Inside ETC’s New Lonestar Prime: Compact IP54 Framing Workhorse

0:19 Welcome back to Geezers of Gear Future Tech. Today's focus is on ETC's high end systems. Lone Star Prime, The newest member of the Lone Star family, Lone Star Prime takes the original Lone Star concept, a compact bright white LED framing fixture, and pushes it further. You get roughly 20% more output than the original improved color rendering and a weather rated IP54 housing, all in an even more compact body. So instead of being limited to clean indoor environments like theaters and studios, Lone Star Prime is aimed at broad purpose rental and production work both inside and in temporary outdoor installs.

1:00 Think festivals, stadium concourses, rooftop activations or architectural style placements around an event site. Under the hood, Prime uses a 350 Watt extra bright color Boost white LED engine rated for around 50,000 hours, delivering over 17,000 lumens at a native correlated colour temperature of about 6500 Kelvin and a native CRI around 80. That's a serious amount of punch for this physical footprint. The optics are built around a 13 lens system with a very flexible 3.8 to 55° zoom. That means it can behave like a tight aerial effects beam at the narrow end and a wide, even wash when zoomed out. Designers can cover a surprising amount of stage or scenic area with relatively few units.

1:51 Prime keeps the full curtain framing system that made Lone Star popular. You have 4 plane framing shutters that can fully cut and shape the beam, and the framing module can rotate up to around 180° so it's easy to align shutters to architecture, scenery, or projection surfaces. There's also a 16 blade iris for very tight beam looks, plus dual frost light and medium which can be inserted variably without interfering with zoom or focus. That matters on shows where you're shifting from crisp gobo projection to a softer key light or wash look from the same fixture. Compared to the original Lone Star, which is an IP20 indoor unit, Prime is clearly designed to extend that same feature set into more demanding environments.

2:37 With IP 54 you're protected against limited dust ingress and water spray from any direction, which makes it suitable for temporary outdoor rigs where weather is a concern, but you don't want to move up to a much larger IP fixture. From a deployment standpoint, that means a rental house can stock Lone Star Prime and comfortably send it to corporate events, worship environments, mid sized touring rigs and outdoor festivals without swapping to a different framing profile for each use case. It's positioned as a compact, high impact workhorse that does a lot of jobs well. Next, let's look at the color and effects package on Lone Star Prime because this is where it becomes a serious design tool rather than just a bright IP rated spot.

3:19 On the color side, you get a dual flag CMY color mixing system combined with a dedicated CTO solution. Prime uses a CTO flag and a color wheel to give you a wide range of white points from that native 6500 Kelvin down toward warm tungsten like tones around 2700 Kelvin. That's particularly important when you're lighting faces for broadcast or EMAG and need clean, accurate whites. In addition to CNY and CTO, there's a 10 position plus open color wheel with dichroic colors that let's program a snap to bold saturated looks quickly or layer fixed colors with CMY mixing for more nuanced palettes.

3:59 The improved color rendering over the original Lone Star means those colors tend to look more natural on camera and on skin. Patterns and textures are another big part of Prime's identity. You have a rotating gobo wheel with 9 interchangeable patterns plus open, and a fixed wheel with 10 stamped gobos plus open. Those two wheels can be combined with the animation wheel and prisms, which gives a lot of headroom for complex looks. The prisms are A5 facet star and A4 facet linear and they can be inserted simultaneously. That means you can build compound aerial effects or multi image projections, which is useful on shows where you want a single fixture to create both scenic texture and eye candy in the air.

4:44 On top of that, the rotating animation wheel supports bidirectional rotation, linear insertion and variable angular control. In practice, that means you can slowly drift a texture across ACIC or LED wall surround or drive faster, more energetic animation for music or dance content. The dual frosts light and medium slot in without affecting focus or zoom, so you can soften gobos or create a diffused wash without needing to refocus the unit. When paired with a 3.8 to 55° zoom, that allows one fixture type to cover front light backlight and effect light rolls on the same rig. For a rental company building a flexible inventory, this matters. A small cluster of Lone Star primes over a mid size corporate stage could handle crisp logo projection, gobo breakups on scenery, and wide soft stage washes all from the same family. That reduces the need to stock separate spot wash and dedicated effects fixtures for certain scales of show. In a worship or theatre environment, designers can lean on primes, framing shutters, gobos and animation to create layered environments.

5:53 For example, isolating A lectern or performer with tight framing while a softened gobo and prism combination builds atmospherics in the background. The fact that all of this comes from a compact IP 54 unit adds flexibility when fixtures need to be mounted and more exposed or hard to service positions. Let's talk a bit more about the operational aspects, IP54 control and the optional rig POV camera and follow spot features because these impact how Lone Star Prime fits into real world systems. IP 54 means the fixture is protected against limited dust ingress and water spray from any direction. In practical terms, that's suitable for temporary outdoor use. Things like festivals, outdoor stages or exposed Truss lines where you may see windblown dust or light rain.

6:39 It's not a permanent submersion or heavy washdown rating, but it significantly reduces the risk compared to an indoor only IP 20 profile. ETC also highlights that the IP 34 rating isn't only about going outside. Better ceiling and protection generally translate into more dependable performance, reduced cleaning cycles, and longer life for the optics and mechanical components, even in indoor venues with haze, dust or long hangs. From a spec sheet perspective, Prime runs on a wide voltage range from 100 to 240 volts at 50 to 60 Hertz, drawing roughly 550 watts. It ships with Reen power X series input and can be powered and networked and typical touring or installed environments without exotic infrastructure. Control wise you've got standard DMX over 5 pin plus Arnet or SACN over Ethernet with passive Ethernet pass through. There's a patented data conversion system that can handle Ethernet to DMX, and the fixture supports RDMNFC configuration and a full colour graphical user interface for local setup.

7:45 Dimming is 16 bit and there are multiple flicker control frequencies including 25 kHz, so Prime can be tuned for cameras and LED walls in studio, corporate or broadcast environments. Fan modes, including standard and studio, help balance cooling with acoustic requirements in quieter rooms. One of the more distinctive options is the Rig POV Camera kit. When specified, that adds an onboard camera that can stream an NDI feed from the fixtures perspective. That's useful for directors and lighting teams who want a rig level view for focusing and queuing, and for creative teams looking to integrate live camera textures from the RIG into media servers or broadcast systems. Lone Star Prime also supports manual follow spot operation that allows a production to repurpose the same head as a follow spot position when needed, which is attractive in venues that don't have space or infrastructure for traditional follow spot booths.

8:40 From a product line perspective, Prime sits alongside the original Lone Star and the larger Hyperstar fixtures in ET CS automated range. Compared to Lone Star, Prime brings the IP 54 rating, extra brightness, expanded Gobo library, and the dedicated CTO flag. Compared to larger fixtures, it offers a smaller physical footprint and lighter weight, around 23 kilograms, which makes it easier to deploy on compact Truss ballrooms or tight studio grids. For rental houses and production managers, the key question is where Prime fits in the rig. The answer is it's a compact framing workhorse designed to do a lot of different jobs reliably, especially when you need the confidence of an IP54 housing and the creative flexibility of a modern effects package.

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