Hi, Im a newbie as you can all see,
I am studying A-Level performing arts currently and in the past I have worked on many technical aspects, sound, lighting, followspot etc. And as part of the A Level course we have to do several performances, and for our next we have decided to hire 2 Martin Mac 250's.

In the past I have only ever used lighting on dimmer circuits so this is all new to me. I know the basics but there are a few questions that have arised.

I will be using a Zero 88 Fat Frog Lighting desk, and from this I wouldn't know how to get the 2 Macs to move together. As ive seen on many lighting shows before, several lights all move simultaneously together and this is an effect I would like to use, but do not know how to program this on the desk????

Also if I wish to point the lights in a certain direction to I programme this as a seperate cue or just as one.

EG cue 1: light moves into position
cue 2: light fades up

or

cue 1: light moves into position and fades up

Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

Firstly Welcome to the blue room!
Secondly, the way it all works is programmed into cues.

so cue 1 is black out
cue1.5 macs move into position
cue 2 mac in position and on

The macs need there own address, from this you patch it. Its pretty easy to do.

You need a 5pin to 3pin DMX cable that connects to the 3pin for the macs.

hth

So from giving them their own address and patching them how do I then on the lighting desk set the lights to move together?

Do I hold down the 2 fixture buttons together?

And I didn't know the Mac's ran on 3 pin I thought they used 5pin instead, If so I think I need to change my hire list.

Thanks for the quick reply.

You will need to address the mac's to an address between 1 and 512.

Do not address them the same, or the same as any other lights or DMX controlled items on your rig, or else you will have a hard time.......(been there done that!)

Then write down the address' for each light on the plan.

Patch them into the desk, it should have the personality loaded into it, if not look in the maual.

Then follow the manual for the rest of the information.....

HTH

Alex

Don't take this the wrong way, but why have you decided to hire them if you don't know how they work?
That is, what is the design idea behind using the kit?

KC

On the fat frog you have the ability for 10 movers in the far right hand area, there is 10 buttons

Select 1 and 2 and then select the other functions, to put intensity to 100%, use the 2 wheels as pan and tilt.

But read the manual! Will certainly help!

hth

Thanks for all your help, certainly helps, if I have any other queries along the way I'll let you know.

And I thought the question might arise to as why use them if we don't know how, it's also been asked by other friends.

But in the brief we have been set it says, "use your knowledge of previous lighting skills as well as taking a new skill to demonstrate short term development"

And for the "New skill" area we have taken on the challenge of using these lights. (Thats partly the reason, the rest of it is I'm just fascinated by them lol)

But no offence taken.

Thanks for all help

If they are original 250s then they are indeed 3 pin, although the desk is five so as mentioned you'll need an adaptor. Depending on the company, quite a few leave adaptors cable tied to the fixture, so you can use them with three or five pin cable as required. There's also another potentially relevant topic on Macs with the Fat Frog here as well as lots more available on the wiki and via the search.

It's twelve on the Fat Frog actually, two rows of six. More details here.

Just thought I'd mention for the benefit of the OP, that yes the fixtures can be addressed at anywhere between 1 and 512, but, that doesn't mean you can address one at 1 and the 2nd unit at 2. Depending what mode you have the fixtures in & as Al Cain said, what other DMX toys you have in your rig will factor into the addressing of the fixtures.

Lets assume you have 24 ways of dimming, and they run off DMX channels 1 through 24, so 25 is the next free DMX address, so you set your 1st mac250 to 25, then, assuming youve left the fixtures in mode 1 (tends to be the commonly used mode) the next address will be 34, this is because the fixture uses 9 DMX channels (each channel controlling a different function, the colour wheel, gobos, gobo rotate, effects, pan, tilt, etc).

HTH.

Tom

Word of warning dont set it to a 100% as they tend to reset. Thats why I'm not in favour of macs. 100% is reset for it.

Don't set what to 100%? Do you mean the control channel? In which case 100% is Lamp Off, I think. Not a great reason not be in favour of Macs. Personally I prefer to be able to douse lamps remotely, whatever lights I'm using; I hate turning them off still struck, even if they're rented. I know some people tend not to bother, but I'm not comfortable with it.

I'm surprised at that - I would always use extended modes and most rental places I know send units out in extended modes as standard. I don't know the Fat Frog at all, but I assume it supports 16-bit attributes, and it is well worth taking the time whilst learning about moving lights to understand timing channels.

I think that the original question about how to get the lights into the right place before they fade up is a good one, particularly from someone who hasn't used them before. In my opinion the skill in using moving lights is not so much in creating the looks, but is more in keeping transitions between looks as clean as possible - whether that means fading them out, marking them in next position and fading up, or planning live transitions that are seamless, e.g. fade between adjacent colours, gobo morphing, etc..

The mechanics of how you get the lights ready for a cue is really down to the desk you're using - but putting in a .5 cue is one way of doing it. I wouldn't move the light into position and fade up in the same cue because you would have to put a few seconds' delay on the intensity coming up. Even if you set the time for the non-intensity attributes to zero, the light will still mechanically take a couple of seconds to sort itself out. (However I've found that snapping attributes to the right value and fading up intensity in the same cue works quite well for LEDs and media servers, where no mechanical delay is involved)

Well david, with the 100% factor, it seems to do it on hogs and fat frogs.

I'm not in total hate of macs, its just they in my opinion are not as reliable as vl's.

The newer macs are better though.
Which mac is it, is it a 250, 250+, Krypton?
As the newer fixtures I believe Martin have ironed the problem out, but don't quote me on that.

Also as David said dousing them from the desk is good, because you give the lamp time to cool down and then the fixture still on cools the lamp with its fans.

hth

hth

Hmmmmnn

Some interesting comments here.

As some other posters have commented, it would be helpful to know which type of MAc250 we are talking about.
I had to laugh at the comment regarding VL's and their reliability (ignoring the costs of VL for the moment!) I have very few problems with Macs. Like all items with moving parts, regular service will mean good reliability.

On the Mac, you can disable the auto reset, regardless of it being a hire item, ours get "fiddled" with all of the time. At the end of a hire when its tested it recieves a full reset.

As for addressing, don't hesitate to ask the hire company to set them up for you. If we know all the info from our customer, we will preset them. It will help the hire company at the end of the day as it means less phone calls!

Don't forget as default the fat frog uses channels 1- 48 as the generics so you won't be able to assign the fixtures to those channels.

Don't quite understand what the problem is that some people seem to be having with certain values on the shutter channel on a Mac sending reset and lamp-off commands. Personally, I find it a very useful function - to be able to remotely reset or douse a fixture from the desk is a real boon. If you don't like it, you can disable it in the SPEC menu anyway. And you don't dim the fixture with that channel anyway, that's what the intensity control channel is for - so simply grabbing a fixture and fading it up won't accidentally set the shutter channel to levels that you don't want it to be at.

So let me get this straight,

The generic channels are from 1 - 48, therefore the dimmers that are on the circuit are bound by these generic channels.

When I add a fixture to the desk I must ensure they are addressed above the channel 48 because these channels are already taken. I also must leave 9 channels in between each addressing of the fixtures because they use 9 channels each?

When patching the lighting up though, do I set the desk to autopatch the fixtures? or do I do it manually?

Also I have been wondering, what exactly the difference between 3pin DMX and 5pin DMX exactly is, I've never noticed any difference.

One more question, on the back of the FAT FROG there is 2 DMX outputs, I have only ever used one, when using the fixtures do they have to be on a seperate circuit???

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Yes - although you can softpatch them elsewhere, the addresses of the physical dimmers themselves are generally fixed.
Yes.
Your choice. Most intelligent-lighting-aware consoles allow you to say "I've got five Mac250s, first one starts at x, patch them one after another without overlaps" - I think this is what the Fat Frog's Autopatch function does.
Manually will allow you to decide exactly where each fixture should start.
Either way, the 'Start Address' in the console must match the 'Address' you give the Macs.
Remember that Macs have several options and 'Modes' that they can be used in - console and moving light must match!

If you decide beforehand, then the hire company can set the Macs up for you - both Mode and Address.
3-pin DMX is Evil, Bad and Wrong. The DMX spec says 5 pin XLR, so you should use 5 pins!
That said, as long as you don't use microphone cable, it'll work. Some 3-pin fixtures swap pins 2 and 3 over as well, which adds to the confusion.Don't have to be, but is probably a good idea.
The two outputs on a Fat Frog output exactly the same data, but using seperate ones allows you to avoid hiring a DMX splitter or breaking into the dimmer DMX run.

The principle of what you write is sound, but I'd question 9 channels for the MAC. I've just taken a quick look on the Martin website, and the wash takes between 13 and 19 channels. Which specific model, and which mode are you using?


Either is OK. I'd suggest manually, so that you're clear in your own head what's going on, and you can follow it through step-by-step.


Officially, DMX should only use 5-pin connectors. But some equipment (for various reasons) uses 3-pin. The electrical signals on the wire are identical, so you'll not notice a difference. But whenever you have a choice, it's good practice to prefer 5-pin.
On a small number of occasions, the extra 2 pins in the 5-pin connector are used (for example, to allow the dimmers to talk back to the desk and report e.g. faults) - but it's not very common.


Some desks can output more than one "universe" (group of 512 channels) of DMX, and hence have multiple sockets. As far as I can gather from the spec sheet, the Fat Frog only has a single DMX universe, which means these two sockets are outputting the exact same data.
You can connect your MACs either to the second output, or to the end of the chain after the dimmers. It doesn't make a difference.

Personally, I'd use the second output. Why? Because it gives you a little more resiliency against failure. If you run everything on a single line, and somebody damages the cable mid-show, you might lose everything. If you have 2 cables, they need to be twice as destructive to cause total havoc!

It would excessive in this application, but you can get DMX splitters (aka buffer boxes) which take a single DMX feed in, and split in into multiple outputs for just this reason. They can also make cabling easier. And there's a maximum number of devices which can be connected to a single DMX output - you'll need a splitter if you ever use this many fixtures!

HTH,

Tom

EDIT: Must amputate a few of Tomo's fingers to slow his typing down...

Actually 12 intellegents fixtures can be run of the fat frog. Scrollers, Moving Heads/Mirrors, Foggers etc.

This isn't exactly true of 250s (or 500s, 600s, or any other mac I've used. well, that's all of them actually). The Mac 250 has a separate Shutter and Dimmer channel, the reset is located somewhere in the top end of the Shutter channel, NOT the dimmer channel. Also, this is a feature, not a "problem"! If you find it that annoying you can turn it off in the personality menu, but I've found it handy on many occasions.

To the OP - Given that this is for an A-level, you should really be going to some other sources as well. The Blue Room is a great resource, but it's not what I rely on when trying to learn how to use new kit. Contact your hire company and find out exactly what model of Mac 250 they have; they'll either be original 250s, kryptons or entours (in order of niceness). That assumes you're not getting Mac 250 washes, which are a bit different. Ask if you can go along one day and get a demo of the light from them, and go to the martin website and download the manual. Read your Fat Frog's manual too, it will, surprisingly, tell you how to patch and control moving lights. How long are you getting the fixtures for? Take a bit of time, if you can, to plug them in and just see what they can do.

What the Blue Room will have that those other places won't is artistic and creative advice; WHAT to do with your lights, as opposed to HOW to do it.

p.s. on DMX - the original 250 is 3-pin only, but the Krypton, Entour and Wash all have both 3 and 5 pin DMX connections. So you definitely need to know which you're getting!

Hi Blue room.

Thought I might let you know, I set up for my show the other day and all setting up, patching and assigning has gone well. All in working order now.

I have found all of its operations but I would like to programme my two fixtures to have a sequence of just panning and rotating around the room and store this as a memory in the fat frog.

Any ideas on how you do this?

thanks, tom

Hi Tom

Best idea would be to use the Effects generator, which is found under Position (press Position more than once to cycle through to the Effects pages). Dial in an effect type (Ellipse, Fig 8, Tri, or Quad) and size in X and Y, then change to the next page (press Position again) and set a speed. Your lights will now move

Hi Blue Room,
Thought I might just inform you all that my show is now over and went extremely well.
I managed to use all effects possible and transitions which is all down to your help.

And with all this, I haven't dropped one mark in my exam.
So thank you for all your help!

Happy Blue Rooming.
Tom_Robbo