controllers !

[buttercreamt]

Hi there room just a quick question for you guys.

 

A friend of mine has 4 x Mac 250/8 x madscans and he needs a controller for them. At the moment I believe he has a Lite-puter (is that right), anyway I think it`s similar to a Martin Freekie or there abouts. What he requires is a desk that he can setup and use almost straight away for dry hire. I own a Freekie and must say the fact that I cant just press a button and set it going when required is a bit of a shame. Basic sound to light would do it....shame.

 

Anyway he asked me to ask about a few desks but first these are his needs !

1. the desk must be of a small size (not a monster)

2. easy to use (intuitive I guess)

3. shape generator....

 

The desk hes asked about

1. Avolites Azure 2000 shadow

2. Zero88 Frog Mambo

 

I realise these two desks are not priced the same so I guess hes done a bit of research and come up with ... well sorry don't know what (busy man).

 

Anyway you probably get by now that I,m not to well versed in these things either. I believe he just needs an intuitive desk that can cycle through the main assets of his lights with as little fuss possible. The shape generator would help with tricky bits of programing that are tricky I guess.

Errm .... and that's it. At the moment (at a guess) I,d say when he uses the 250`s especially, they probably just run through their test mode !, I haven't asked but that would seem a very frustrating place to be at for anyone.

 

I hope that this thread was vaguely amusing to read in its crapness and did not offend anyone to much.

 

Thanks Malcolm.

 

PS how do you successfully program a Martin Freekie, is there a course I could go on !(joke).

 

.

[Rich newby]

Let me tell you now that those desks you have listed are way to big for you application. Something like the Zero88 Diablo will be much more suited to your needs.

 

Rich

[dwh]

The Zero88 Frog series have a lovely feature (Called FROG - Fixture Random Output Generator) which is great for random on-the-fly effects (just set your controls to FROG mode and you'll have fresh new effects immediately), and they're very intuitive (made to be some of the easiest-to-use desks there are), and the Mambo is a fairly small (yet functional) model, but this is about as far as my experience with moving head control goes!

[travis1234]

The best desk for you should be a zero 88 fat frog, hires for around £80 per week.

 

It has a "FROG" (fixture random output generator) which is a nice little toy.

Other options are avolites peral which is a bit trickier or try PC based control I.e wholehog.

Albeit, have a shot of the software that is avail to download off the zero 88 site for a feel of the desks.

 

Travis

[jfitzpat]

I think that the Frog would be a good fit for the rig, as, of course :), would our PC based solution (we have a 'radomizer' as well, which is nice for 'walk away and smooze' situations).

 

But I am a little concerned by the phrase 'dry hire'. We are in inventory in some rental houses in the US, but I think that the renters are generally at least basic theatrical lighting savvy. If the target renter is someone with no lighting background, I'm not sure how well us, a Frog, or an Azure would work out.

 

Can you give us some idea of the expected technical savvy of the renters, along with just how much show programming they would typically do?

 

-jjf

[P. Funk]

Just out of interest can you give reasons as to your recommending the fat frog?

 

As I understand it, the majority of that desk would be unused in this situation (i.e. the fader banks for generics) and the moving light section would leave no room for expansion (it limits at 12 fixtures does it not?), as well as it being (in my opinion) very awkward to busk movers on. Admittedly the FROG function does have its uses, but I'm sure there are much more appropriate desks available (maybe the mambo as dwh suggests? havent used it..)!

 

I can't really recommend anything - the only desks I've used for intelligent lights are 520s, various celcos + frogs, and lightjockey :)

[travis1234]

Your right about the frog being a bit of a to use movers on, but when its all patched correctly itll do its tupence worth. Its 12 movers on 12 DMX address, so in theory you could run 12 lights each on their own DMX address, or daisychain them so you could fit upto 32 on one DMX address.

 

The manual, in my oppinion isn't the best but there is an excellent tutorial available on the net somewhere.

 

In terms of programming, anyone will back me up, its easy as pie, with the attribute menus its great with lots of effects, but the frog 2 might be a good idea, but ive never used it so I can't comment much!

 

Travis

[merlin24]

Its 12 movers on 12 DMX address, so in theory you could run 12 lights each on their own DMX address,

 

 

Eh...... How else would you do it. .??

 

 

Andy

[Tomo]

Your right about the frog being a bit of a to use movers on, but when its all patched correctly itll do its tupence worth. Its 12 movers on 12 DMX address, so in theory you could run 12 lights each on their own DMX address, or daisychain them so you could fit upto 32 on one DMX address

Utter, utter rubbish. Please learn how DMX works before giving this kind of advice.

 

Within DMX addressing it does not matter how many fixtures have the same address. Not in the least!

The limit of 32 is the maximum number of receivers on a given transmitter - it's completely unrelated to the DMX addresses applied to the fixtures in use.

 

When more than 31 devices need to be controlled from one universe (output) active splitters must be used - personally I split at around 15 devices, as we're usually in a bad environment.

(The desk itself counts as one receiver)

 

There is no theoretical limit to the number of active splitters or the number of outputs on a splitter

- It's theoretically possible to put thousands of outputs on a splitter, although this would be of limited use.

 

The Fat Frog is limited to 12 independant moving lights.

A Fat Frog series is probably NOT suitable, as it has harder access to pre-created chases and palettes and this rather low limit on movers.

In a club, you generally work by combining palettes of movement and colours on-the-fly.

 

The Mambo Frog will run 96 independant moving lights across up to 2 universes and is designed for club use, so it's probably a good idea for the OP's application.

 

Personally, with these choices for pure club use I'd go with an Avolites Azure with the touch panel, because it can just about take having a drink spilled on it, and it's also physically smaller.

 

If you're likely to do any theatre-style (with cuelist) stuff, get a Mambo.

 

However, a word of warning - there is no desk that you can just leap onto with no experience and use successfully.

Everything has a learning curve, however in a club environment all you need to know is how to patch your fixtures, and then create and use some movement, position and colour palettes.

 

It's fairly easy to do this with an Azure but I've not used movers on a Fat Frog series, let alone a Mambo, so I don't know how easy it is to set up.

[zonino]

Other options are avolites peral which is a bit trickier

Travis

 

I'd say the azure (as mentioned in in the OP) would fit the OP's requirements much more than the pearl!

 

he has 12 fixtures, an ample number for the azure, a pearl would be overkill! and you can do virtually everything you can do on a pearl on an azure, with the added benefit of it being spillage resistant.

 

re frogs: I don't like movers on frogs, especially in club type situations, I think the azure is much easier to operate on the fly and easy to generate stuff mid-show!

[Bottle]

Howdy

 

I've got a similar setup with the Madscans, but I've gone down a slightly different route, in that I use two controllers linked together. I'm using a Zero88 Diablo to control generics and movers, with a MadFx Raving Mad controller for the Madscans.

 

I can either leave the scans running from the Raving Mad using its inbuilt Sound-to-Light mode (quite effective), or I can override it from the Diablo using the DMX input. I just need to allocate up to 12 channels of HTP (Highest Takes Precedence) on the Diablo (in truth, I only need around six if I'm just using Scans). Fixtures-wise, I just create four or eight instances of the scans, and patch them accordingly (the Madscans use DIP-1 & DIP-10 for their inbuilt mode, so I use these when setting up the DMX address as well)

 

You can then use the Diablo to control the Scans directly, and I've created a fixture personality for the Madscan using the supplied Diablo software. You could also run the Mac 250's from the Diablo as well.

 

Downside is learning to use the Diablo. I've had mine a year, and I'm still finding new stuff I can do with it!!

 

PM me if you require any further info, and I'll be pleased to help

 

Good luck

 

Ian S

[Flyboy543]

I'd go with the Azure. We've got an Azure 2k running 8 mac 250's + many other intelligent fixtures and find the 'quick access' buttons really simple to use. After the desk has been programmed near enough anyone can use it given 5 minutes of training. It's also quite portable as desks go, although needs a VDU which makes it slightly awkward. Still choose the avo desk though.

[pscandrett]

After the desk has been programmed near enough anyone can use it given 5 minutes of training.

 

After any desk has been programmed anyone can use it after 5 mins!

 

I've got personally a Mambo Frog and use it with four mini mac profiles (and have used it with Mac 250+s in the past). I have no problems with it - in fact, I like having the bank of buttons in front of me to use as pallettes (colour, gobo, position shortcuts etc). It certainly would fit what you're after - and no, the submasters wouldn't be 'wasted' as you can put scenes/'looks' onto them too. I use mine for gigs and things though and busking shows; you might need to program it more in advance if you want to walk away from it a bit more. (You could program sequences into the memory stack and leave it to get on with it, changing every five minutes...?)

 

I've used an Azure once before, which had a lot of preprogrammed stuff in it and it was OK but I didn't get on with the external display. I've also been using a Pearl a lot recently (at work, with the 250s) which - I'm not going to recommend here - but operates in the same way as an Azure in many ways. I can't really remember what the Azure was like to be honest but if it's anything like the Pearl you'll be able to set up focusses/pallettes as shortcuts so you should be able to busk it on there, too.

 

In short, I think either of them would suit what you're after. It depends what your priorities are - if you like a small console and the Avo way of doing things, go for the Azure; if you like a larger console with the flexibility of being able to use a better theatre stack then go for the Frog. Without knowing how you're going to use it I'm not sure I can say much more, but you could ask for Avo and Zero88 to demo it for you? (Perhaps at the AC lighting trade show or something?) or go to one of their training days on the consoles. (I'm a bit confused by your comment about dry hire - either desk could have pre-programmed chases and sequences that anyone would be able to dive in and use in a minute or two...)

 

HTH

 

Peter

 

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