brit got tallent

[martin-iow]

looking to turn a light on at the same time as the noise. the same affect as the bix "X" on britains got talent. any help

thanks

[paulears]

I don't mean to be rude - but why would you want to make this complicated? There are three options, sound and lx go from the same verbal cue, lx goes on the buzz, or sound buzzes on the light.

 

I can see somebody wanting to automated this if it happened over and over and over again - but why mess around with DMX or MIDI for something like this?

[WiLL]

press both buttons at the same time?

Paulears was right, sound and lights have been 'going' together for decades without any means of automation, simply good communication.

[PhilB]

When we did Talent show, based on the TV show, we gave the judges 3 switches which were linked to 3 SLs behind the 3 massive X's, with red gels etc.

We then briefed a stage hand with very quick reactions to hit space bar on a laptop when he saw a red light turn on! Obviously this played the relevant sound effect.

 

The only issue was reminding the judges to turn their lights off before the next act started!

 

Why over complicate things!

 

Phil

[dbuckley]

This is show control 101.

 

Any half-decent computer based audio system will have some way to do this.

 

As I already have a GPI to MIDI interface, it would be easy to use that to interface the buttons to stuff.

 

But if I had to start from scratch, as a PCStage user, joystick interface would be the cheapest way to get a few buttons into PCStage. So I'd get a Joystick/USB converter off fleabay, and connect where the joystick buttons should go to the judges table buttons. Programme the software so the buttons run a cue to make the noise. If your show controller doesn't do lights (most dont), then find a lighting controller that accepts MIDI note-on messages (most Zero88 desks do, for example, even the ancient XL - I've got one and can confirm it works nicely) and programme the show controller to make the lights work.

 

Once your fleabay bargain has arrived, and you've wired up the judges desk, then programming up the PC and lighting should take less than an hour, not a huge amount of effort, and you'll get a rock solid system that gives the slickness of an engineered and designed solution.

 

I'm sure I recall that some lighting desks have (or maybe had) GPI inputs (contact closure) on the back and for these a double pole push buttons could be used, one pole for the joystick interface to make the audio flow, and the other pole to the lighting desk GPI.

[paulears]

http://www.earsmedia.co.uk/susanboylexxx.jpg

This simply went GO-GO-GO worked fine, 88 times!

[LXbydesign]

about as technical as we went, the 3 judges each had there 'own' style of buzzer therefore each had a nice little doorbell push button on the desk - and the buzzers were located under the table with a radio mic head popped inside to link to the PA.

 

Nice and loud then.

 

Only the lighting op had to have his brain switched on to press the relevent 'sub to buzzer'!!!

 

If your doing this sort of gig many times, yeah sure, then its worth the technical set up on the show control etc etc - but just for a one off, personally I think its a lot of faff and just keep it simple.

[fazJ]

When I did this we cheated ever so slightly, we had two light switches per judge one wired to a buzzer and the other to the lights inside the X, granted our x was basically a wooden frame with normal 60W bayonet lamps inside, didn't take very long or cost too much.

 

Although as it has been mentioned before, remaining the judges to turn off the light again afterwards was a little bit of an issue!