Using Martin Mac 250's and Fat Frog Lighting Desk

[Tom_Robbo26]

Hi, Im a newbie as you can all see,

I am studying A-Level performing arts currently and in the past I have worked on many technical aspects, sound, lighting, followspot etc. And as part of the A Level course we have to do several performances, and for our next we have decided to hire 2 Martin Mac 250's.

 

In the past I have only ever used lighting on dimmer circuits so this is all new to me. I know the basics but there are a few questions that have arised.

 

I will be using a Zero 88 Fat Frog Lighting desk, and from this I wouldn't know how to get the 2 Macs to move together. As ive seen on many lighting shows before, several lights all move simultaneously together and this is an effect I would like to use, but do not know how to program this on the desk????

 

Also if I wish to point the lights in a certain direction to I programme this as a seperate cue or just as one.

 

EG cue 1: light moves into position

cue 2: light fades up

 

or

 

cue 1: light moves into position and fades up

 

Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance. :unsure:

[five_pin_xlr]

Firstly Welcome to the blue room!

Secondly, the way it all works is programmed into cues.

 

so cue 1 is black out

cue1.5 macs move into position

cue 2 mac in position and on

 

The macs need there own address, from this you patch it. Its pretty easy to do.

 

You need a 5pin to 3pin DMX cable that connects to the 3pin for the macs.

 

hth

[Tom_Robbo26]

So from giving them their own address and patching them how do I then on the lighting desk set the lights to move together?

 

Do I hold down the 2 fixture buttons together?

 

And I didn't know the Mac's ran on 3 pin I thought they used 5pin instead, If so I think I need to change my hire list.

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

[Al Cain]

You will need to address the mac's to an address between 1 and 512.

 

Do not address them the same, or the same as any other lights or DMX controlled items on your rig, or else you will have a hard time.......(been there done that!)

 

Then write down the address' for each light on the plan.

 

Patch them into the desk, it should have the personality loaded into it, if not look in the maual.

 

Then follow the manual for the rest of the information.....

 

HTH

 

Alex

[Ken Coker]

Don't take this the wrong way, but why have you decided to hire them if you don't know how they work?

That is, what is the design idea behind using the kit?

 

KC

[five_pin_xlr]

On the fat frog you have the ability for 10 movers in the far right hand area, there is 10 buttons

 

Select 1 and 2 and then select the other functions, to put intensity to 100%, use the 2 wheels as pan and tilt.

 

But read the manual! Will certainly help!

 

hth

[Tom_Robbo26]

Thanks for all your help, certainly helps, if I have any other queries along the way I'll let you know.

 

And I thought the question might arise to as why use them if we don't know how, it's also been asked by other friends.

 

But in the brief we have been set it says, "use your knowledge of previous lighting skills as well as taking a new skill to demonstrate short term development"

 

And for the "New skill" area we have taken on the challenge of using these lights. (Thats partly the reason, the rest of it is I'm just fascinated by them ** laughs out loud **)

 

But no offence taken.

 

Thanks for all help

[peternewman]

And I didn't know the Mac's ran on 3 pin I thought they used 5pin instead

If they are original 250s then they are indeed 3 pin, although the desk is five so as mentioned you'll need an adaptor. Depending on the company, quite a few leave adaptors cable tied to the fixture, so you can use them with three or five pin cable as required. There's also another potentially relevant topic on Macs with the Fat Frog here as well as lots more available on the wiki and via the search.

 

On the fat frog you have the ability for 10 movers in the far right hand area, there is 10 buttons

It's twelve on the Fat Frog actually, two rows of six. More details here.

[tokm]

You will need to address the mac's to an address between 1 and 512.

Just thought I'd mention for the benefit of the OP, that yes the fixtures can be addressed at anywhere between 1 and 512, but, that doesn't mean you can address one at 1 and the 2nd unit at 2. Depending what mode you have the fixtures in & as Al Cain said, what other DMX toys you have in your rig will factor into the addressing of the fixtures.

 

Lets assume you have 24 ways of dimming, and they run off DMX channels 1 through 24, so 25 is the next free DMX address, so you set your 1st mac250 to 25, then, assuming youve left the fixtures in mode 1 (tends to be the commonly used mode) the next address will be 34, this is because the fixture uses 9 DMX channels (each channel controlling a different function, the colour wheel, gobos, gobo rotate, effects, pan, tilt, etc).

 

HTH.

 

Tom

[five_pin_xlr]

Word of warning dont set it to a 100% as they tend to reset. Thats why I'm not in favour of macs. 100% is reset for it.

[David Buffham]

Don't set what to 100%? Do you mean the control channel? In which case 100% is Lamp Off, I think. Not a great reason not be in favour of Macs. Personally I prefer to be able to douse lamps remotely, whatever lights I'm using; I hate turning them off still struck, even if they're rented. I know some people tend not to bother, but I'm not comfortable with it.

 

mode 1 (tends to be the commonly used mode)

I'm surprised at that - I would always use extended modes and most rental places I know send units out in extended modes as standard. I don't know the Fat Frog at all, but I assume it supports 16-bit attributes, and it is well worth taking the time whilst learning about moving lights to understand timing channels.

 

I think that the original question about how to get the lights into the right place before they fade up is a good one, particularly from someone who hasn't used them before. In my opinion the skill in using moving lights is not so much in creating the looks, but is more in keeping transitions between looks as clean as possible - whether that means fading them out, marking them in next position and fading up, or planning live transitions that are seamless, e.g. fade between adjacent colours, gobo morphing, etc..

 

EG cue 1: light moves into position

cue 2: light fades up

 

or

 

cue 1: light moves into position and fades up

The mechanics of how you get the lights ready for a cue is really down to the desk you're using - but putting in a .5 cue is one way of doing it. I wouldn't move the light into position and fade up in the same cue because you would have to put a few seconds' delay on the intensity coming up. Even if you set the time for the non-intensity attributes to zero, the light will still mechanically take a couple of seconds to sort itself out. (However I've found that snapping attributes to the right value and fading up intensity in the same cue works quite well for LEDs and media servers, where no mechanical delay is involved)

[five_pin_xlr]

Well david, with the 100% factor, it seems to do it on hogs and fat frogs.

 

I'm not in total hate of macs, its just they in my opinion are not as reliable as vl's.

 

The newer macs are better though.

Which mac is it, is it a 250, 250+, Krypton?

As the newer fixtures I believe Martin have ironed the problem out, but don't quote me on that.

 

Also as David said dousing them from the desk is good, because you give the lamp time to cool down and then the fixture still on cools the lamp with its fans.

 

hth

 

hth

[sparkyweb]

Hmmmmnn

 

Some interesting comments here.

 

As some other posters have commented, it would be helpful to know which type of MAc250 we are talking about.

I had to laugh at the comment regarding VL's and their reliability (ignoring the costs of VL for the moment!) I have very few problems with Macs. Like all items with moving parts, regular service will mean good reliability.

 

On the Mac, you can disable the auto reset, regardless of it being a hire item, ours get "fiddled" with all of the time. At the end of a hire when its tested it recieves a full reset.

 

As for addressing, don't hesitate to ask the hire company to set them up for you. If we know all the info from our customer, we will preset them. It will help the hire company at the end of the day as it means less phone calls!

 

Don't forget as default the fat frog uses channels 1- 48 as the generics so you won't be able to assign the fixtures to those channels.

[gareth]

Don't quite understand what the problem is that some people seem to be having with certain values on the shutter channel on a Mac sending reset and lamp-off commands. Personally, I find it a very useful function - to be able to remotely reset or douse a fixture from the desk is a real boon. If you don't like it, you can disable it in the SPEC menu anyway. And you don't dim the fixture with that channel anyway, that's what the intensity control channel is for - so simply grabbing a fixture and fading it up won't accidentally set the shutter channel to levels that you don't want it to be at.

[Tom_Robbo26]

So let me get this straight,

 

The generic channels are from 1 - 48, therefore the dimmers that are on the circuit are bound by these generic channels.

 

When I add a fixture to the desk I must ensure they are addressed above the channel 48 because these channels are already taken. I also must leave 9 channels in between each addressing of the fixtures because they use 9 channels each?

 

When patching the lighting up though, do I set the desk to autopatch the fixtures? or do I do it manually?

 

Also I have been wondering, what exactly the difference between 3pin DMX and 5pin DMX exactly is, I've never noticed any difference.

 

One more question, on the back of the FAT FROG there is 2 DMX outputs, I have only ever used one, when using the fixtures do they have to be on a seperate circuit???

 

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks.