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While digital lighting fixtures are not new to the lighting market, Robe’s DigitalSpot 3000 DT is the first digital moving light projector that has been combined with an LED-based wash fixture, forming a unique hybrid lighting fixture with both digital spot and wash features.
With the DigitalSpot 3000 DT as Robe’s newest addition to the company’s Digital Series line of fixtures, Robe continues to make advances into the digital lighting market.
So what is a digital lighting fixture? It’s a lighting fixture that uses a video projector as the light source and the means of manipulating the light’s pattern, combined with a computer-based graphics engine that provides the moving or still images and effects to the video projector, all combined in a moving light body allowing the light to pan and tilt like any other moving light. This combination of video projector and moving light with media content allows you to do things with a digital light that you can’t do with a standard moving light.
Real-time video playback, 3D rotation effects of the video, and dynamic warping to fit on curved or odd-shaped surfaces are just a few examples of what a digital light can do that a standard moving light can’t. Also, multiple DigitalSpot 3000 DTs can be tiled and edge blended to create one large image. These features alone allow for a lot of creativity in your lighting design.Add in the fact that images and effects can be overlaid using the three digital gobo or pattern layers, and you get a lot of flexibility.
The DigitalSpot 3000 DT has a 2700 ANSI Lumen DLP video projector with a 4:3 aspect ratio at 1024 x 768 XGA resolution with a 2000:1 contrast ratio. It uses a 200-watt, 4000-hour lamp and has a mechanical focus and mechanical shutter for true blackouts. This projector is housed in a moving yoke that gives the unit its pan and tilt capabilities.
On the front of the unit is a built-in RED wash module. RED stands for ROBE Emitted Diodes, which is the LED wash portion of the lighting fixture. The RED wash module consists of a total of 48 red, green, blue, and cool white LEDs, allowing you to color mix any color of light you might want from the fixture.
The LED color mixing was very nice. I especially liked the range of blues that the unit allowed me to create. The dimming was good, as well. You can use both the wash portion and the spot portion of the fixture simultaneously, increasing the number of effects you can get out of the fixture. This makes the LED wash module a nice value-add to the unit.
The base of the DigitalSpot 3000 DT contains the brains of the fixture, the onboard graphics engine which is a custom PC running a Linux operating system and custom Robe graphics software, which interfaces to a lighting console via DMX or the DMX-over-Ethernet control protocol ArtNet. Although this sounds simple, the results are stunning.The control over the light that comes out of the DigitalSpot 3000 DT is amazing, and is primarily the product of the graphics engine.
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Greg Persinger is the owner of Vivid Illumination. He can be reached at greg@vividillumination.com.
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