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Making LED lights flash using ETC Element


Tramen

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Hi!

 

I have used the lighting desk we have in our school (ETC Element) to light shows before, but it's been basic lights on and off and the odd flash (using the button under the faders) for scenes. But I have been asked by a Year 11 music class for their final performances for some flashing lights during lots of their songs. I have tried doing it using Effects and it didn't work, and using the Follow option (loads of cues linked together) doesn't seem to work either.

 

I know from reading the manuals that the Showtec LEDs we have do have flashing options built in - strobe and one that goes with the music if connected up to the sound desk (or something) but they don't fit in with what the music lot want and I have no idea where to start with the second option (we have no technician and the teachers don't know). Is it possible to programme cues of flashing lights for the LEDs (the other type we have are ETC Palettas) or do I have to do it all manually and feel like my arms will fall off!

 

Thanks.

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Could you clarify what you mean by doesn't work, and what sort of flashing effect you are trying to achieve. For example, for one show we had to make the wings in an angel in Flint Street nativity Flash and that was easy to do in an effect on an ion so you should be able to do something similar on an element.
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First of all I'd forget about the built in flashing options on the Showtecs since they are not under your control. You need to set up the desk so that you are in control of the flashing since you will be able to make the flashing fit in with the music far better than a machine (at least at a basic level).

 

A simple way is to set up various 'scenes' (I think that in Element-speak these are 'submasters' ) in contrasting colours or styles eg a submaster with a general red wash over the whole stage or a submaster with blue spotlights on the drums and the guitarists. If you then use the flash buttons to control these then you can flash in time to the music or fade up the appropriate submaster to leave a certain 'look' in place for a little while to provide a bit of contrast. You can use one at a time or mix them together - eg fade up one submaster part way so that the whole stage is a dim red and then flash your blue spotlights. If all the lights are flashing randomly all of the time it soon gets very boring but if the whole stage suddenly changes to a different look just as the band plays the power chord then it begins to get more interesting.

 

I'm not sure if this is the sort of answer you were loking for and if it is then it's at a very basic level - I'll leave other people to go into more depth from both the technical and the artistic points of view! If you haven't set up a submaster on the Element before then I'm sure there are several people who could give a simple set of instructions as to how to do it.

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@alistermorton - it needs to flash along with the beat of the music, almost like disco lights (which I know from reading is done by connecting the lights and sound so it registers the music) for the band groups. I managed to get the Follow option to work which is great, but I am struggling with the Effects part of the Element.

 

Whenever I try to follow the ETC tutorial for step-based effects on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcc4tToYaUs), when I get to the point of 'adding' the effect to the channels as described in the video, the channels show as being at Full but there is no light on stage and nothing happens. I don't know if it's the desk or that to have the lights up on the LEDS you have to have the seventh channel up to control it.

 

@Hilary Watts - I can do the flash using the hard buttons under the submaster faders (after setting them up), but don't really want to be doing it for every song for two hours.

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It sounds as if your best option will be (as Hilary suggests) set up some looks on subs, then "busk" using the flash buttons and faders. Don't know the element myself, but I don't think it has a sound-to-light input, but to be honest you're going to get a better effect if you take control yourself.

 

Look at "intensity" submasters in EOS - this allows you to set up different looks but only have the fader affect the "brightness" of the look, rather than all of the attributes. So if you set up a blue wash and a red wash using the same LED fixtures, you can swap between them using the bump/flash buttons while the faders control the overall brightness. Effectively you can use the bump button to load the attributes (colour, position, beam etc) and use the faders to control the brightness (although you can also fade out one look then have the next look come in when you move the next fader off zero).

 

Another thing to look at is to set up some colour palettes for your fixtures, then assign different palettes to each step of a step based effect, and use the attributes of the effect to distribute the colour palettes across the fixtures.

 

The EOS family isn't really a live performance busking desk (like an Avo or Chamsys for example) but you can get away with quite a bit with a bit of lateral thinking.

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I don't know if it's the desk or that to have the lights up on the LEDS you have to have the seventh channel up to control it.

 

 

I don't know which Showtec LEDs you have got but if the seventh channel is an intensity or level channel then you will need to include that in your programming of the effect just as you woiuld include it when setting up the submaster. If it's possible you might be better choosing a more 'basic' mode for the LEDs, eg a four or five channel mode - it reduces the number of channels needed and you may well not need the extra features that come with the more 'sophisticated' modes, since you can achieve the same results by using the features of the desk.

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does the eos do tap tempo to set the speed on chases?

No, but you can program a chase so that its speed is controlled by whichever submaster its running from. I do this all the time on our Element. All you have to do is create your chase with reasonably fast step times (0.3 seconds is a good place to start). Then set the 'Entry' and 'Exit' parameters for the chase to 'Fade by rate', and the 'Time' parameters to 'Cue/Sub'. This will allow you to set the chase speed via the submaster. The reason we have short step times is because we can only slow a fast chase down, and not run a chase faster than its programmed timings. Finally, once the effect is programmed onto a submaster, just set the submasters mode to 'EffectSub'. Et Voila!! you can now run your chase by pressing the submasters flash button, and control its speed by moving the fader. For bonus points you can have the chase fade in and out when you start and stop it by giving the submaster up and down times. Hope this helps

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does the eos do tap tempo to set the speed on chases?

No, but you can program a chase so that its speed is controlled by whichever submaster its running from. I do this all the time on our Element. All you have to do is create your chase with reasonably fast step times (0.3 seconds is a good place to start). Then set the 'Entry' and 'Exit' parameters for the chase to 'Fade by rate', and the 'Time' parameters to 'Cue/Sub'. This will allow you to set the chase speed via the submaster. The reason we have short step times is because we can only slow a fast chase down, and not run a chase faster than its programmed timings. Finally, once the effect is programmed onto a submaster, just set the submasters mode to 'EffectSub'. Et Voila!! you can now run your chase by pressing the submasters flash button, and control its speed by moving the fader. For bonus points you can have the chase fade in and out when you start and stop it by giving the submaster up and down times. Hope this helps

 

Actually, I've got a strong feeling there is a 'BPM' button that you can tap to set a speed buried in softkeys somewhere- I can't get on our console or Nomad laptop at the moment due to a show in progress, but I'll try and remember to check before the show starts tomorrow.

 

 

 

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I don't think there's a 'tap-to-tempo' function in the EOS software. However you can set the BPM of a running effect by pressing '[Effect] x, [Enter]' and then '[s1] (BPM)', where x is the number of the effect you want to alter. Then just type in the BPM you want and press [Enter]. Your chases BPM has now changed!

 

Note: This is how I set the BPM of chases in cued shows on our Element. ION keypresses may be different, but the functionality will be basically the same.

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