Zero 88 Alcora

[menghini222]

Hello,

 

Hope you can help me,

 

At school we have a Zero 88 Alcora and I was wondering if it is possible to

run moving heads off of it.

 

Now I looked on the web site and found no info on it, probably because it is

rather old.

 

So any help will be very great-full.

 

Thanks

 

Menghini222.

;)

[Andrew C]

With only 24 channels, you won't get very far. Depends a bit what you hope to achieve, and what you have to do it with. Don't get your hopes up!

[menghini222]

The moving heads are only 7 channle's,

I dont know if that will make a diffrance to your reply's

 

Thanks,

[dave_m]

theoretically, you could, as either way, DMX data bits are all that are being output. However, the problem arises from the fact that many moving light attributes should be LTP, with the exception of the dimmer channel, which should be HTP.

 

The way the alcora works is that it uses HTP channels, meaning that the Highest value for each output takes precedence over the other values. This could present problems for you when busking for example, as if you wished to move a light from a position stored in a sub, but keep, colours, intensities etc, to a position with a lower DMX value, it wouldn't work.

 

Another potential problem is that if you crossfade between cues without putting a control cue in place is that you would see the movers "fade" to 0, I.e, gobos to position 0, pan/tilt to 0 etc etc.

 

It is so much easier to use a specific moving light desk, such as the hog or the fat frog (just the first two that came to mind) than to try using a generic console for many reasons, including those above.

 

If you do choose to get a moving light desk, I would reccomend that you went for the fat frog, which I believe is similar to the Alcora. At least, it's zero 88, so there should be similarities. The hog really can be quite daunting to use at first (I leanred on a hog 1000.) but you get used to it.

 

HTH

------

Dave McCulloch

 

Used 4 miniscans on a lightmaster XLS and vowed never to do it again

[menghini222]

Thanks alot for the help,

 

I do have a saparate desk that I could use

But I would of prefferd to have it all of one desk

to save tracing lots of wire's back and forth.

 

Also what are your veiw's on the martin mini mac's

Profiles I.e: are they easy to use.

 

Thanks

 

Menghini222 :) ;)

[Stuart91]

I can't remember offhand if the Alcora has a DMX patch facility. If it does, you'll get more bang for your channels by patching all the colour wheels, gobos, etc. onto one channel, whilst keeping the pan and tilt on their own individual channels.

 

You'll still be limited in terms of what movement etc. you can do - the only way to get chases will be to record sequences of individual positions - it can be time consuming to do but you can still get some effective looks. In fact it can be quite a good learning process because you actually have to think about what the movers are doing.

[menghini222]

I can't remember offhand if the Alcora has a DMX patch facility.

 

First yess it does

 

In fact it can be quite a good learning process because you actually have to think about what the movers are doing.

 

Secondly

 

Alway's up for a challange.

 

Thanks

 

Menghini222 ;)

[Stuart91]

------

Dave McCulloch

 

Used 4 miniscans on a lightmaster XLS and vowed never to do it again

 

Exactly how I started. Although I began with two scans which is a lot easier than four.

[dave_m]

part of the reason I vowed never to do it again was that it kept on crashing and coming up with IPR failed. When I was next at the yard, I tried to replicate it, and it didn't do it. So the next job I did used a frog instead! Still quite tricky, needing rather a bit of number crunching, but it worked. I like to try to do things "the hard way" to keep myself on my toes sometimes. I wonder hoe hard it would be to use a level 6 to run a mac 250? Need to have three controllers, but I reckon it'd work

 

What's the other desk you could use?

[Nick S]

Yeah, running anything other than simple disco fixtures is going to be...well, extremely hard. I am surprised you couldn't find much information online - the manual and the Zero88 support is pretty good and freely available.

 

So yes - as others have said, it is certainly possible, but your movers will likely be (unless you put considerable time and effort, far more than you would on other desks) somewhat sloppy...and obviously as you only have 24 channels, you're limited in the number of fixtures you can use too.

[Renny]

Can nobody consider a show without movers these days? In the real world they aren't that common outside shows with large budgets.

[grumpy]

What other desk do you have?

 

As others have said, hiring in another desk may be the solution, as you can run all equipment off one desk. Id give another vote for the frog; should be easy enough to get your head around and has a simple intelligent system on it. The Alcora is a great little desk for generics, but trying to run movers and generics off it may just cause confusion when programming and cause you to throw it through the window!

 

If you have the money, hire, otherwise expect a headache or two (achingly remembers running Minscans off a Sirius 24...never ever again! EVER!).

 

Maybe have a word with the local hire companies; theres a chance if you hire a desk from them and explain the situation that theyll throw in a little training free of charge to get you started.

[lightingyoung]

Hi, I hav ran 2 scanners of this desk with no problmes at all.

[paulears]

This topic comes up often, and a trawl via google or even just a search in lighting will bring up loads of examples. To summarise the answers that appear when this question is put, it goes something like this:

 

"Can I run movers off my basic fader only lighting desk?"

 

"YES"

 

"should I?"

 

"Only if you have infinite patience, only want very basic things to happen, have no need to use the master fader, and can move umpteen faders to new positions individuall by hand with great accuracy"

 

 

It's like asking if your old Ford Fiesta can have an electric winch fitted to the front, because you don't have a landrover available. Can it have one? yes, should you bother? I don't think so!

[Stuart91]

It's like asking if your old Ford Fiesta can have an electric winch fitted to the front, because you don't have a landrover available. Can it have one? yes, should you bother? I don't think so!

 

Not quite - your Fiesta would tear itself apart if you tried to do Land Rover type tasks with it - however at worst you'll have a poor looking show if you make a bad choice of desk. Nothing is going to break, and there is no actual danger to anyone involved.

 

I guess, ultimately, it depends on what you're looking for. I ran quite a lot of shows using scans from a Z88 XLS. It wasn't brilliant by any means, but I got by quite well, using different memories

 

As long as your desk has the capability to store scenes and chases, you should be able to get some simple looks out of movers. Of course if you have complex programming requirements, then the sensible thing to do is get a desk suited to the task.