The Apollo Jammer colour controller: With some flexible LED lighting, this adds an impressive portable lighting show to your DJ set-up.
Digital DJing’s got one feature that has always particularly appealed to me: Portability. You can fit everything you need (if you choose wisely) in a backpack, and literally, it’s “have party, will travel”.
Except, that is, lighting. Wouldn’t it be great to roll up at a house party, and not only set up a laptop or tablet DJ system, but also add some professional, impressive lighting – all out of the front pocket of your backpack? Well, it is definitely possible with products like the Apollo Jammer, which we review today.
Unboxing and setting up
The Apollo Jammer is a small colour controller, about the size of a couple of packs of cards. It’s lightweight, and made of white plastic. There are a few sockets around its sides, a one-digit LED on its top, and two buttons plus two display lights, also on the top.
In the box are a stereo RCA-to-stereo 1/8″ TRS lead, a stereo 1/8″ TRS-to-TRS lead, and a small TRS splitter adaptor, along with a lightweight power transformer. There’s also a one-foot length of flexible RGB strip light to “get you going”; you’ll want to buy a longer section (we tested with with a 10-foot section, that rolls up really small, and would be plenty to add lighting to any DJ area).
It comes with a foot of LED strip, but you're going to want to buy your own lighting strip if you're after a portable set-up like the one we demo below.
You have two options for getting lighting plugged into it: You can add strip RGB lighting as we used (there’s a plug and adaptor provided, you just need to attach the plug to the lighting strip with a small screwdriver the first time you set it up), or plug in whatever DMX lighting happens to be knocking around in the venue you’re in. It’s good to have the DMX option for bigger shows.
Next, you have to add a music source. It’ll work fine with an iPad (or iPhone etc.) for a truly portable system, and the makers have thought about the need to feed both your speakers and the Apollo Jammer with a sound signal; that’s what the splitter is for. (This is a stereo splitter, not to be confused with mono splitters, which are used for pre-cueing on iOS devices, by the way. You’d probably end up using both in this instance.)
Alternatively, if you have a DJ controller or a mixer with two independent outputs (say, a booth and a master) and one of those is spare, you could plug the lighting controller into that instead.
Finally, you plug it in to the mains and start the music…
In use
There are ten settings, which the “change mode” button lets you cycle through, and these have various combinations of different lights reacting to different parts of the musical spectrum, and differing fade/decay rates. You’ll just want to mess around with them to see what suits at any given time
You’ll want to experiment and keep the optimal setting chosen as your night progresses.
You will also want to mess around with the sensitivity. There are four settings for this, represented by the sensitivity LED being off, or set to one of green, red or yellow. This determines how much the lights react to the music, and again you’ll want to experiment and keep the optimal setting chosen as your night progresses.
Once you’re set up, the controller works really well. Obviously it depends what you plug in to it, but its job – to turn the musical information into instructions for the lights – is achieved excellently, and we found it a lot of fun.
Conclusion
Digital DJ gear looks “small”. I always love rolling up somewhere with a ridiculously tiny set-up, watching the looks on people’s faces as I plug in (usually “toy DJ!”), only to have them congratulating me a few songs in for being able to, you know, “DJ on that stuff!”
Throw it in your bag along with a reel of LED and forget about it... instant lighting show when you need it.
This, though, takes it all to a whole new level. Now, you can roll up with a passable lighting show in your bag too, at least for house parties or small bars. I think that’s awesome.
It would have been good to have a small microphone built in to the Apollo Jammer, to save even having to wire it in to your output at all, although I suspect the results wouldn’t have been so good via that route. Also, the splitter thing is not ideal. It’s better to use a separate output for the Apollo Jammer if you can.
Overall, then, this is a cheap, fun, effective and above all, small and lightweight way to add a lighting show to your DJ set-up – a lighting show that looks far bigger than it actually is. If you want to pack the biggest punch possible from as small a set-up as possible, you should definitely consider adding an Apollo Jammer and a strip of RGB lighting to your digital DJ weaponry.
Video
Summary
We like:
- Small and light
- Flexible enough to work with DMX lighting or self-carried RGB strips
- Nice variation of programmes
We don’t like:
- Splitter cable is a bit of a precarious solution for getting sound into it
- You’ll need to buy a reel of LED lighting separately
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Product details:
Size & weight: 3.1 x 2.7 x 1.7″ (80 x 70 x 42mm), 0.45lb (0.2kg)
Price: US$99
Buy from: Elemental LED
What do you think?
Would you consider adding a portable lighting rig to your gig bag for those impromptu house parties and for adding a bit of punch to your digital DJ set-up? Got any other little lighting tricks you like to use? Please share your thoughts in the comments…
Now go to:
Lighting Setup for House Parties?
4 iOS Tools To Give You An Unfair Advantage In the DJ Booth
Review: iRig Mix Mobile iOS DJ Mixer
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Tags: lighting
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Thanks again Phil, this puppy is pretty sweet… Ive been looking to build my own Dj setup for gigs and this lil thing with some light strips really gives you a nice light setup without alot of the expensive nonsense …
[ link ]I’m thinking of trying it round the TV in our living room… instant house party stuff!
[ link ]Oh, I see you’ve already switched to the SC3900′s, good job.
As for this, I’d buy this for my home setup as it’d probably help me get into the groove faster.
Great review.
[ link ]We’re only testing the 3900s, we won’t be keeping them…
[ link ]This is outstanding, and I’ll definitely get one for the house party grooves.
[ link ]How much for the lighting extension?
[ link ]You can fit what you like, not sure what the one they supplied to test costs. Guessing US$99-ish?
[ link ]I saw a sight that had some for anywhere from $120 to $750 depending on the style. Just google LED light strips.
[ link ]that is really cool! DJ and Lighting must go together one day. Imagine being able to mix audio and visual altogether.
[ link ]dj AND lighting has been going together for decades!
[ link ]Great review Phil. Such a neat little solution producing a big result.
[ link ]I’m with you – I love being able to fit everything into a backpack – there’s a real sense of satisfaction coming from an efficiently packed bag full of DJ goodness.
(Although, in saying that, I still do take one 1200 and a bag of records to my regular gig at a local wine bar. Seeing vinyl spin is part of the show for the punters.
I like it. I just might buy one.
[ link ]This seems like it would pair nicely with my Chauvet 4bar and Chaeuvet 4play. They have a built in mic for sound activation, but they tend to be way too sensitive. I think the fact that I can plug the music into this will give it a better response for the sound activation of the lighting.
[ link ]I’d like to get some portable lights like these as well. Are they compatible with the Jammer?
[ link ]Have you tested it with DMX lights? I have some LED bars and this would be ideal for my setup.
[ link ]I haven’t, no, only with the RGB strip provided. We have no DMX lights here.
[ link ]No problem. I’ll contact the people from the Apollo Jammer.
[ link ]very interesting, thanks for the review and video….
[ link ]when i was 14 (late 80′s) i built one of this with a DIY kit (15 us$) and was using this with a double deck cassette player to dj…connecting a standard speaker cable from the unit to one of the amps outputs gave it the power and audio signal..
nostalgia…
was actually looking for a one of these as they are great for underground parties but i wouldn’t have them flashing all the time though…
Cheapest pro lightshows…. you get it with freeware:
http://www.freestylerdmx.be/ and cheap dmx-interafce
http://www.enttec.com/index.php?main_menu=Products&pn=70304&show=description&name=dmxusbpro
There is also a free freestyler plugin for virtual dj: easy & automatic lightshows on beat.
[ link ]This is $10 more than the Apollo DMX LED colour-changing controller which comes with software.
[ link ]Also, the jammer costs $160 to ship outside of USA and spools of lights are sold for about $200, which makes it expensive for what it is.
You can get a cheaper version on ebay that reacts to the music but you can’t cycle through various programmes, so you can’t tweak your light show. Pity, this all sounded so appealing (now it just sounds appalling
I’m from Brazil, and the only way to buy it is from Amazon, paying an expense of US$ 100,00 with shipping.
Luckily I’ve a friend who’s is US and he will bring it for me, along with a NanoPad 2 (just love the korg nano series).
Thanks a lot for the tip, Phil, you always keep on the edge of what the bedroom DJ needs. Stuff that I can buy from less than US$ 100,00 will always can my attention.
Thanks a lot,
[ link ]Léo.
Just to let you guys know, it arrived here.
Yes, it delivers what it promises.
Channels 5 and 6 are the best ones, you can use them playing with the sensitivity and can get the most amazing results.
Awesome, thanks a lot for the tip.
Léo.
[ link ]Glad it’s to your taste!
[ link ]To give you a more detailed explanation on the Digital Multiplexing Function (DMX512) of the Jammer
The Apollo Jammer actually will allow you to access more advanced features by using the DMX512 connection.
By addressing compatible wall washers or DMX decoders differently one can build a vibrant orchestra of color to play along with all the different beats to his or her music.
For more detailed instructions refer to the manual;
http://www.elementalled.com/pdf/elemental-apollo-jammer-manual.pdf
[ link ]hello, i have a question about how do i connect with my audio receiver? i have an av receiver yamaha and i want to connect the apollo jammer in the back of the receiver. is it possible? because i dont want to use an iphone or another mp3. do i need a special cable to connect to my av receiver?
[ link ]