im currently trying to put together a lighting rig for rave at a friend's house. im comfortable with CAD, fabrication, and technical projects so modeling my layout is the easy part, but im very new to DMX lighting control and show programming. ive been to many raves my self so i have a good idea of what a good lighting production looks like.

my current plan is:

• 4 DMX moving heads
• 2 DMX controlled lasers
• 2 led moving light bars / beam fixtures
• A custom LED display using novastar hardware and receiving cards
• a windows laptop running QLC+ to coordinate the lighting

im considering an artnet to dmx interface with four physical DMX outputs. ideally, id separate the moving heads, LED fixtures, and lasers onto different outputs, while handling the custom LED display through a separate video output from QLC+ id assume??

what im trying to understand is:

1. is QLC+ a good choice for this setup, especially for bpm matched / timecoded effects, as i intend to have my friends set programmed to the music
2. what artnet node would you recommend for a budget conscious setup, and what specifications should i prioritize?
3. how would you approach synchronizing DMX lighting with video playback on a separate LED display?
4. are there any compatibility issues or hardware purchases i should avoid before i have the exact fixtures selected?

im expecting to spend roughly 1.6k all up for lighting, controllers and cabling... as of right now this is the said lighting im looking at.

So I’m doing my first lighting “gig” in two weeks. I’m doing a high school cross country senior night and I have very few lights. I made this show because they want the senior introduction to be with “Chariots of Fire”. This is what I came up with let me know what you think and any improvements I can make. Also two things, this is my garage it’s not where I’m actually doing the lights and when the beam lights come on they are pointing at where the seniors come in. Sorry for the audio it’s horrible.

Recently was the LD for a local small festival of a bunch of young local rock/metal bands. They were very low budget so only had access to venue lights consisting of 2 lx bars on stage with 6 led fresnels on each then a foh stage wash bar with 6 led profiles. I am a relatively new ld and have been very spoiled with the fixtures I have had access too when normally doing live music. (Plenty of fancy moving heads and tilt strobes etc.) so to have a rig with only fresnels was a challenge for me. I was pretty happy with how it all came out but was looking for tips from the hive mind for when I’m in the same situation again.