SHOWTEC LED PAR64'S

[tij5987]

Hey guys.

 

(Totally not out of choice) I have to use some Showtec shortnose LED parcans - never had much use of these before and so far I'm not a fan.

I am fairly confident with strand desks (300 and 500 series) and am running genius pro.

Below is a description of the DMX chart that I found for the lantern:

 

Channel 1 - Red

Channel 2 - Green

Channel 3 - Blue

Channel 4 - Colour Macros

Channel 5 - Strobe

Channel 6 - FX's (pulses in light, color changes etc)

 

So easy enough I thought and created the below in the fixture library of my Strand 300:

 

[13] [LED PAR 64]

14, 0, 0, 255, 0, 0 (14 Being attribute red)

15, 0, 0, 255, 0, 0 (15 Being attribute green)

16, 0, 0, 255, 0, 0 (16 Being attribute blue)

2, 0, 0, 255, 0, 0 (2 Being attribute colour)

17, 0, 0, 255, 0, 0 (17 Being attribute Speed) I could have used attribute 41 Strobe I suppose.

35, 0, 0, 255, 0, 0 (35 Being attribute FX)

 

 

Now having created some macros etc to easily access the Red, Green, Blue attributes it is easy to make the desired colours etc - but obviously there is no dimmer or intensity attribute, so on the live display, when running cues all of the lanterns appear to have an intensity of 0, when infact they are on - which is very misleading for the operator - as the show will tour a bit, it will see many different operators and it would be great to allow the fixture to display an intensity when it is turned on. Is this possible??? I guess I could go into the ATC page and delete intensity (if that is even possible I don't know!?!) but that isn't really an option as we have other fixtures in the rig. Dont really want just one colour to appear as the intensity either!

 

I know it might just be something that I need to put up with, but just wonderng if there is anything I could do to make it a bit neater and tidier really.

 

Appreciate your time, help and effort.

 

Tom.

[Ynot]

The only way to realistically get what you need out of this is to NOT use a fixture personality.

For our LED pars, I usually simply patch the attributes to discrete channels and treat them almost like a seperate fixture for each colour. I seldom use the effects functions on these but when I do, it tends to be assigned to the pars in groups anyway, so I'd simply patch all of DMX channel 4 for all the LEDs to one control channel, 5 to another and 6 to a last.

A bit of a pain to type into the patch charts, but worth it for the improved control.

 

You can also in this way group all of the red channels together, green and blue, making it a tad easier to play with.

 

Oh - and if you have them set up as a fixture you will NOT be able to set them up on subs!

[Rob Halliday]

Hi Tom,

 

LED fixtures like this are a pain on the Strand consoles; if you ever get a choice try to get LED fixtures that have a built-in intensity channel as well!

 

As has been suggested one way of dealing with them is just to treat them as lots of separate intensities, which works but is not particularly user-friendly.

 

To fill in 'something' in the intensity column: you can't do this while you're plotting, but once the show is done you could use automod to achieve something along these lines:

 

- patch a 'fake' intensity for each LED channel if there isn't already one

- set up an automod for each channel: 1 AMOD FROM 1.14, 2 AMOD FROM 2.14 etc

- update your cues: 1 THRU whatever UPDATE USE AMOD CUE firstcue THRU lastcue *

 

 

This will copy the value from each '.14' attribute to the intensity through the range of cues you specify.

 

Sadly, if .14 is set to 0, a zero will get copied which is not helpful.

 

My workaround to that would be to make sure that every colour mix you use is stored as a reference group. The automod would then copy the reference group to the intensity, and if you added an intensity level to the appropriate reference groups you'd then see that on screen.

 

It's not particularly elegant, but it will at least give you an indication of when the lights are 'on'.

 

Rob.

 

 

 

(PS: if you store the attributes of a fixture but NOT any intensity on a sub, the sub will behave as you'd expect it to behave with level - ie. 0 is the attribute(s) at zero, FL is the attribute(s) at full. That would let you make, for example, a red, a green and a blue sub as a quick way of mixing colours. It's only when a sub has attribute information AND intensity that you see the behaviour where the attributes 'jump' to the right values as soon as the sub is lifted off zero, the fader then controlling the intensity)