BobJ

I messed up my last reply. I set this all up on my WIN10 64 desktop only to find the response rate to a fader move was up to 40 seconds! Turning the packet refresh rate from 40 to 0 improved it to 3 to 12 seconds. So I downloaded again and installed onto my WIN10 64 laptop. The results were exactly the same either way. At the moment it appears unusable. I can't believe that other light tech and console manufactures don't have a way of looking at the entire console output for testing purposes.

I have a small controller board to test at home and a ENTEC Pro US/DMX dongle. Sometime back I remember plugging the output from the board into the ENTEC's DMX "in" socket and using some software to 'see' the DMX channels and at what level the board was setting them. But for the life o me I can't find the software. Ideas?.

We have some heavy items that need to be moved across stage to be danced on! We want a system, where the crew could operate a button that activates some pneumatic cylinders to push the wheels down an inch. And similarly retract them once in place leaving the platform stable. Has anyone used anything like this and if so can you let us have details of the apparatus you used please.

We're building a 8 x 16ft arch to frame some singers and plan putting white and colored light bulbs on it. My question is: should I use 120 volt bulbs or would 12 volt ones be bright enough?

We are shortly looking to replace about 40 legacy Fresnel lamps. We would be interested to hear from others who have done this or who have some ideas on what replacement lamps they have or would use. We would like the benefits of reduced power requirements, low heat output , no gel changes and so on of the LED lights.

I use a couple of boxes that when addressed initiate some relays. But they require a DMX address for each relay (e.g. one for Red, One for Green and so on). I'm looking for a box or system (Raspberry Pi. Arduino perhaps) where I can Decode the data being sent to a single DMX address and have that presented to 8 pins for actuating my relay system. So, if I send "16" to that address then pin 4 will go high (or low). Are there any commercial units that would do this?

Nice selection - thank you. I ordered a reel today. I'm Arduino'd already and have a couple of 12 volt relay boxes from a previous show (which flashed regular LED tape). So should have some proto's next week.

Hope its not so complicated hence the question.

We're doing "Tuna in Vegas" in a couple of months. Director wants some 'typical' Vegas (perhaps more related to the street) "Arrow" signs with chasing lights. At this time, I'm thinking of making thin wooden arrows about 2' long 6" wide and then mounting LED's around the edges. I'll group and wire several adjacent LEDs and bring them out to a 12v relay box which I'll drive from a Arduino. The final step would be to control the Arduino to provide the various 'chases' from a DMX decoder. Hmm! lots of work so posting here to see if anyone has done this or similar or has a more efficient way of handling things. Bottom line; Although I want simple commands from the Console I want these things to be pretty much self standing.

We've had 10 of these 120 watt jobs for about 3 year on a cove bar. Over the past 6 moths we have seen 3 of them start to turn off and then back on a few minutes later when run over 80%. It looks like a heat problem. We've been up there several times to check the fans, blow out any dust bunnies etc. 3 out of 10 is getting serious. We'd be interested in finding out who might be using these and their experiences. And, if anyone reckons there is a fix for the problem we'd love to hear it.

We run an ETC Element 2 at the theatre where we just hung two (inexpensive but very rugged and bright) "Ridgeyard 36 x 10 w RGBW Moving Heads". Playing with them I noticed that they only responded to positive Pan values. i.e. Anything below 0 (0 > -270) had no effect. In essence they travelled from 0 (Facing forward) anticlockwise to 150 for a full circle and then on another 3/4 turn to 270. Unfortunately I only have Capture Student at home with no profiles for Ridgeways so I plugged in a Martin MAC Entour and matched it with an entry in a ETC EOS show file. But! I noticed a difference. With the MAC I could run from -270 though 0 and up to 270. This gave me the 1 and 3/4 turns as before. I.E the same as the 0 > 270. With little MH experience I'm not sure if such is normal (-270 -> 270 versus 0 >270) or if I have some setting different between the theatre console and my home EOS suite.

Are we still talking about when you accidentally used Magicq software or the quickQ? I'm confused now. (easy done, to be honest) Thank you. I'm talking about the "QuickQ" software because that is what is what is now on the consoles.. I will try to rephrase my questions. (I'm assuming based, based on your answer you are a QuickQ 10 or 20 user) In the home screen I can pull channels (whatever) into the Layout (we call it "Magic Sheet"). However, having patched 1 thru 96 dimmers to DMX 1 thru 96 I there is only space in the top row for 1 - 32 boxes. I have tried page right etc. to see higher numbers to no avail. So; 1/ How do I pull, say # 74 onto the layout? 2/ Is the only way to set - let's say put chan 18 to 100% to highlight it in Layout and pull up a fader. Could I not enter 19 @ 100%? 3/ What about patched fixtures above 20!? Is there a button or menu option whereby I can point the 20 faders away from 1 -20 nd to 21 - 40, 41 - 60 and so on. I.E Am I restricted to controlling ONLY the 1st 20 via faders? I appreciate you input

I'm adding to my original because I discovered I was using MagicQ and not QuickQ demo program. I found I could patch 96 dimmers to consecutive DMX addresses OK - good news. But! Some questions came up; In my patch program I have all 96 across the top ready to drag into the Layout. However I can only see out to 38 and the rest are off screen! How do I drag, say 81 or 90 into the Layout. If the faders can operate channels 1 through 20, are they "paged" IE can I prime them to look at channels 40 through 60? Can I (like on most consoles) type in something like 87 @ 5 to give me 50% on DMX 87? I'm posting this around 9pm EDT (4am in the UK) hoping to get an answer win (my) morning.

Looking for anyone with real experience on one of these consoles. Trying to see how many control channels they have. For example on our ETC Expression 3 or Element 2 we have the 1st 96 control channels patched 1 to 1 to our ETC SENSOR 48 dimmer rack. Plus, we have been putting an increasing number of multi parameter devices ranging from simple RGB LED lamps to 10 DMX address consuming moving heads. I have the software demo on my desktop and the manual but can't really see how to reproduce the Element command "82 @ 5" which would put control channel to 20% and in turn (patched 1 to1 ) dimmer with the DMX address of 82 to 50%. This is a UK board hence asking in blue room.

All points noted and being hacked into a comparison. (Not always easy when your audience is very untechie). And darn, I forgot about the cost of the gels and how many time we needed "Bastard Amber" only to find we'd run out and had wait on an order!

No the 36 x 10w is brighter than a 1k in anything other than open white Ouch you bought up a darn good point and one that I totally forgot about when comparing legacy lamps and LED's. Once you put a gel on the legacy you lose a significant amount of output. So, I just ordered a couple of 36 x 10s to put over the stage and compare to other legacy and LEDs we have. Not quite sure why movers don't have a price premium. If I want to light two different corners at two different times I would have to put two Fresnels or Ellipsoids - but a single "mover" could be turned from one position to the next. Wouldn't that be seen as some premium? I'm probably being too pedantic here but want to get my ducks in a row as I will have to "sell" the multi DMX address, P&T issues to some lighting guys here who've been patching legacy dimmers 1 to1 for over 20 years!

8 cheap Chinese RGBW zoom 36x10W. This sounds interesting. I Googled RGBW zoom 36x 10W and came up with several. But they were all moving heads. Are yours? I notice that a large (and very well funded) theater near us has 3 rows of 5 large Martin Macs. THey claim they have to very little re-positing becasue they can quickly change the way these things point and they only nead so few becuase a/ they don't have to put up different Fresnels with different gels to cover color situations and b/ One lamp can be used to point to different locations in different scenes. They aren't LED but I think the two points (multicolor and remote pointing) seem to be gaining in popularity. Your point about Fresnels hotspots totally intrique'd me becuase I notice that our lighting designer using Fresnel want ot get rid of such to the point that we sometimes have as many as 50 Fresnels over the stage and 20 or more Elipsiods on the auditorium bars, to get chase shadows and smooth out hot spots! Even a couple of our paltry ADJ Cannons seem to give a much more homogeous wash across the stage, so several more (evne LEDs) would seem like a good idea to me. The tech involved (multi DMX addresses, pand tilt and color control) and moving away from a total Fresnel invasion will be e big jump for our guys, but one I am sure they will have to make some days. That 36 x 10W woudl indicate a rough comparision to a 500W Fresenl so the brightness is not too far off. And, as we discussed the LED woudl be sans hot spot etc etc. Thanks again for a most interesting input and I am off to look up more on these 36 x 10 guys.

Usually 500 Watt tungsten halogens off a ETC Sensor48 dimmer stack

We run some Chauvet Corepar 80, ADJ Encore spots and a couple of ADJ Cannons on our small stage. But I have been asked to recommend some LEDs for our larger (35 x 40') stage to "add some color"! I've used a couple of the C80 and think they are fine but we there are no barndoors for them. If you had to put some LEDs up onto a big stage what would you go for? They'll be used alongside regular (legacy,) Fresnels. ould you go for? They'll be used alongside regular (legacy,) Fresnels.

I was asked to look at one of these recently. I've been trying to get 'accepted' into the Strand User Forum for a couple of days but haven't heard anything so posting here; The Level Wheel has been broken by some heavy handed use. I'm pretty experienced opening up and fixing ETC Expression 3 and Element 2 and some smaller stuff but wouldn't know where to start on this console. Is it easy to open up? If there is anyone out there using this board and who has any quick notes or advise to jump start my association with it. I would be most appreciative.

We have several groups of LEDs, each group fed from a wireless DMX receiver. All worked well until I got called out because all the LED fixtures were not responding to any commands! On inspection a newly placed ADJ COB Canon (on the floor) was found to have had its mode changed to "Slave". Now for the interesting part; It's wireless DMX receiver was pulsing red (rather like the DMX wireless transmitter). And even then the question remains; If this fixture was in a wrong mode how did it a/ change the receiver to pulse red and more importantly b/ how did that stop ALL the other wireless connected fixtures working? Finally; when the Canon's mode was set back to DMX the Rx pulsed green (per norm) and all the other LED fixture groups worked perfectly. A receiver transmitting!!!!!!

Thank you. I'll look to using the AUX method. I forgot to ask. If I use the AUX method rather than 'Insert" should I set the 2nd Edit control to Mono and the 3rd to activate the "EXTN" output mode? Are there any other setup edit settings I need to look at?

At very short notice I was asked to put "echo" onto a singer. We just received the FX200 and it looks like it can do a lot. Maybe too much. I'm wanting to use it with the TRS 1/4": insert socket on our Soundcraft Mixer Console. (I have the "Y" leads). What I am hoping for is someone who has used this box to tell me as simply as possible how to set up a simple echo effect. I'm reading the manual - but as said there is a lot to it and any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Carwin, I pasted your reply into a document so I can research these and any other suggestions

As LED lights are changing so fast I have been asked to talk to our board members about LEDs for the main stage. We have another very small theater running entirely on LEDs but my experience is that there are still no real replacements for the big stage legacy Fresnels and Ellipsoids. We do bring over some "Chauvet DJ COREPar 80s" to give the big stage some deep color on occasions. (These little guys are truly fantastic - but main drawback is you can't get barn doors for them. We use black tinfoil but it's a kludge!) So, if you wanted to replace 40 or more Fresnels with LEDs for a big stage what you buy?