Stage Designs

LED Hexagons

Gary Brownell and Esther Guillen with Potential Church in Cooper City, Florida bring us this design reflecting series artwork. (Originally posted December 2014)

The design also had to reflect the South Florida electronic music vibe that attendees expect. All the while keep the project in budget.

There were LED hexagons along the back and side walls. The square keyboard and drum risers had rounded backlit sections added for the circular look.

The keyboardist and drummer were each surrounded by a hexagonal LED tube backdrop.

The hexagons were constructed of PVC pipe for rigidity and the LED tubes were attached. Inside the hexagons were 10″inch work lights ($12 Lowes) that connected to the dimmers. They put in 60-watt clear silver bowl bulbs ($2.84 1000bulbs.com) for an authentic look.

The 2ft LED tubes are 8ft clear fluorescent tube covers ($4.50 Home Depot) cut to 2ft lengths with Lee 216 diffusion gel inside lit by 5050-300 RGB LED tape (Amazon $11.36) inside. The tape was connected to a DMX controller ($249 superbrightleds.com) and 2-12 volt 30amp power supplies. ($25 Amazon).

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Titanium Stage Siding

24 responses to “LED Hexagons”

  1. Cameron says:

    Where did you find those fittings for the PVC pipe? Did you have to special order them?

    • Gary Brownell says:

      Greenhouse suppliers. The PVC fittings to make the hexagon angles aren’t available from home improvement stores.

  2. Danny Sena says:

    Looks Incredible.
    how many Dmx boxes did you guys use?
    Also, was a 25′ roll of Diffuser enough?

  3. Jeremy says:

    If you used multiple strands of that led strip, were you able to link them together? Also How did you connect it to your light board?

    • Gary Brownell says:

      I hard wired several tubes together and then used Y connectors to connect chains of tubes together. You can get Y connectors from Amazon for the LED strips. I cut the single end off of the Y cables and terminated them to the DMX boxes. The DMX box is connected to the light board with DMX cables. The light board and DMX box have to be assigned matching DMX addresses for the board to control it.

  4. Rob says:

    Where did you get the led strip y’s. I see that you said on Amazon. And, I’ve bought a bunch of this in the past; but, I’m having a hard time finding non-flat-strip-crimp-closed type connectors.

    Would like to have flexible multi-conductor wires as a y!

  5. Rob says:

    Can you provide a link to the 120 degree pvc y’s. I’ve found others, but $4.95 each is steep, when you have to buy 65 of them.

  6. Hi Gary that’s a beautiful design, mind if i copy that for our anniversary stage design?
    And do you mind to share how you connected and powered (an electric diagram will be much appreciated) all of those strips to DMX Controller and power supply?
    Thank you very much..

  7. I was checking into using polyethylene tubing (milky white type) that has a 1/2 inch inner diameter. This would allow 10mm LED strip to slide inside of it, rather than fluorescent tubes.

    I didn’t need the quantity that the supplier was able to do, as a minimum order. But, another of you might need this info. I mentioned to Jim that I would post their info here, in case any one else needed it. So, if you need this type of thing, be sure to mention where you got his info. [I’m not affiliated with Grayline at all. I just found them on google, while searching high and low for a company that could make nice and straight tubes, instead of buying it in a coiled spool, that wouldn’t look good with its curling, on stage.]

    Manufacturer’s email response follows:
    ————————————————————————–

    Jim Fronsee
    Jan 27 (3 days ago)

    Hello Rob,

    We can make polyethylene in this size and we can cut it in-line during extrusion, so it would be straight, but your order is fairly small. As a manufacturer, our minimum order quantity would probably be about 1,000’ and the cost would be in the neighborhood of $200.

    Before we have our engineering team look at this and get specific pricing, are you ok with roughly a minimum order size of $200?

    Thanks! -Jim

  8. Josh Anders says:

    We are definitely wanting to implement this amazing design for our summer series this year. Our only concern is the cost for us to pull it off.

    We priced everything out and realized we would actually have to do this for half that cost

    Is there anyway you or anyone else on here who have implemented this would be interesting in selling your used setup? We could buy it and ship. I know how often a lot of this stuff ends up sitting in storage, taking up valuable space after it has been used.

    Please email me if interested at josh.anders@thepointechurch.net

  9. James says:

    How much did you spend overall?

  10. Jerrod says:

    Did you put the diffusing gel inside of the tubes or did you put it on the outside? If on the inside, how did you attach it?

    Great design.

    • Mark Manley says:

      I have the same question! Great design!!

      • Gary Brownell says:

        The adhesive on the LED tape won’t hold it securely. I used a long piece of wood or PVC pipe to press the tape against the inside of the tube. Then I used clear packing tape at each end to keep the tape taught. So it the adhesive on the LED tape comes loose, the packing tape at each end will still hold the tape stretched through the tube.
        The difusion is inside the tube and is slid in after the LED tape. There is a learning curve to putting these together but after making hundreds of tubes, 70 in my last tube project, they can take a fair amount of abuse and still stay together. You can check out my Hanging pixel tube project on my Instagram @GaryBrownell.

    • Mark Manley says:

      I have the same question! Great design!!
      And… how did you attach the strip in the tube? With its own tape? Seems hard!

  11. Natalia Peralta says:

    i love this design! want to do it for my church. Are you able to send me a video please of the process on how you did this?

  12. Isha Shrivastava says:

    What are the dimensions of the hexagons?

  13. Juanita Howe says:

    A Leading Global Manufacturer of LED Hexagon Lights

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