ADJ's WiFly series of products is a new line of fixtures from the company that are battery powered and have wireless control. Part of this line is the WiFly Par QA5 and the WiFly Transceiver Wireless DMX Transmitter/Receiver.
The WiFly Par QA5 is an LED color-mixing fixture with five quad color (red, green, blue, and amber) five-watt LEDs. It has a dual power system with an IEC wall power input and an IEC pass-through for daisy chaining up to 10 fixtures, as well as an internal replaceable Lithium Ion battery. Control is via DMX, either through the three-pin XLR DMX in and pass-through ports, wirelessly using a WiFly Transceiver to transmit DMX to the fixture.
The WiFly Par QA5 has eight DMX channel modes and uses from one to eight channels of DMX depending on which mode you choose. The fixture also has six different operational modes that allow you to use the fixture in different ways. You can set it in a static color manually, mix your own static color, have it fade through colors, run a preset program, react to sound, or take DMX commands. It has strobe and color macros, and flicker-free dimming.
Personal observations
The WiFly Par QA5 was easy to set up requiring me to select what operational mode I wanted, as well as a DMX address. All of this is set from the four buttons via the four-digit LED display on the side of the unit. I did need to reference the manual for this because knowing where to find the menus for the various functions was initially difficult, but all of the settings are well documented in the manual. Then once I had all of the correct settings, the unit instantly began receiving DMX from the WiFly transceiver connected to my lighting console.
Color mixing was very good. I like that the fixture uses a quad color LED so that the face has a unified color instead of multiple discrete LEDs. I also like the fact that it has amber as the fourth color instead of white. Adding amber allows it to mix a nice variety of reds and ambers, as well as punching up the yellow and warm white.
IN A PORTABLE CHURCH ENVIRONMENT WHERE YOU NEED TO SET UP QUICKLY, THE ABSENCE OF CABLES WOULD BE A PLUS.
Dimming in its raw form is a bit jittery on long fades, but ADJ adds three dimming curves that smooth the dimming over long fades. Each of the three dimming curves has a slightly different fade-up and fade-down profile, allowing you to pick the curve that works best for your application—this is great if you are doing theater. If you are trying to do chases you will want to make sure you use no curve at all, or find the dimmer curve that gives you the best balance between chases and long fades since the curves do affect your chase timing.
The beam of the WiFly Par QA5 is pretty narrow at 25 degrees, making it almost more of a spot fixture then a wash, but this lets the fixture work well for up-lighting truss and highlighting scenery. Also, with the fixture being 10.5- by 9.5- and only 6.5-inches tall, it fits easily into a 12 by 12-inch piece of truss to be used as a truss warmer. In addition, all of the connections are on the sides of the unit instead of the bottom, allowing the unit to sit flat on the floor or flat inside a piece of truss. Yet it still has the double yoke that can be used as a floor stand or to hang the fixture. This makes the unit great for scenic work where you are up-lighting the piece from the floor.
Weighing 10 pounds each, having a battery life of six hours at full on and a recharge time of nine hours, this is a little light that is quite versatile. I could easily see it being set up as a wired unit in a sanctuary for a normal Sunday service and then being pulled out and run from wireless DMX on the battery for something special happening in the fellowship hall or youth room. Or it could be used in a portable church environment where you need to quickly set up, and the absence of cables would be a plus. Even using the optional RFC RF remote to set static colors would be pretty handy to have with this fixture, although the fixture is more versatile with the WiFly Transceiver Wireless DMX Transmitter/Receiver.
Transmitter/receiver specifics
The WiFly Transceiver Wireless DMX Transmitter/Receiver is a standalone box that takes a DMX input and transmits it to other WiFly devices, or as it's name implies, it can also be a receiver for another WiFly transmitter.
Each WiFly Transceiver transmits or receives one universe (512 channels) of DMX, and you can run up to 16 units in a system for 16 universes of DMX. Each unit is dip-switch selectable as to which universe it is going to transmit or receive on. In addition, all of the WiFly fixtures, like the WiFly Par QA5, can be set to which DMX universe it receives in its fixture settings.
ADJ says the WiFly Transceiver will transmit to [a] 500-feet line of sight. I never got that far from the transmitter, but I never had any dropouts or glitches in the signal. Operating in the 2.4 GHz frequency range makes it less prone to interference from wireless mics, Bluetooth devices, or cellular phones.
I do like the fact that there is both five-pin XLR and three-pin XLR DMX in and outs on the unit, so you don't need any adapter regardless of which connector type your console uses. Power is from a wall wart transformer, and the 2.4 Ghz antenna is removable and replaceable.
Overall, I like the system. It was easy to get up and running wirelessly and on battery power. The enclosures appear to be mechanically solid, and operated as advertised.
The list price of $129.99 for the WiFly Transceiver Wireless DMX Transmitter/Receiver is very reasonable for a wireless DMX system. The list price of $329.99 for the WiFly Par QA5 it is a little more expensive than many of ADJ's standard fixtures, even some of those that are much brighter. However, the battery power and wireless DMX capability make it worth the price if you need a fixture that is not constrained by cables. If this is a tool that you need, you should give the WiFly system a look.
