Stage Designs

Throwback: Glow Squares

Drew Middlebrooks from ThreeLife Church in LaGrange, GA brings us these very cool glowing LED squares. (Originally posted March 2014)

The main elements of the design are the nine 4’x4′ led squares. They were constructed out of 1/2″ PVC sprayed black with standard RGB LED flex strips attached to the front. They were run off five DMX decoders. The ideal situation would call for one per square, but they had to double up some of them.

Their stage is not very deep, so they always ran into the issue of creating a sense of depth on stage. This design really did the trick. The brightness of the LED squares fools your eye into thinking the space behind the square is darker and deeper than it is.

The design cost about $65 per square.

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Window Puzzle Twisty Trees

12 responses to “Throwback: Glow Squares”

  1. John says:

    Drew, Great job man! Love seeing these all over twitter and Facebook! Thankful you are using your gifts to glorify The Lord! You have a special gift my friend!

  2. Matt says:

    I’ve been working on something very very similar to this and have held off due to concerns on DMX controller cost. Can you tell me what controllers you used to do so many strips on so few? I also noticed that the linked LED strips on Amazon are about half the density (Diodes per inch) than most. Was that the compromise you made to use so few controllers? Looks great.

    • Matt says:

      To clarify, my main concern is power. How did you power so many? Most specs I read say that they need to return to power every 5 meters. Thanks.

      • Drew says:

        matt- we part number of the decoders used is PX24506 (amazon) they are pretty much the cheapest most basic out there. i ordered the led strips that have the 12v power supply included with them and used those to power the decoders. the way i configured them was to run all of my decoders and power supplies in one “hub” and feed out from there rather than scatter them all over. my longest run being about 30 ft. i did notice that in some colors (purple, white especially) you will see a good bit of color variation in the squares. other colors don’t do this though (red, green, blue). i did notice a minute intensity loss on the squares at the longer cable runs, due to voltage drop, but to the untrained eye its really unnoticeable. we’ve since upgraded to 16 squares on 9 decoders. best of luck to you.

        • Nicco Hirajeta says:

          Hey Drew. I love the set up you guys have. One question I have is how you have the whole wiring set up and controllability. We run our lighting system through a computer based program called light jockey with 512 Dmx addresses. How do you have your set up for controlling intensity and changing color?

  3. TheRVK says:

    I really like your concept, do you have any video of it in action? I’d love to see some performance video.

  4. Joscelyn says:

    Nice job bro.

  5. Brittany says:

    I have a question about the powering of the LEDs. Drew you said you purchased the LEDs with the power supply included. How many of the power supplies did you use in order to create the 9 squares? You used these to power both the LEDs and the decoders correct? If you don’t mind me asking, could you send me a link to the LED strips that you ordered? Thank you so much!

  6. Lisa says:

    What color of led strips did you order? The link at the top in the description takes you to copper. However, there is also white and black strips available.

  7. Pamela says:

    How did you keep the LED lights from hot spotting if you just applied them to the front? Or did they go on the back?

  8. Caleb says:

    Hey Drew, what method did you use for hanging these squares?

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