Andrew H

Edward, Thank you very much indeed. First, let me confirm I understand how to use the profile you provided: This is loaded into the desk and assigned as, say, moving light 12. In the manual patch, I would assign moving light 12 to be DMX 512. As the characteristic is Beamshape, it is unaffected by the Grand Master. I understood enough to recognise that there was a solution of this nature, but I don't have your experience or knowledge. I realise the potential risks of this approach - providing power to a fixture with a power supply in it that will be damaged if it is subjected to a leading-edge dimmed supply. The context is that the lighting trusses are fed by one of three phases of a three phase supply and the nearest 'normal sockets' are something like 15m below on a different phase, so there's no option to take power up to the trusses from that source. The installation needs to be modified by a qualified electrical contractor, and it will be. The work is currently being costed and will then be commissioned.

Hi Sunray, in answer, yes, it makes sense to have additional sockets put on the trusses which are permanently live 230v ac. This is currently being costed. My understanding is that if I assigned slider 48 to DMX channel 512, whilst I can set slider 48 to maximum, when the Grand Master is used (for all the parcans in use), then this will vary the output on DMX channel 512, unless it is logically separated. I am not sure how to do this, or whether it is even possible.

I have a Zero 88 Fat Frog controlling the lighting in a theatre which controls a series of rack mounted dimmers with 'dimmable sockets' on the trusses. Very conventional set-up. I have six Martin Mac 250 washes on the trusses, with the control coming from the Fat Frog. The power for the Martin Mac's comes from the 'dimmable sockets' and this has been done by not assigning the six sockets to channel 512 (the opposite end of the desk's working range) and then manually setting the outputs on the dimmer packs to maximum. We put an oscilloscope on the outputs first to be sure that the output from the dimmers was "pure". This works perfectly. The disadvantage is that every time the dimmers are switched on, each of the six channels that power a Mac have to be manually set to maximum, pushing a button for each channel to increment the output. A very neat solution would be to have channel 512 set to maximum (and each of the dimmer channels are set to 512). However, this needs to be set so that the Grand Master doesn't vary the output level to channel 512 as it would do if, say, slider 48 was manually patched to 512. Does anyone know any way of doing this?