76 • May 2014 • Lighting&Sound America

TECHNICAL FOCUS: PRODUCT IN DEPTH

This month, we have something a little different. The prod-uct under review is a little difficult to categorize; it’s notstrictly a wash light, although you could use it as one, nor isit a hard-edged beam unit, although you could use it as one,nor is it an LED pixel display luminaire, although you coulduse it as one. It is the MagicPanel 602 from Ayrton inFrance. We’ve looked at Ayrton products before in this spotwith some of its more conventional offerings, but theMagicPanel seems to have found a new niche in the lightingarsenal of many designers.

As I mentioned, it’s a tough product to categorize. It’salso a tough product to measure and review. However, I’lldo my best and follow the usual route from light source tooutput and try to accurately report what I saw. Hopefully,

this objectiveapproach will giveyou some assis-tance if you wantto see if theAyrton MagicPanel602 is a productyou would like totry out; however,as this is primarilyan effects unit thatis less likely thanmost products tobe used for func-tional lighting, it’syour subjectiveopinion that reallycounts!

Ayrton distributes its product in the US throughMorpheus Lights, and the company provided me a unit fromits demo stock for this review. Everything I report is basedon the tests on this single, typical unit. All tests were run ona nominal 115V, 60Hz supply (tests run at 119V); however,the unit is rated to run on voltages from 110 – 240V,50/60Hz (Figure 1).

Light sources and opticsThe Ayrton MagicPanel 602 uses an array of 36 four-color(red, green, blue, and white) LED emitters arranged as a six-by-six pixel array. No output is specified for these emitters,but they seem to be consuming approximately 10W in eachpixel. Each four-color LED is a single chip mounted directlyto a single large circuit board that is the size of the luminaire(Figure 2). If you take a closer look, you can see that the

LED clusters aremounted at a 45°angle and thenrotated (or“clocked”) aroundfrom one pixel tothe next. Thisensures that allthe reds, forexample, point indifferent directionsin equal quantitiesand you don’t getone side of theluminaire predomi-nantly the samecolor. In Figure 3,you can see fourof the 36 pixels,each rotated 90°from its fellows.The circuit boardis quite complex,as each of the 144separate LEDs, 36of each color, canbe controlled indi-vidually, meaningthat every LEDmust have its ownassociated driverand control circuit-ry. To fit everythingin the space avail-able, Ayrton hasstacked a secondlayer of circuitboards containingprocessing andcontrol on top ofthe main LEDboard with theLED lenses passing through. You can see this second boardlayer in Figure 3.

Even with the efficiency of modern LEDs, this large arrayproduces a significant amount of heat that has to be dealtwith and removed. The main LED circuit board is mounteddirectly onto a finned heat sink running across the entire

Ayrton MagicPanel 602By: Mike Wood

Fig. 1: Fixture as tested.

Fig. 2: LED main board.

Fig. 3: Board layers.

Fig. 4: Rear of head.

Copyright Lighting&Sound America May 2014 http://www.lightingandsoundamerica.com/LSA.html

www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • May 2014 • 77

rear of the luminaire. There are then four thermostaticallycontrolled fans blowing across that heat sink and extractingheated air. Figure 4 shows the four LED cooling fans sur-rounding the main LED power supply, and its own coolingfan, in the center of the unit.

The LED diesare bare, with noprimary optic ordome, just a flatcover over thedies. This die sitsin a cavity at thebottom of a largemolded acrylic TIRlens that colli-mates and mixesthe light. The cavi-ty ensures thebest coupling fromthe light from thedies into the optic.Figure 5 shows asingle optic whenremoved, whileFigure 6 showsthe lenses in placeover the top oftheir associatedLEDs. This opticalsystem has a fixedfocal length (i.e.no zoom) and isdesigned to give anarrow beam fromeach of the 36pixels. You might

wonder if the beam that comes out of a square array likethis would also be square. Well, not really. It might start outas a square pattern of 36 individual beams, but each ofthose 36 beams is circular and diverging. Once you get a lit-tle distance away, into the far field, at about 10' or so, thenthose individual beams have merged and you get a singlefairly round beam. The further the throw, the more circularthe beam as the initial square arrangement gets swampedby the natural beam divergence pattern. It’s extremely diffi-cult to get anything other than a round beam with non-focusing optics. No matter how you start, it nearly alwaysends up circular. You need an optical system with a focuspoint and an edge to focus on, such as from a gobo, shutterblade, or barn door, or a coherent (non-diverging) lightsource such as a laser to get straight lines.

OutputI measured the output from the system with all emitters atfull and then with the color set to the various color tempera-tures of white light that the MagicPanel 602 offers throughone of the color-control channels. As I’ve mentioned before,the lumen output of a luminaire like this, which is specificallydesigned for effects use, is only one part of the picture. Likethe narrow beam lights we are seeing from many manufac-turers at the moment, when we want to view a light beam inthe air, then the beam definition, color, direction (toward oraway from you), and profile have as much to do with howclear the beam is as the raw brightness. Figure 7 shows thebeam profile and output with all emitters at full. In this con-figuration, I measured approximately 8,300lm with a fieldangle of 15.6° (beam angle approximately 8°). The output inthe preprogrammed whites was as follows:

OUTPUT IN WHITERated CCT Actual CCT Output, %Full Output N/A 100%

2,700K 3,200K 45%3,200K 3,461K 50%4,300K 4,856K 47%5,600K 6,109K 74%6,500K 6,607K 74%8,000K 9,666K 72%

I also measured the output from the individual and mixedcolors:

COLORSColor Red Green Blue Cyan Magenta Yellow WhiteTransmission 12% 41% 4% 46% 18% 50% 54%

Fig. 5: Lens.

Fig. 7: Beam profile.

Fig. 6: Lenses.

78 • May 2014 • Lighting&Sound America

It’s clear from this, as the percentages add up to morethan 100%, that Ayrton is applying power budgeting to thesystem. In other words, emitters are allowed to be brighterwhen run on their own than when all run together as long asthe total power consumed is less than some limit. This is agood technique to improve output in saturated colors fromLED luminaires.

What matters with a light like this are the beams in the air,and the MagicPanel 602 performs well here. With a littlehaze in my test room, the beam definition was good and theeffects available through individually adjusting the color andbrightness of the 36 pixels, are complex and interesting.

LED controlDimming was smooth and followed a good square lawcurve (Figure 8). With only eight-bit dimmer control avail-able, the performance under 15% was inevitably less

Fig. 8: Dimmer curve.

Fig. 9: Spectrum at full.

PRODUCT IN DEPTH

smooth, with every step visible below 10% dimming. Imeasured the PWM rate at 600Hz, which, although fine forthe human eye, can be a little slow with the newest CMOScameras. However, Ayrton staggers the phase of the PWMacross emitters, which can help in some TV situations. Thissituation has gotten worse in the last year or so. While400Hz was acceptable for CCD cameras, CMOS oftenrequires 1kHz or more to avoid rolling shutter artifacts. It’s aproblem all LED luminaire manufacturers are struggling withright now. Ayrton tells me that it intends to increase its PWMrate to 1.2kHz in the MagicPanel 602.

Output sag was relatively standard for a non-calibratedLED unit; output dropped to a level of 83% in the first tenminutes of operation and then cycled slowly around the80% – 85% levels. All my measurements were done afterthis initial sag when the unit reached thermal equilibrium.

I measured the Ayrton MagicPanel 602 as offering astrobe rate from 1.15Hz up to a maximum speed of 25Hz.

Color and pixel controlFigures 9 and 10 respectively show the spectrum of the lightat full output and 2,700K. This was very typical for anRGBW unit, with blue (from the blue emitter and the bluepump in the white emitter) peaking around 450nm and redat 650nm.

Ayrton provides a myriad of ways to control the colors

from all those emitters. As I mentioned earlier, you canchoose to go into a pixel-mapped DMX512 mode using160 DMX channels where you have individual control of allfour emitter colors in each pixel. For these tests, however,I ran it in 20-channel-combined mode where you can man-ually control the color of all pixels together and also applyeffects, patterns, and chases on top of that. The systemallows the selection of both preprogrammed pixel patterns

Fig. 10: Spectrum at 2,700K.

80 • May 2014 • Lighting&Sound America

PRODUCT IN DEPTH

and pre-programmed color patterns, either or both ofwhich can be static or dynamic. For example, you couldhave a static spiral pattern of pixels with a dynamic rain-bow color chase running around the pattern or a pulsingsquare image with a static color. There are lots and lots ofpossibilities, and it took a while to get my head aroundhow all the various control channels interacted and priori-tized. Make sure you have rehearsal time to explore theseif you use the unit. Some of the more complex effects lookbest when looking into the MagicPanel 602, while othersproduce interesting aerial and projected patterns. Still oth-ers probably look best when you have a lot of MagicPanel602 units in an array or line.

Pan and tiltIt’s interesting that Morpheus is handling Ayrton distributionin the US, as the MagicPanel 602 offers fully continuousrotation on both the pan and tilt axes, just like a Morpheusproduct did a few years ago. This rotation is handledthrough separate control channels from the normal pan-and-tilt control, so you can choose to treat it as a normalautomated light with pan and tilt ranges of 540° and 268°respectively or switch to a controlled variable-speed spin oneither axis.

When operating in the conventional 540° pan mode, Imeasured pan speed over the full travel at three secondsand 1.5 seconds for 180°. In tilt, the figures were 1.6 sec-onds for the full 268° and 1.2 seconds for 180°. Both axeswere tight, withminimal hysteresisof only 0.04°,which is 0.2" at athrow of 20'.There was someslight oddity inmovement pro-ducing someovershoot, whichwas quickly cor-rected, whenreversing directionquickly, but Ayrtontells me that it islooking at this. Slow movements under 16-bit control werevery smooth.

When in rotation mode, I measured the range of spinspeeds for pan as 0.6rpm – 40rpm (1.5 sec/rev) and for tiltas 0.7rpm – 43rpm.

With both axes possessing full rotation, cabling has to gothrough slip rings. These are sealed units, so I couldn’t seewhat was inside, but each seems to contain ten conductorsfor both power and data. Figure 11 shows the tilt slip ringassembly, with pan being similar. I experienced no problemswith either of these.

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Fig. 11: Slip ring assembly.

www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • May 2014 • 81

NoiseThe fans are by far the noisiest items in the AyrtonMagicPanel 602. The only other moving parts are the pan-and-tilt systems, so the sound level chart is short thismonth.

SOUND LEVELSAmbient <35dBA at 1mStationary 49.7dBA at 1mHoming/initialization 48.0dBA at 1mPan 50.6dBA at 1mTilt 50.4dBA at 1m

Homing/initialization timeThe Ayrton MagicPanel 602 took a measured 42 seconds tocomplete a full initialization from power up and 28 secondsfrom a DMX reset command. The reset is badly behaved inthat the LEDs are faded up before the unit has come to afinal halt in its programmed position.

Power, electronics, and controlMy tests were carried out with a 119V, 60Hz supply; theMagicPanel 602 consumed 5.02A when running with allLEDs at full. This equated to 596W, 599VA with a powerfactor of 0.99.

We’ve already dis-cussed the two largecircuit boards in thehead, containing LEDcontrol and the asso-ciated driver elec-tronics. There areonly two steppermotors, and the elec-tronics for them,along with the panmotor, is in one of theyoke arms as seen inFigure 12. The otheryoke arm containsthe tilt system andencoder (Figure 13).In Figure 13, you canalso see the magnet-ic sensor on the largegear wheel at thetop, which provides

the homing position for tilt as well as the spring belt ten-sioning. With continuous rotation, you can’t use hard hom-ing stops of course.

The top box is pretty empty, with just a power supplyand the electronics for the various network and control con-

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Fig. 12: Yoke arm 1. Fig. 13: Yoke arm 2.

82 • May 2014 • Lighting&Sound America

TECHNICAL FOCUS: PRODUCT IN DEPTH

nections. As well as DMX512, the MagicPanel 602 offersArt-Net and Kling-Net over Ethernet (with internal switchand Ethernet output), and integrated wireless DMX fromLumenRadio (Figure 14). You can also use a unit as an Art-Net node and pass DMX512 on to other units downstream. Iwas unable to test it, but Ayrton tells me it will also supportRDM in a later firmware version.

Figures 15 and 16 show the LCD display and menu sys-tem and the set of connectors. The Ayrton MagicPanel 602uses the new Neutrik powerCON TRUE1 connector. You

may already be aware of this, but the more familiar bluepowerCON isn’t rated for live connection/disconnection, somany people are moving over to the TRUE1 version, whichNeutrik designed as a fully rated version. Unfortunately, theyaren’t interconnectable.

Construction is based around simple aluminum chassismembers, with significant use of plastic injection-moldedpanels and assemblies. I had no difficulty in disassemblingand reassembling the unit and would expect normal serviceto be straightforward. The slip ring system is the onlyunknown there.

ConclusionsAs I said at the start, this is a tough product to categorize.The Ayrton MagicPanel 602 is very much a light to use foreffects and in rows or arrays. It isn’t really a single light thatyou would use for direct illumination. With that in mind, thechoices that have been made in design and control—onlyeight bits for dimming but four separate color-control chan-nels—begin to make sense. I’ll end with a couple of photosof the kind of patterns you can get on the unit (Figure 17),although it’s difficult to convey this with a static image, andby reminding you, as I always do, that although I’ve givenyou some facts and figures, it’s your decision as to whetheror not the MagicPanel 602 will work for you.

Mike Wood provides technical, design, and intellectual prop-erty consulting services to the entertainment technologyindustry. He can be contacted atmike@mikewoodconsulting.com.

Fig. 14: Top box.

Fig. 15: Display.

Fig. 16: Connectors.

Fig. 17: Pixels.