Main Light Industries, who manufacture and rent a wide variety of fiber optic-based products, introduces the LED-powered LightStar fiber optic illuminator, part of DiCon Lighting’s FiberLamp product line. LightStar uses an innovative LED light engine comprised of Red, Green, Blue, and White LEDs for a broad spectrum of color choices as well as reducing the power draw and weight. A key feature of the LED-powered LightStar is that it produces an output comparable to, or greater than, a fiber optic illuminator using a 150-watt metal halide light source. In a white color mix, the LightStar is equivalent to the 150-watt metal halide powered illuminators. By using an LED light engine there is no transmission loss with a color filter, so in deep, saturated colors, the LightStar has a greater output that is equivalent to 250-watt illuminators.

The LightStar’s color management is done electronically, the LightStar illuminator eliminates the need for a traditional color wheel so unlike many other fiber optic illuminators, LightStar is not limited to three or four colors on the wheel, rotating at a fixed speed.

With the LightStar’s separate dimming channel you can dim down and not loose your color mix plus it is equipped with a built-in strobe function and a twinkle wheel for sparkling effects with star drops. The fiber port has a 30mm aperture, which can handle 900 points of fiber, enough to light one circuit of a 20’x30’ Main Light LightScape fiber optic drapery.

The LightStar illuminator has full DMX capability for remote control; up to 30 units can be daisy chained via DMX control using five-pin XLR or Ethernet RJ-45 in-and-out connectors. Built-in DMX-based master-slave functionality allows one unit to control and synchronize the behavior of the other units, such as dimming and twinkling. LightStar can also operate in standalone mode as well as be controlled locally at the illuminator. The unit has a DIP switch to set the DMX address and it requires eight DMX channels for control—one per color and one each for the twinkle wheel; the strobe; the dimmer and a pre-mixed white color. The 5 lb LightStar measures a compact 12”L x 6”W x 5”H.