[Scheinwerfer]

Modell of the stage of the Thalia-Theater - Thalia Backstage.

Model of the stage of the Thalia-Theatre in scale 1:25:

This is the model of the stage of the Thalia-Theatre, that my father and me have build as a demonstration object for my examination.
The model has a basesize of 1 squaremeter and it's height is 80cm. Build based on original plans of the Thalia-Thetre and so it seem that you are sitting in the auditorium if all the lighting is off except the one on stage. If has been one part of my final year project 1995. I develloped a dimming system with 12 channels being dimmed the old fasion analog way with a 12 channel digital analog converter and two 6 channel analog dimmers. The other 12 channels left are controlled by two cards with 6 digital dimmer channels each.

[Theatermodell von vorne. 4 Logen link und rechts]

 You can see the 4 boxes on each side of the stage of which the upper ones are used for lighting. The ground is layed out with white paper by me, so that the lights can be seen. This is normaly not done on a theatre-stage because it is not interesting to see the light on the ground, but to see the light on the actor. Some times this is heavy to work if the producer only want to see the head or the hands of a person, or the light has to be cut exactly on the upper side of a wall.

Lightingpositions in front of the stage:

  • 3 lights in the upper left box
  • 3 lights in the upper right box
On the left side of the stage you can see the light from the left tower.
On the left side of the stage you can see the light from the left tower.

The theatre from the back without lights on

[Theatermodell von hinten]

Lightin positions on stage (from the left to the right):

  • 4 lights in the upper right gallery (left side of the picture)
  • 3 lights on the right tower
  • 5 lights on the upper middle galery
  • 3 lights on the left tower
  • 5 Sghts in the upper left gallery (right side of the pic.)
  • 2 light on the same dimmer as backlight on backstage (can not be seen here)
On top of the stage you can see the joists that holds the velvet stripes.

The theatre backstage with lights on

[Theatermodell von hinten mit Licht] The lights that can be seen here are for 3-4VA/12V as they are used as signal lights in cars. They have a lense in front. The model has 24 of such lights.

The theatre backstage with the dimmer-rack

[Theatermodell mit Steuerung]
 On the picture you can see the 19" rack of the dimmer. Over it you can see the model of the theatre and you can also see the three connector for the 24 load-outputs. The little vertical bar on the left sied of the picture is the back-side of the theatre that has been removed to have a view inside.

This is the dimmer-rack of the theatre model (24x12V)

[Bild der Steuerung]

Inside the 19" rack from left to right:

  • 1 x Power-supply 5V,+12V,-12V (bought)
  • 1 x DMX-receiver
  • 1 x DA-Converter 12 x 8Bit (0..-10V)
  • 2 x digital phase controler (6 channels with 8Bit on each card)
  • 2 x analog phase controler (6 chanels each card)
  • 1 x zero cross detection for all cards
  • 4 x Triac boards (optocoupled) each board 6 x 8 Ampere

The System Bus

The system is build around a backplane that contains the system bus. It is made up of the power supply, the 10 bus address bus, the 8 bit data bus, some control signals and some per slot io lines.

The Digital Analog converter

The DAC board contains three 4 channel 8 bit digital analog converters that are accessed thru the control bus and provide 0V to -10V to the io lines. The Board can be addressed on a 16 byte alighned address.

The Digital Phase Dimmer

The digital dimmer board hosts 6 channels of digital dimmer controllers with 8 bit each. Each dimmer is made up of an 8 bit data latch (74HC574) and a down counter with an async reload (40103). The 50x256 Hz clock is provided by another board, tha also hosts the zero cross detection.

The Analog Dimmer

The analog dimmer boards each hosts 6 channels, each build up of a ramp, synced by the zero crossing, and a comparator.

The Triac Board

The triac board contains 6 triacs with the needed peripherials around them. The control path of the triacs have an optical isolation.

The DMX512 Receiver

The DMX512 receiver is not part of the final year work. I have build it up later, to be able to use the theatre model together with comercial desks. It has a DMX512 input and dip switches for selecting the start address.

Screenshow of the Control Software

The following images shows a screenshot of the control software.
[Screenshot]

The features are:

  • Main Menu (top) can be configured.
  • Quick command bar (bottom) can be configured (same syntax as main menu).
  • Channel window in the top right corner with Master and Offset Fader.
  • Fife Groups with selectable channels.
  • A cue editor
  • A program editor

The Website of the Thalia-Theater in Hamburg.
Homepage
mailto: michael AT stickel DOT org