Martin 121 Questions?

[SceneMaster]

Fistly where can I get Martin 121 Scanner manuals form on the net I have tried martin but can't seem to find them and have googled it but please if people know a site tell me. Thanks.

 

The next thing is I been told that I am operating these for a Charity Disco and the Hire man refuses to hire them out to the parish who are running the disco unless I am operating them (very protective of gear! It seems). Are these units any good? And are there any tips people can give me to use them? (please no comments about better gear and that we should have Mac 2000 performances ect!!! I am not the chief LX and just the man who is lending knowledge and gear. The man organising the gear dosn't have a clue but it his job.) I think these units are all that the event can hire within buget and I don't even know who they are hiring from!

 

Anyway the next thing is the hire comapny want us to find control for the units and I have offered my SceneSetter 24 for the Job. (It is DMX :D and can output values on DMX channels so should in therory work :D ) But it is HTP not LTP so for moving from one preset state to another won't just be the case of sliding the next submaster slider up (or will it?) I thought the way I would have to do it with the desk is to crossfade from on sate to another or just flash up states and if I want to hold a state slide up the sub master slider of the state. Should this work? I know that at points beacuse of the HTp it may be a bit sloppy but I have told this to the organisers and they replyed that it is a buget disco not a theatre play so a few unwanted random effects won't be too much of a problem :D. If people have any ideas of how I should use the desk to get the best possible playback results please tell me (if it will work at all) which it should as it ouputs DMX values!!! I know it not ideal but if my desk is not used then the lights will not be hire and considering the Chif LX is excited about these that would be a shame.

 

Anyway if you cna understand my ramble then great!!!

Thanks in advanced for any help offered!!! :D

[World_Lighter]

All the manuals on Martins website

 

hav a look on there.. theres bloody loads of them

 

hope it helps

[minimac]

are you sure its called a 121? I have never heard of this.

or is it that old?

[cmck]

Never heard of a Martin 121 scanner, do you mean 1220 or 1020?

 

Martin has all its manuals up on its web site, but check you have the correct product ID first.

 

Chris McK

[SceneMaster]

I was told 121s by the guy who is organising the event and is hiring the gear. I know it is a scanner/wiggly mirror type thing and the only info he gave me was Martin 121s, maybe I misheard is there 212s? I don't know but I will ring the guy up and find out exactly. But would a scanner work on my desk like I explained in my original post :D ?

 

Thanks

[Stu]

But would a scanner work on my desk like I explained in my original post :D ?

Probably, I see no reason why not.

 

But remember you have 24 channels to play with, so if the scanner is 6 channels of DMX, you'd only be able to run 4 on the board. You could squeeze in more by pairing up colour channels, gobo channels etc but this would mean every light would go to breakup when you moved the fader.

 

Anyway when programming you'd have to very careful to make sure it all looked fliud. For instance, if you dragged down the GM fader, all the attributes of the movers would go to 0 as you've patched them into the desk on a HTP (Highest Takes Precendence) basis.

 

One way you can get round this is by programming all the attributes from Scene 1 into Scene 2 (the backlight) but taking out the Intensity, as this would then mean the colour wheel, gobo wheel etc would stay at the same value, hence keeping the light in the same colour as the B/O goes.

 

Anyway, you'd have to play with it and see what works. Needless to say it won't be easy mind.

 

Stu

[Tomo]

Given that you are going to be using them in a "Disco" setting rather than theatre, I assume you are going to be busking the show, and essentially running a set of wiggles and colours?

 

For that kind of setup, I'd do something along the lines of program a set of positions ONLY in a few of your submasters, intensities in some other submasters, and colours in another few.

 

Then you can crossfade any pair of 'like' submasters (eg one position to another) and you'll get reasonable transitions.

(Colours should usually be snapped in and out as they will use a colour wheel, although you can get nice effects by spinning the colour wheel)

 

Oh, and don't use the GM. Really - try it and see what happens! :D

 

That's a similar technique to what you'd be doing when busking on a moving lights desk anyway.

 

If your desk can run more than one chase/sequence at a time, do a similar thing but put chases on some submasters - eg a chase of positions on one, chase of colours on another etc, and SNAP between similar chases.

 

Playing about with the speed (and how the desk goes from one step to another in the chase) will give you some interesting effects.

 

And have a few pieces of paper and a pen handy!

Whenever I've used moving lights on a generics desk, my crib sheet is a real lifesaver. I usually have a channel function summary taped to the desk, and when setting up movement chasess it's very useful to note down a few core positions that you then flick between. I have done the 'manual shape generator' thing before (use a calculator and a piece of paper) as well, but I would recommend you only do that if you want slow movements.

Fast ones are easier as you can just keep the chase slightly ahead of the mirror.

 

(And browsing through the list of Martin fixtures, I'd guess it's a Roboscan 812 or Roboscan Pro 218.)

[SceneMaster]

I've emailed martin and 212s definitely don't exist so I guess as tomo said is that they would be 812 or 218 as the organiser could have written an 8 as a 2. I think I’ll will ring him :P .

[Cwest]

There are manuals for all the Roboscan series on our web site, www.martin.com.

 

Simply click on the 'support' link on the left hand side then select the type of light you want the information for.