Some time ago I was turned on to the fact here that a powerflash will accept audio as a trigger.
This opened up a whole world of goodies for me.
I have an extra line output in a 24 track digital audio workstation that I sent to the powerflash.
I had to increase the powerflash sensitivity by tweaking the input circuitry a bit but once I did I was able to send a tone to the powerflash when the workstation is in record mode, turning on any lights on its HC/UC. - sweet.
But moreover, if you remove the HC/UC dials from a lamp controller or appliance controller, they default to M-13. So I went about building lightboxes and buying commercial ones and building the controller guts right inside them.
It's so neat to be able to stick these up wherever I have power nearby, all set to M-13 and have them dance like marionettes to the record mode of the system.
I have one in the tracking room, in the enternce to the studio and portable light boxes that I can take with me on location.
I even put a powerflash
inside an ALESIS ADAT portable recorder. And by sensing the record led with a paralleled opto isolator the ADAT actually send M-13 ON/OFF commands out of it's own AC socket turning on the portable record lights that I can set on a piano etc.
This is so cool.
And I'm not even using BVC yet!
And I hope I haven't told this story already.