Stuart91

This statement has near-universal application...

I suspect it may have been valid for the clamps produced in 1996 by the original designer/manufacturer, but possibly not whatever random Chinesium efforts are showing up on a Google search today...

Yes, it's not a standard item in their range (yet). We've got the advantage of having them relatively close to us so we're able to have a chat about it in person. The way ours are done there's a velcro flat on the back, this can be adjusted to give enough clearance for connectors and cabling. It's probably not 100% waterproof against driving rain, but miles better than having nothing at all.

It might be an HDCP problem. If a copy-protected source can't see a "compliant" display at the other end of the HDMI line, it simply displays a blank screen. No warning message, so can be hard to detect. I'd try running their content on your laptop and see if that works...

I've recently had some raincovers made up by https://www.hotcovers.co.uk which turned out very nicely. We lost an amp module before Christmas as rain was blowing into it from behind, and the covers seem to be a good solution. The business end of the cabinet is mesh so audio still makes it out unscathed.

Alas the manufacturers are nowhere near that consistent. There are literally dozens of "Beam230" variants in the Avolites personality library.

The Event Spot comes with a a couple of diffusion filters, 10 and 45 degree. The 45 degree version might be best in this application.

Similarly, I wonder if clamping trusses onto the vertical girders would work? More expensive than some of the other arrangements discussed above, but would be a feature in and of themselves, if that fits with the over aesthetic...

I usually make it the teacher's problem. Most understand why I don't want to go delving under kid's clothes. It's at the expense of the occasional "interesting" mic placement, but the more adept staff usually cotton on quickly enough. Did you at least have a red suit and a false white beard?

Jon is spot on. It's also possible to get truss sleeves in various colours of fabric if your corporate clients don't like the look of the raw truss.

My favourite episode around this was a community-run festival. The local council were supporting it, providing some steel deck and a crew to assemble it. Meanwhile the licensing department of the same council were trying to get the event shut down, as no licence had been applied for. There were too many punters on site by this point, so it went ahead anyway. By the end of the day the main organiser had been taken away by the police because he was selling booze without a licence and refused to stop when politely asked...

100v speakers that will do full range sound do exist, but are expensive. There's a few events we handle where there is no option but 100v. (Existing speaker lines laid under the street) We've got a bunch of TOA horns that handle speech more than adequately but music sounds horrible. But there's just not the budget for me to buy anything with sufficient output and frequency range. Thankfully the music is only background at the start and finish of the event but I still wince whenever I hear it.

This gives me happy memories of the tail end of lockdown, when there were all manner of furtive events going on. We found ourselves having to quiz punters on what they were doing with kit before letting it out to them.

A hammer, which you can either use on the smoke machine, or the person overdoing it... Keeping smoke out of the movers will be very difficult, cooling fans will draw it in. IP-rated movers might have a better chance of long-term survival, but it's hard to be sure.

https://stagedepot.co.uk/rigging-install-staging/staging/stage-accessories/global-truss-stage-deck-leg-bracket These sort of brackets are available for Global deck. I've got a handful and they seem to work well. The big advantage is that they don't require any fixings into the surface of the deck. For the OP there's perhaps not the flexibility available with placement. If this pyramid is being built and de-rigged regularly (e.g. for a tour) I'd be trying to get something like this fabricated to reduce some of the hassle. It's overkill for a one-off though.