alistermorton

Download the arduino IDE - it comes with examples.

The online reference is fairly complete and also covers some of the commonly used libraries such as lcd. https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/

While it's true that the big console companies have all those resources behind them now, they were start-ups once, and there are plenty of shows running on shareware or freeware lighting software in the non professional world. But that wasn't really my point, made somewhat flippantly. The arduino is a component, like 7400 series chips were in the 70s, a commodity part that you can use to make low cost systems, and as Tim and Dave have alluded, they needn't be something to be afraid of. Especially when you're on a really tight budget.

And of course we all still use rheostats for controlling our lights rather than those microprocessor based lighting consoles operating electronic dimmer circuits?

As Gerry suggested, you may be able to set them to power on in the look you want, then you don't need DMX at all. What fixtures are they?

That's an interesting alternative, Tim. Many years ago I worked for a company who manufactured calculators and it had an RS-232 port. We fashioned an adapter that allowed us to do a simple local area network over 3 core cable (single ened, not differential). Of course youd need processing in each out station too but arduino nano or similar are dirt cheap. I'd suggest having feedback from the outstation could be useful- when the talent is in place and waiting they signal to the DSM with their pushbutton.

An ... ummm ... "interesting" range of products to position alongside lighting consoles.

Some theatres specifically ban the wearing of blacks for backstage crew who will appear on stage during changes, requiring them to be in costume as fits the production.

Could the talent not operate a thumb slide on the handle to eject the blood, I wonder. Easier than faffing around with springs and motors, fun though that is.

Beat me to it - I was about to suggest a spring syringe rather than a gas cartridge.

The facebook groups I'm in are EOS programmers and EOS Macros, Qlab, SCS (mainly for historical reasons- no longer use it and I probably ought to cut down the traffic) and Zero88 for announcements.

I don't think the Thomann DMX master 2 that I referred has any notion of what the channels are, really, each "scanner" is just a 16 channel fixture. It fades them all together, whether they're red, green, blue, white, amber, gobo, strobe whatever. Certainly how it worked when I used it, it cross faded between intensities and colours as (well as could be) expected.

Sorry to be a pain … but can you confirm that this crossfade works when manually selecting scenes (ie not in a chase)? In other words, if I have scenes 1-5 set up and press 1, it fades up … then I press 5, and it crossfades to scene 5 … and then I press 2, and it crossfades to scene 2 … and then I suddenly need scene 5 again, so I press 5, and it crossfades to 5. I've looked at the manual and there's specific mention of this in a chase, but not when manually selecting scenes. I've already now bought (and am returning) several different DMX controllers on assurances that they can do this, but they can't. Pressing the scene buttons just switches to that scene. Thanks, Alister On the desk I used, yes, it cross faded between scenes, unless it was left in programming mode when it snapped between scenes. The fade time is set by a slider, and if it's fully down the fade is instant, i.e. it snaps. We did Aladdin with scenes set for four locations and a black-out on the buttons, and just faded from one location to the next on the scene buttons (even - wow - used a second page of scenes). The low cost (cheap) LEDs we were using were very steppy at the bottom end, but nevertheless the desk was doing its best to fade between scenes.

You can often download the manual for stuff that Thomann sells from their site without purchasing, so you can get an idea whether the way it works is likely to work for you.

That sounds like you're after scene submasters, something you're unlikely to find in a very low end desk. I suggested to the school I was helping that they seriously looked at the educational Nomad package from etc. They liked the price, they liked that it was real lighting software, but they wanted physical faders to pull up and down to affect the lights (which I can understand) as they intended at some point to let the kids (up 10/11 year olds) operate. I think the kids would have got the hang of point and click and drag better than I would to be honest, and of course it's possible to add a midi surface to nomad using luminosus to get physical controls.

I helped do a show at step granddaughter's primary school. They had a stairville DMX master 2 (of which there are numerous copies) and that allowed slow crossfades between scenes. They snapped when in programming mode but once out of programming mode the fade time slider was active. Just about does the job and quite cheap - about 110€ from Thomann.

That's ancient. Right click lists are relatively recent. Upgrade it, I'd say.

Not just signs - we've used that technique with ceiling light fittings, chandeliers etc, swinging them out of sight behind a border.

Thinking laterally - you'll see what I did here - could you use heavy duty curtain track to fly the scenery out rather than up? We have no fly space at all, so we often move scenic flats in and out of the wings on Hall curtain track with small wheels attached at the bottom of the flat to help guide it. This avoids having to lift stuff at all, once it's rigged.

That's the ones we have, Ray.

Yes, we had some of these and the connectorwas reversed. Easy enough to check - the plug and socket are connected by a PCB plug to the circuit board, and that plug can be "persuaded" on the wrong way round. This solved our problem.

Good enough for me :-)

Also check that you have the usual culprits like anti-virus scans turned off etc.

Can you think of a reason why the two designs couldn't be combined? If you had nothing on the two red LEDs, that could either mean no signal being received at all, or lost ground, but the bi-colour LED would show the presence of the differential signal.

Gear4Music also have strobes - a 1500W ADJ one which will give you exactly the same grief, and a load of LED based ones which may be a safer bet for home use.