Integrated vs Bespoke control surfaces

[Bryson]

Shame they've ditched the trackball in favour of a trackpad - I hope you're not expected to use that to pan & tilt the movers!

what old strand desk have they nicked the button design from ???? good to see them using somthing with a real clunk, better than the rubber ones they put on the 300 that are verry easy to miss press when typeing at speed.

Button-wise, they look like the keycaps from the old Lightboard M. Not sure that's really a good idea. And further to a point in an earlier post - trackpad - UGH! I didn't spot that on my first cursory glance, but now that I have spotted it I really really hope it's not intended as the primary method of pan/tilt control of moving lights.

Yes there is a track pad, but it is for navigating the screens (which were touch screens!) But for Pan & Tilt there are 4 knobs above the keypads, though I would not be suprised if you could use it some way for pan/tilt

 

The buttons are the same at etc express (which I personally don't like but I know I will get over)

Yes there is a track pad, but it is for navigating the screens (which were touch screens!) But for Pan & Tilt there are 4 knobs above the keypads, though I would not be suprised if you could use it some way for pan/tilt

No trackball. Biiiiiiig mistake. :)

The buttons are the same at etc express (which I personally don't like but I know I will get over)

Again, a mistake IMO - the type of keypad buttons used on the newer 500-series (not the flatter, less responsive ones from the old 500s) are the best kind for a lighting desk. But at least they aren't the god-awful Schadow buttons as used on the Pearl and Expression ...

It occurs to me that one advantage (** laughs out loud **) of Win XP is that it may be relatively simple to attach an outboard trackball and have it "detected" as the "pointing device." If Genlyte is smart, they will make this an "authorized" alteration.

But one of the disadvantages of the 300-series was the need to use an external trackball due to the lack of a built-in one - building this fault into the new desks can't be a clever thing to do, surely?

Surely the biggest reason why a trackpad is utterly idiotic is that the Palette is said to have a "point and click interface".

With a trackpad.

Surely the biggest reason why a trackpad is utterly idiotic is that the Palette is said to have a "point and click interface".

With a trackpad.

Erm, I think I'm missing your point here, but a trackpad is just another device for moving the 'point'er around the screen and 'click'ing.

 

I've been playing with the Marquee OLE for the last few days, mostly using my laptop's trackpad, and it becomes intuitive after a short while. Admittedly it needs a wheel-mouse for wheel-like level setting, but I'm sure that's not the case for the finished desks.

Erm, I think I'm missing your point here, but a trackpad is just another device for moving the 'point'er around the screen and 'click'ing.

My point is that trackpads are hideous for long-term use - mice and trackballs are much less likely to result in RSI.

 

I get a cramp if I use a trackpad for longer than half an hour or so, while I can mouse or 'ball all day.

If they've kept the functionality they had at PLASA you could always hook the desk up to a touch screen...

Which are expensive and therefore one of the first things to go when the accountants get their sticky paws on a project.

Shame though, as they are really cool.

But one of the disadvantages of the 300-series was the need to use an external trackball due to the lack of a built-in one - building this fault into the new desks can't be a clever thing to do, surely?

Having had a 400 series and a 300, I'd actually say that the external tracball is a feature, not a disadvantage. It means you can get a trackball you like (actually, the Microsoft one that comes with the 300 is pretty good, anyway) and when it breaks (as they invariably do) it's an easy, user-level repair, not a depressing, service-engineer level job.

 

That said, I'm entirely with you on the buttons front. In fact, I'm researching getting a PS/2 replacement numeric keypad with proper keys on for my 300, as the rubber buttons are terrible! I'm not familiar with the Lightboard, but if they're not as good as the ones on a 500 (the 500 ones are perfect) then it's a step backward, for sure.

 

You know, I think the whole "integrated control surface" vs "customisable control surface" thing is interesting. I'll start a whole new thread with quotes from this one soon to discuss it more fully....

Further to some discussion in the Strand Palette thread, I thought I'd start a new thread to discuss the wider issue:

 

Should manufacturers be dictating to us how to physically interact with their consoles? With consoles moving towards Graphical User Interfaces, and with the buttons, wheels, mice, trackballs, touchscreens and dials so obviously a matter of personal choice, perhaps there's room for selling the various parts of the physical interface separately? For example, if someone sold a compatible version of the 300 control surface with proper buttons, I'd certainly take a look at it, very hard.

[lightsource]

Good point there, from an audio perspective, there are a vast array of control surfaces for audio devices. I personally have used a Korg Triton Keyboard as the sequencer for a midi based lighting rig, but as far as control surfaces go these days I do think everyone has a personal favourite as well as a personal dislike ( this was noted in one of your quotes regarding trackerball vs. mouse).

 

However I do feel that unless a standard (such as midi in audio based control surfaces) is set for the control of such devices, then each manufacturer would create their own proprietary standard and control surfaces would not be interchangeable with other consoles, allowing each manufacturer to inflate the price of their products. (I couldn't see martin selling a £1.99 mouse with their name on it :)

 

Bear in mind my background is mainly audio, but I do dabble into lighting sometimes.

[gareth]

Sounds like a case of "Back to the future" ... or perhaps 'forward into the past' ... or something. :) What I'm saying is that you only have to look back to Strand's modular control desks of the 70s and 80s (MMS, Galaxy) to realise what a great idea it was to enable the client to specify the size and configuration of the physical interface of their lighting desk.

[lightsource]

True with most things gareth, in the 80's we had supersonic airliners, now we don't. In the 90's we had CD's, now we have MP3's. Valve based audio went out in the 80's, now it's retro in the naughties :)

[Andrew C]

Some time back, in another thread, I mused on the idea of a touch screen "desk" with all the buttons laid out just like your favourite desk. OK, the "feel" would be shocking, but the familiarity might out way that...

[lightsource]

The Triton I mentioned in my previous post has a touch screen and is a wonderful tool, no arrows to buttons, no ...press this to..... you just see the graphic and press it.

 

The problem is that if the touch screen fails, regardless of the product, you're knakkerd (spell checker couldn't help me on that one) :unsure:

[dbuckley]

... With consoles moving towards Graphical User Interfaces, and with the buttons, wheels, mice, trackballs, touchscreens and dials so obviously a matter of personal choice, perhaps there's room for selling the various parts of the physical interface separately?

Only a matter of time. Modern lighting consoles are just Windows PCs with funny old-style interfaces. Take the Hog3. Run it on a PC, and get used to funny keystrokes, or run it on a PC with wings, or have a b'stard Hog iPC that has no clue what it is, or have a "proper" Hog3 console. Software's the same, attitude is the same, but what you poke at and grabble with is different. It is true that these Hog models are market segmented, you want lots of universes you cant use Hog PC, f'rinstance, but thats just marketing: there's no reason why HogPC can't be made to drive the networked DMX boxes.

 

But in a more general sense, for doing what I normally do, which is "plays", I cant figure out why anyone would want to use a lighting console anymore. Rock and Roll, yeah, movers, yeah, interactive, yeah, gimme those bumps and faders, but anything where the words "theatre stack" are involved, all that expensive metalwork is as relevant as pisspots. We've made progress since then. Actually, the progress was made with the M24, which was the first mass market desk designed to do the job right, but we've gone backwards since then.

[obsoperator]

An intriguing thought; We had a Horizon in the theatre for a while, as the second board in a two-operator Moving/Fixed lighting job. I thought the Horizon required too-much menu operation. It seemed too much like setting up a complex Word document. (I've always been suspicious of office workers who insist on running Word exclusively from the keyboard shortcuts. It seems to me that they have a "black-box" approach to the product, instead of looking at it as a machine with a million levers you can use in various ways.)

 

But in this case, the ML operator was working "on his own", with general objectives from the designer and no firm deadlines. The Fixed lighting operator is "obeying" the designer and working as fast as possible to be ready for the next operation. (The Horizon ran off MIDI from the Obsession, so the show only paid for one operator at performances.)

 

When I post on the LightNetwork, it often seems to me that all of the operators run a different board every week or month, so they may have different needs that an operator in a road house. I run the same board every day, and need to be as fast as I can on it. I am never, ever, the designer. You could compare my work to being a utility company data-entry operator. The difference is that instead of monitoring my speed and error rate, they monitor every single keystroke! The key observation is that I've never met an American drama/opera/ballet designer who wished he were the operator, or who thought the "union was sticking him" with an unwanted worker. He/She has many better things to occupy their mind with than pushing buttons.

 

Are all General Electric atomic reactors/..... steel mills/Siemens turbines/etc. of the same decade built with identical control rooms? If not, why? To pick an example a tiny bit more like our work, I recall reading that for many years, medical anaesthesia machines came in two styles. In one, a rotary knob increased the proportion of oxygen when you turned it clockwise. The others increased the proportion of anaesthetic when you did that. More than occasionally, patients died, because different anaesthesiologists used different machines several times a day.

 

I'm not comparing the importance of our work to life-and-death, I just mean that standardization is not always a bad thing.

[lightsource]

I'm not comparing the importance of our work to life-and-death, I just mean that standardisation is not always a bad thing.

 

I think that one of the main problems with lighting in particular is that MIDI is not really a viable option. It has a low Tx rate, and (correct me if I'm wrong) is 8 bit, so the largest number it can transmit is 255, not good if you have a 64k colour pallet. Unfortunately various leading industry members would need to collaborate to form a standard protocol and when you look at things like VHS vs Betamax or Blue Ray vs XYZ, they're all independent..... one company had an idea and they BELIEVE they can sell it. Weather this works in reality or not is probably the subject of a totally separate thread.

 

Sorry Bryson for wandering off your original post, but as there is no suitable useable protocol (with the exception of DMX512) then something surely needs to be created (Frankenstein's monster comes to mind) :unsure:

[dbuckley]

I think that one of the main problems with lighting in particular is that MIDI is not really a viable option. It has a low Tx rate, and (correct me if I'm wrong) is 8 bit, so the largest number it can transmit is 255, not good if you have a 64k colour pallet.

In fact MIDI transmits 7 bit data, so the biggest number you can transmit is 127, unless you put two 7 bit "bytes" together to form a 14 bit word, like continuous controllers do.

 

Of course, ACN is coming and will solve everyone's problems...

[paulears]

can we leave midi and protocol discussion for another (either and old or new) thread - we're drifting away from control surface issues which was the interesting starting point - please.

P

[lightsource]

Should manufacturers be dictating to us how to physically interact with their consoles? With consoles moving towards Graphical User Interfaces, and with the buttons, wheels, mice, trackballs, touchscreens and dials so obviously a matter of personal choice, perhaps there's room for selling the various parts of the physical interface separately? For example, if someone sold a compatible version of the 300 control surface with proper buttons, I'd certainly take a look at it, very hard.

 

Sorry Paul but I disagree. In audio midi has become the default protocol for data transmission in control surfaces, and has allowed the development of many low cost cross-platform control surfaces as well as proprietary systems.

 

As the vast amounts of data required for lighting data transmission render midi rather useless, there needs to be a cross platform transmission protocol, or all manufacturers will use their own proprietary protocols, and there won't be the cross platform interchangeability enjoyed in the audio control surfaces.

 

It would just be good if any control surface that a user was familiar with, could be used with all the various desks used within the industry.

 

Thanks dbuckley for the correction to my previous post ... It was far too late at night for me to be talking technical <_<

[ben.suffolk]

As the vast amounts of data required for lighting data transmission render midi rather useless,.....

 

Is that actually true, sure MIDI would be no good for sending the lighting data (thats why we have DMX). But how much and how often does the user interface data change? You move a few faders, press a few buttons....

 

I can't see you needing to do so many things at the same time that MIDI is not fast enough. Having said that I know nothing about MIDI so I don't say that with any authority <_<

 

Regards

 

Ben

[paulears]

I'm not sure if my comment was correct now - as it has been pointed out that if we're talking remote surfaces, some kind of protocol is needed to connect, and maybe midi is a valid one.

 

The lower reolution mentioned, isn't really a problem. I have a behringer controller that canbe used to send midi control data (not that I ever maode the damn thing do what I wanted). If we are talking about something like a desk control panel with 100mm (or shorter) faders, then 256 steps on a fader is perfectly good enough resolution - so midi might be the one. critical timing data on channel 10 always seemed to work for me. I suppose the lighting mans panic slam of every submaster fader and a single GO prod could go wrong - after all, hung midi notes are pretty common, but this is often the fault of the receiver, not transmitter. However, 24 faders going down and a button prod would be sequentially sent no matter what, but would this time delay be visible? Has anybody actually played with the exisiting midi control functions - I have to admit I never have. How quick are they in practice?

 

Would not usb2 or firewarire not be the way to go, interface wise? quicker than midi, and a proper 'pc' format, unlike midi, which is pretty elderly now.

[Andrew C]

Would not usb2 or firewire not be the way to go, interface wise? quicker than midi, and a proper 'pc' format, unlike midi, which is pretty elderly now.

USB is (was) the way the new Strand was shown at ABTT. PC in the case and USB to the control surface and the output module IIRC. So it isn't a huge leap of imagination to come up with a cross-platform USB based system; but I'll bet it doesn't happen for a while yet.