005)

JahJahwarrior said:


> ...I think my diagram has it wired like you suggest--positive to the switch, switches between two leads from there. Ground is not wired to the switch, only to pin 1 onthe XLR's.
> 
> And yes, I have TONS of wall warts
> 
> The cable in a snake...any idea what AWG it is? I don't have a snake with me, especially not the snake I use the most. I do have a few mic cables lying around but I think wiring in a snake is a smaller wire...



Yes - the picture is correct for the switch but my comment was in relation to your initial post and also as a warning when wiring things up. Have seen a few melted wires from people shorting out their power supply with an incorrectly wired switch.

Not sure on the AWG of a snake and I would imagine that it would vary depending upon the quality. Last one I remember using was possibly 18AWG - but that is just a guess.


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## JahJahwarrior (Dec 23, 2005)

Well then, I might make a guess. At most I'd think you'd only have 1-5 ohms resistance, and that's not going to do much. I mean heck, the quality of most resisters is plus or minus 5%. If anything the LED will be a little bit dimmer. 


And yes, in my origina post I probably did describe it wrong  thanks for warning peopl! 


Now all i need are some project boxes, TRS 1/4" jacks, a spdt switch, and some LED's. I wanna build it!


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## JahJahwarrior (Jan 5, 2006)

Well, I built one. If anyone wants pictures or detailed info, I have it and can give it. It's in two modules and will work with a snake, you could build adaptors for 1/4" even 1/4" TS, but with TS you cannot have a warning light and a go light likeit does now. 

It's held in two project boxes, each rather small, about the size of my hand. on-off on switch, red power LED, power jack and wallwart, I used "Size M Coaxial" power jacks and plugs or something like that. yellow warning LED and a green GO LED. Short XLR leads on each box. 

so, I feel accomplished!


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## JahJahwarrior (Jan 5, 2006)

http://img415.imageshack.us/img415/7126/dscf18561nl.jpg
http://img415.imageshack.us/img415/8536/dscf18554iu.jpg
http://img415.imageshack.us/img415/2851/dscf18545xb.jpg


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## Mayhem (Jan 6, 2006)

Looks good - well done.

What axe is that in the picture. Les Paul in style from what I see.


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## Radman (Jan 6, 2006)

Very nicely done! Little plastic enclosures and everything! I wish I had the time to do cool projects like that!


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## JahJahwarrior (Jan 6, 2006)

the project boxes were just abut the perfect size. Had trouble fitting in the large switch I got though, they were just barely tell enough. smallest I could find at the local 'Shack. 


other than that, some resistors, box of various LED's, a few LED holder/mounting things, a power jack and plug for my wallwart, the two project boxes were already mentioned, and a heavy duty switch. I had two XLR cables which were dead in the middle, I just used the ends of those. 

if anyone really wants one that's simple like this (I know people sell really nice big systems, this is really simple and not too fancy) I would be willing to make some and sell them at cost. I can make them for maybe about $15, depending on parts, if people wanted one, I'd order some parts from Jameco or something, rather than going to radioshack, I think that will lower the price. I paid $20 in parts, but some camein multiples, others were only single items. 

the axe? LP style, but she's a Hamer Slammer, cheap beginner kind of thing. They sent me new pickups though, when the stock ones turned out to be total crap that was unpotted (or atleast, the potting sucked. I had feedback anytime I was within 15 feet of my amp almost regardless of volume because of that...), which was nice of them, some Seymour Duncaen designed, not actually seymour duncan, but like, a cheaper version of them, I guess designed by SD and made by Hamer. 

nice git, works well with my Flextone II.


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## Diarmuid (Feb 21, 2006)

I have finally managed to convince my TD to let me make some cue lights, and was wondering, if the cue lights were intended to be going over about 100M of normal microphone cable (in our snake), would it be possible to have LED's at the end with the switches, or would this draw too much power away from the other LEDs and make them too dim?
Thanks in advance for your help.


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## Mayhem (Feb 22, 2006)

Diarmuid said:


> I have finally managed to convince my TD to let me make some cue lights, and was wondering, if the cue lights were intended to be going over about 100M of normal microphone cable (in our snake), would it be possible to have LED's at the end with the switches, or would this draw too much power away from the other LEDs and make them too dim?
> Thanks in advance for your help.



Depending upon the gauge of wire in your snake it shouldn't be too much of a resistive load. If you go back one page in this discussion you will see this covered and also some pictures of a completed project.

If you are using a 9V battery then a 390ohm resistor should be used for the LEDs. If they appear a little dim, reduce the value of the resistance. If you can attach a 9V battery to one end of the mic cable and then check the voltage at the other end.


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## JahJahwarrior (Feb 22, 2006)

So, you are saying that you would have, say, green and yellow lights on both ends, so that when you had the yellow light lit on the stage end, you'd also have a yellow light lit on the switch end? fairly simple, if you have a on-off-on switch, +X volts goes to centre, top goes to say yellow, bottom to green. I put my resitors on the stage end, so the line has 9 volt available in it, I am not sure if that could potentially harm a microphone plugged into a line that it was one, but I accidentially used the wrong ends anyways, so I'd need adaptors or a snake with XLR sends on the stage. All you do is parallel off of the on contact a 390 ohm resistor and whatever color LED you want to use. 

ground
|
LED
|
resistor
|
power send to stage for light
|
|-resistor--LED---ground
|
top contact of switch aka +9vdc

same thing for bottom contact. Hope that make sense...you might try a little bit bigger of a project box, it gets really tight with the tiny ones. Also, some people have told me they would rather have two switches. That has the bonus of allowing both to be on at once: you can work out a code with four possible outcomes. none on means one thing, one on means another, the other on means yet another, and both on means something else. Radioshack also has some nifty switches meant for cars with the cool flip safety lid thing. If I did it again, I'd use those nifty switches, (they are two contact only, so I'd need two), and put another LED on the switch box so you can see there what you have on. I'd also use a bigger resistor on the power LED so it wasn't so bright. What'd be really nice is to manage some way to have an acknowledge button on the stage end--somehow when pushed it would short out the light on the switch end or something. It's beyond me, I might sound smart but I don't know too much about electricity and stuff. Mayhem? can you chime in and help me out here? If I could figure out how to do an acknowledge button, I'd definitely build another version.


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## Mayhem (Feb 23, 2006)

JahJahwarrior said:


> What'd be really nice is to manage some way to have an acknowledge button on the stage end--somehow when pushed it would short out the light on the switch end or something. It's beyond me, I might sound smart but I don't know too much about electricity and stuff. Mayhem? can you chime in and help me out here? If I could figure out how to do an acknowledge button, I'd definitely build another version.



With regards to an LED on both the send and receive boxes, that is fairly straight forward and all you would do is mount the switch, LEDs, resistor, battery and XLR into one your master box and then just the LEDs, resistor and XLR into the slave box. The output to the XLR in the master box is tapped from the switch side of the LED and in the diagram below, note the tap from the top LED crosses over the wire going to the bottom LED, not connected to it.

However, I am not sure exactly what benefit having the LEDs on the master box would be. Other than giving you a visual indicator of which position the switch is in.

The Slave box is essentially a DMX tester in construction with the only difference being that one of the LEDs is reverse polarity (and also the value of the resistor is different). As such, you could actually build it into a XLR plug. 

Another variation would be to buy one of the flashing LEDs for the standby LED, as most people will see a flashing light before they see a static one. 

An acknowledge system is a bit more tricky and I would need to find some time to sit down and figure it out. Although, if the cue is missed, that is a very clear indication that it wasn’t acknowledged! It is going to be difficult given only 3 connectors in a mic cable. Given the switch is on the master box, turning off the power in at the slave box will turn off the LEDs there but will not turn them off on the master, therefore not achieving anything. I’ll try to give it a bit more thought but at the moment I would say that you would need to have a least 4 connectors. On a lot of snakes, that is either going to mean using 2 amp sends or 2 mic channels.


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## JahJahwarrior (Feb 26, 2006)

mayhem: what about a PIC chip thingy? I've worked a bit with them. Seems you could build a circuit and write a program that could allow it. Eh, I'm way too tired and bogged down with an english paper and definite integrals (I HATE MATH!) to think about it much just this second. Could you use two leads of the three to power two leds simply by reversing polarity? Put a diode in there to protect your led: depending on the polarity, different led's will light, and if there is no power at all, neither will light. same if both switches are up, I think....that could be bad...?? Then, use the third lead for acknowledge: it's simply a momentary push switch that lets the power go around their LED and back to you via the third lead. And, based on the polarity, and which line is ground at that instant, it would light one of your two LED's, showing you they acknowledge whatever message you just sent. The led's on your master controller would not light until they pushed the switch, and would only stay lit as long as they held it down. 

possible, or am I crazy from caffeine and sore abs? (baseball conditioning)


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## Mayhem (Feb 27, 2006)

Well that is possibly going to place it outside of the usability of a lot of people and probably not really worth the effort.

Another option would be to use a bi-colour LED (the two leg resistance dependant ones, not the three leg dual LED types) for the cue/go but that would require a trim resistor being used to adjust the resistance to accommodate long cable runs. You would then only need one power wire to deliver both cue and go, leaving the other to return the acknowledgement voltage through the third wire.

I would suggest just using a second circuit if you wanted an acknowledgement system as well.


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## JahJahwarrior (Feb 27, 2006)

but would it work? I'll try to draw a diagram sometime, right now I'm working on english


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## Andy_Leviss (Mar 1, 2006)

A lot has been written on the technical hows, so I'm going to weigh in with a thought on some of the suggestions of the functional hows and how cue lights are used in professional situations.

The most efficient way to use lights, and avoid false starts or missed cues, is to use a single cue light as both the standby and the go. As a rule, every single situation, regional, touring, off-Broadway, and Broadway I've worked or observed in has used the action of turning the light on as the standby, and turning it off as the go cue.

Multiple colors are used for stage entrances and fly rails (the most I've seen are three) so that multiple movements can cued in close timing to each other (for example, on the fly rail, blue is for lines 5, 6, and 7 to fly out and 10 to come in; then red signals for 12 to fly out). 

Also, when using incandescent bulbs, always double up...you don't want a blown lamp either not coming on at all or blowing in the standby and cuing the action early. The most common cue light you'll find in Broadway/Off-Broadway and touring situations is a low wattage colored incandescent bulb running on standard 120V, with two bulbs (each in protective cages like you'd find at a worksite) Y'd from the same connector (most commonly just a standard stagepin).

Another neat trick for fly rail cues is to use rope lights..two or three colors can be strung across the rail, and that way they can be clearly seen from anywhere on the rail without having to look away from the operating lines.

To add a bit more on the technical side, every show I've been on using cue lights in the last three years has just used some sort of panel with a number of standard wall switches connecting to pigtails or jacks to connect to the cue lights. There is often some sort of master or submaster chain worked out so that multiple cues can be triggered at once. One of the squints here will have to fill in the details of how that's usually worked out, since this squeak tries to stay far away from any cue light other than the one at the FOH console!

Hope this helps,
Andy


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## Mayhem (Mar 1, 2006)

Good points Andy.

One issue here would appear to be the fact that the people wanting this system either do not have the ability or the money to put in a more elaborate system. As with the build your own headset thread, that is trying to find a workable medium between the ClearCom system and a couple of tin cans and some string, this is looking at a cheap and workable solution.

Whilst it is simply a control panel and 120V lamps the ability to run cables would appear to be the problem. As such, this little system can run down a snake which neither of us would advise for a high voltage application.

The use of 2 lights is a good idea and one that is easy to do if you remember to wire them up in parallel, not series. Can also be done with LEDs.

Your comment on the industry using a single lamp (or pair of lamps) for each cue (on/off) is a good bit of feedback and perhaps should be replicated for any system adapted for school use here. This also fees up that 3rd wire for the acknowledgement system, if that really is something that you want to build. 

Now it is fairly straight forward to use a low voltage system to turn on some 120V lights by using a mains rated relay but that is something that you should really be supervised in building.


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## JahJahwarrior (Mar 2, 2006)

I definitely am not building something that is used on broadway--I know that, and trying to replicate more what they do is beyond my abilities. I'm working in a tiny, sort of crappy school theatre, working with administration and directors who would not be extremely happy with me trying to run new cables through walls, and who don't know the laws on anything. For example, I don't think I can legally add in circuit breakers and wiring (run in conduit along walls) because I'm not an electricion. I can move an outlet though, as long as I don't add any on. I think I could run conduit wherever, and just have a male 3prong edison cable sitting there to plug into wherever I want to put rented dimmer packs though. The school doesn't know about any of that, nor do they care. it's a small christian school an we rent the space from a small church. I just replaced all the lamps in the exit signs because they weren't working. My dad has donated some flourescent lamps (tax write off for him) and I've been working to change out the incandescents where I can. I'm probably the only one at the school who cares about how much electricity is wasted by turning on the cans in the ceiling along with the big mercury vapor lamps used to light the bulding. 

This was mainly an attempt by me to see if I could build something someone on here suggested. It might have a practical use for me, it might not. I've also build a nifty intercom circuit. nothing amazing, but it allows me to use ordinary wired or wireless phones as a party line intercom. I realized that our school was not allowed to use FRS or GMRS radios, because of FCC laws. CB and some other type of radio that i can't think of the name for were both $100 or so per handheld. Cheap wireless phones are $15 each and the system is quite modular--you can use your own phones with it. 

anyways, I could see how an acknowledge button could be nice, I like to know that people got the signal. Not necessary though. I could use a relay to use mains voltage but don't see it as necessary for me. Building another system isn't even necessary, I probably won't. This two light system works alright for me, for the applications I'm using it in. I also designed it to be quite portable, so I can take it to anywhere I go. 

anyways, thanks very much andy and mayhem, you both have put alot more knowledge into my head!


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## saxman0317 (Apr 23, 2006)

We have a tv on both sides of the stage as well in the green rooms that are running on the schools annoucment channel (which happens on the stages cameras), and just patch in what were taping to sell. Works fine, and then we cant get blamed for actors missing cues.


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## FxDrew (Jun 1, 2006)

With most touring broadway shows they use an on-standby and off-go configuration. They use small 5 watt lights (they come in a variety of colors), they are plugged into socket splitters (like a light bulb base twofer, so if one of the bulbs burn out during a show, you still have another light and you don't miss the cue). When the light is turned on by the stage manager, you are on 'Standby' when it's time for the cue to happen, the stage manager turns off the light as the 'GO'. 

Another way to do this is to have one of those "Now Serving Number..." signs. The stage manager cues the number and then turns on another light under the sign to go into 'Standby' and when it's time for the cue, the stage manager turns off the light to 'GO'

I saw a cool way to do Fly Rail lights at the Barbra Mann Theatre in Florida. They use different colored rope lights on the backside of the arbor guide. That way you're not craning your neck to look at the wall cue light for the 'GO'..


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## burgesg (Dec 22, 2006)

Diarmuid said:


> Has anyone had any experience with using cue lights? Our theatre is now changing the rules so that for the first time, people backstage will be calling the show, and we were wondering if it was worth getting cue lights...
> Also, whereabouts could we get them from, or could we even make them?
> Thanks in advance for your help and input!



Interestingly our school recently bought a set of these but we never ended up using them. I think we bought the parts then put them together. They are definately useful, but the LEDs are rather small so you have to make sure the actors keep a close eye on them. I think a better system is to use an intercom.


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## SHARYNF (Dec 23, 2006)

Another possibility is to use a setup for what is usually refered to as hall lights, where you have two switches and either switch can turn on or off the lights

http://www.hometips.com/hyhw/electrical/22_3way.html

I would be cautious about running a switched circuit through your audio snake especially is you use the 1 pin (shield) you could easily wind up with a pop in the audio system everytime you turn the light on or off.

Audio snakes are typically 22 awg wire, a few are 20, 18 awg would be very unusual and it would make the snake very stiff

Sharyn


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## drawstuf99 (Dec 28, 2006)

We had a very simple "cue light" for A Chorus Line when I was on crew for all of those wall units in the back to flip around from side to side. It was simply a clamp light w/ the scoop off with one of those red bulbs that is close to infrared or something so it wasn't seen or spilling onstage but just by the crew backstage.

It was off for no cue coming up, when it turned on that meant "stand by" and when it went back off that was go. It was just wired to a switch box at the SM desk. Very simple but it worked. I personally don't think there is a need for some really expensive L.E.D system with all the crazy features - then again it depends on the cue I would suppose.


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