Stage Designs

Light Bars

Isaac MacDonald from Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC brings us this stage design that looks like a neon Crossfit gym. (originally posted August 2015)

Isaac was approached at the beginning of the summer to design a stage for the youth camp weeks (two weeks, senior high and junior high) for the theme of “Linked”. He researched and came up with the idea of connected LED tubes to make the dream come true.

Once he had the idea, he put it into CAD software and designed it so he knew how many tubes and LED bits he would need. He’s always looked around for cheap ways to DMX LEDs into the system, but have never found a solution for under $200+, until he found this site: http://www.holidaycoro.com. He purchased a 290channel DMX decoder from them and a power supply (12v 33 amp) for a total of $80.

After he had that, he needed to find a cheap way to put LED into tubing that was somewhat durable. He found out there are actual protectors for fluorescent bulbs. So that was that. He ordered 48 4′ T12 Fluorescent Bulb Protectors from bulbs.com for a total of $85 ( oupon was used to get it down to $77 with shipping).

Then to get the LED tube look, he bought spray frost from Home Depot and sprayed each tube to get the frosted look, then cut and placed the LED inside.

From there, he built a 2×4 frame and with PVC cap fittings, he screwed everything together and linked all the LED’s with wiring from Amazon and everything came together very nicely.

With some extra lighting fixtures laying around, they had the opportunity to light the whole back and side wall, with some extra to point outwards.

With everything, below was their budget (it was a $300 budget):

Home Depot (Spray Paint, 2×4, extra protectors) – $93
Bulbs.com (Protectors) – $77
HolidayCoro (DMX Decoder/Power Supply) – $95
Amazon (Wire/Shrink Wrap/etc) – $28
PVC – $37

TOTAL – $332

Yes, they did go over just a bit, and no that didn’t include LED. The LED would’ve added $150 on Amazon. They had some from a previous project.

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2 responses to “Light Bars”

  1. JB says:

    What kind of spray paint did you use?

  2. Josh says:

    What kind of LED’s were used inside the tubes?

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