Riggers Remote - cost effective!

[Ian_P]

All,

 

Your thoughts and ideas please,

 

We have just upgraded to DMX (Yipee! those resistance faders were getting very hot!) and I would like to know if there is a 'cost effective' riggers remote that I could consider.

 

It needs to work with a Fat Frog and Strand S72 demux, and wireless would be nice, but not essential. I see the following options and I would be interested in any others and views on these:

 

Artistic License / Zero 88 Debug / Martin Wife units - these seem very similar to each other, are they?

Zero 88 Linebacker

The unit (not sure what it is called) that uses a cordless phone to activate each channel

Leprecorn wireless remote unit - very nice, but can't find prices or UK dealer

 

Any others?

 

The requirements are

Robust, cheap (£100-£350), easy to use, ability to easily step in both directions thro the channels and jump to a particular channel.

 

Cheers!

[robloxley]

Or indeed Z88's DeBug which is another Artistic Licence etc. clone. However these are all stand-alone DMX testers, not a rigger's remote as such. Also I'd avoid the Linbacker as you are tethered to its external PSU!

As for suggestions, I seem to remember a company called Chamtech who made a cheap DMX tester, and in fact a tiny one that hung round your neck that could just flash channels up. Unfortunately they seem to have disappeared!

[peter]

However these are all stand-alone DMX testers, not a rigger's remote as such.

It's worth mentioning that the AL clones all have the ability to generate DMX, and you can alter each channel level individually.

 

Assuming you only want this during the plot, why not create a show file with 48 cues. Cue 1 = Ch1 @ Full, Cue2 = Ch2 @ Full, etc. You could then use the remote go option on the Fat Frog to trigger each light in turn. Perhaps a second button would be 'home' which would activate Cue 1, so you always know where you are in your keypresses. This would almost certainly be cheaper than any of the other options. With a bit of electronics applied, you could even put in a counter so you can see which light you're addressing. If you had this show saved to a disk, you could load it for each focus session.

[Shaun Foster]

Assuming you only want this during the plot, why not create a show file with 48 cues. Cue 1 = Ch1 @ Full, Cue2 = Ch2 @ Full, etc. You could then use the remote go option on the Fat Frog to trigger each light in turn. Perhaps a second button would be 'home' which would activate Cue 1, so you always know where you are in your keypresses. This would almost certainly be cheaper than any of the other options. With a bit of electronics applied, you could even put in a counter so you can see which light you're addressing. If you had this show saved to a disk, you could load it for each focus session.

The only problem with this is you may need to bring more than 1 lantern up at once, to line them up etc.

[robloxley]

Maybe these days you can get some disco-tat DMX lighting desk to sit on stage to use when focussing etc. Or you could hoof the main desk down to stage. Or you could just call for channels to the desk operator?

[Ian_P]

Thanks for all suggestions, the remote trigger idea is a good one- I like that, not too much expense to get that working, and I had also considered a Behringer 2412 desk as the 'onstage' remote desk, and its not too dear.

 

Cheers

[johnhuson]

As for suggestions, I seem to remember a company called Chamtech who made a cheap DMX tester, and in fact a tiny one that hung round your neck that could just flash channels up. Unfortunately they seem to have disappeared!

 

Yes sadly Chamtech have gone out of business, which is annoying as I have one of their testers. It's very good and a bargain.....perhaps that's why they went out of business!

[andystone]

We sell a unit caled CompuCALL which basically enables you to interface a standard DECT digital cordless phone (or a number of them) into a DMX lighting system which is presumably what you are talking about.

 

The unit can connect to a standard telephone line so you can call into it from anywhere, or you can connect a DECT receiver. Then you have a number of different key sequences on the phone to call up channels and set levels, it's quite fun!

[patricevolts]

Yes sadly Chamtech have gone out of business, which is annoying as I have one of their testers. It's very good and a bargain.....perhaps that's why they went out of business!

 

Bonjour Blueroom

You are not right, ChamTech are still in business. The company I work for has purchase there buffers with testers many times over the last 3 years. Chamtech is seen in Europe in many times. I understand they no sell in England for many year as person in the lighting press run a vendetta against the company.

 

As a simple rigger control the 6 way truss buffer with tester allow rig to be easy tested in many sections. Also very cheap as 6 way buffer all output optical with auto terminate and bypass in case of power fail along with DMX tester for approx 375 euro.

The X-Buster tester is also very good and a good price.

 

 

Patrice Voltaire

[Graham NZ]

Hi

 

ELC make a riggers remote that would probably do what you want. I think White Light are the UK Agents.

 

Graham

[patricevolts]

Should have put on the web for Chamtech it is

www.chamtech.co.uk.

 

The web says they are in England but I think company may now work in France as I had to collect equipment in big hurry from the Englishmen just near Bordeaux.

 

Patrice

[olistockman]

My innovative little brother came up with a superb solution this weekend.

We did an outdoor show, in a field, from the back of a softside artic trailer...

Due to the music being played, us lampys always end up in a far corner of the stage, not great for seeing the show from...

I rigged and programmed the show, running HogPC from the trusty thinkpad, he turns up with a normal pc box at about 7pm....dumps the show files onto this...plugs his network card into a Wireless Broadband Router, slots a Wi-Fi card into the laptop...and hops up WinVNC, and now he is free to wander anywhere within 1/4 mile to operate the show from..the bloody genius!!

Not practical to those running hardware desks, but for those using PC equivalents (see....there is a major advantage!) it is a godsend....it also means that the laptop falling over, although it may not be convenient, doesn't take the show down with it. And should the PC fall over, just jack your DMX dongle back into the laptop....solving all the redundancy problems

:blink:

(and if you are a little clever, you can write a batch file, drop it into the scheduler, to syncronise the show files on the machines every minute or whatever, straight over the network)

[ziggyP]

Not practical to those running hardware desks, but for those using PC equivalents (see....there is a major advantage!) it is a godsend....it also means that the laptop falling over, although it may not be convenient, doesn't take the show down with it. And should the PC fall over, just jack your DMX dongle back into the laptop....solving all the redundancy problems

 

Any hardware desk that outputs on a network protocol, ie MagicQ with Artnet, can be run with 2 access points, one next to the desk the other driving the Artnet box. If you have a WiFi PDA then this can connect to the network to act as a focus remote, check out MA's range of desks.

 

As for back up some systems can be set to either monitor for no DMX packets or to merge packets between the hardware desk and a back up PC running the PC version.

 

Ziggy