ETC Nomad setup

[TomHoward]

Hi

We've just bought an ETC Nomad setup, to use as a possible desk in a school theatre. (We also use QLab's lighting and a couple of Zero88 consoles)

I'm looking at hardware to run it on & with.

I'm thinking of buying the LXKey keyboard, and possibility a touchscreen, or an all-in-one desktop with touchscreen on.

Questions are:

 

Is it worth looking at Windows or OSX as a host system or does it make no difference?

If Windows, would you look at 7, 8 or 10 for a standalone machine?

Is it pretty processor heavy, or will most basic AIO / more basic office PCs run it?

Does the LXKey keyboard make the touchscreen kind of redundant or is it still worth having?

 

So far I've played with it for about 20 mins so it's all new to me yet. Most of our shows are either straight theatre shows, with generics and LED, or not entirely 'busking' but running live subs and chases for scripted / rehearsed music concerts / cabarets - the things that aren't busking but are just too fluid to be able to program in a cue list fully.

 

My colleague has used Ion so chances are we'll run it in EOS mode rather than Cobalt.

[IRW]

I bought two Lenovo AIO 700's, along with two dedicated Nomad dongles for use as tracking backup computers in our two main venues last year (Main auditorium running an Eos Ti and studio theatre running a Gio). Once you work out how to beat Windows 10 into submission and then never let it see the internet again they run quite happily. I've not tried it yet, but one of the selling points of the AIO700 to me was that you can plug an extra display into it via HDMI, so this could in theory be another touchscreen.

 

Even if you get the LXKey, it would still most definitely be worth having the touchscreens, as so much of Eos now is designed around touch screen use. To be honest, combine a two-touchscreen system with a couple of cheap tablets running a suitable button layout, and you've got a very usable system in my opinion (although for your environment, a hardware key solution keeps it simple). I've personally used my touch screen laptop along with one, sometimes two tablets to program and run some of my own shows with no problems.

 

Processor-wise, at the sort of level it sounds like you'd be working, a fairly bog-standard present-day computer would easily cut the mustard. As soon as you get it set up how you want it, take a drive image, then don't use it for anything else and keep control over what gets plugged into it!

 

Ian

[TomHoward]

Thanks for that,

I think having looked at it what I'm going to do, is we've got some 2-3year old Lenovo machines, so to justify the cost of the accessories I'm thinking of buying a touchscreen, the LXKeys and then re-using one of the existing desktops with a clean install.

The big desktop is a bit clunky but we can replace it with a Lenovo Tiny PC in time.

Having played with it a bit I can see why the touchscreen is needed for the magic sheets etc, I think personally I prefer some hardware buttons as well though for those shortcuts, and a hardware button for the levels always seems faster than touchscreens.

Could we then set a tablet up for subs etc as well I guess? I haven't got to the live event use yet, mainly playing with the programming a cue stack.

[themadhippy]

but one of the selling points of the AIO700 to me was that you can plug an extra display into it via HDMI, so this could in theory be another touchscreen.

Another option is a usb touch screen.Ive got a 10" liliput working with an asus all in touchscreen pc that doesn't have any monitor outputs,it even plays nicely with win xp

[TomHoward]

I've got a Windows 10 box up and running, ordered a 22 inch touchscreen, and going to order lxkeys tomorrow (can't do it from home as they don't take paypal)

 

Re Windows 10, it's really bloated with Xbox Live, Paint, all that kind of nonsense. Does anyone run Windows Embedded or similar these days for this kind of application?

Otherwise has anyone had any luck in stripping windows back to the bare minimum to wrap the one application, or do you just deal with all the background stuff and leave it alone?

[ddproduction]

Re Windows 10, it's really bloated with Xbox Live, Paint, all that kind of nonsense. Does anyone run Windows Embedded or similar these days for this kind of application?

 

There was an interesting discussion here http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=68241&st=0

[alistermorton]

tl;dr

 

Windows enterprise LTSB doesn't have the cruft.

[TomHoward]

I've got Enterprise licences but I don't know about LTSB.

I've actually got it running pretty well by general standards, I've replaced the Explorer shell with Nomad so it boots straight into Nomad fullscreen with no Start menu or anything, and looked at the Black Viper service configurations which are a batch script that run a preset sequencing of disabling / changing services.

 

I was hoping to get the disk image size down by removing Edge / Cortana etc but think I'll leave this one for now and use a different Windows version if we change the hardware.

[Tom_M]

LTSB is different license only available on Microsoft volume licensing programs so is unlikely to be available to most users.

 

LTSB doesn't have Edge and Cortana (yet).

 

For Windows 10 Home, Pro and Enterprise I have a PowerShell script that I use to remove the bloat that is just not needed. If anyone wants a copy then just PM with your email and I'll get a copy over to you. There are several bits of Windows 10 that you just cannot get rid of - Edge, Cortana, and X-Box but most of these services can be disabled. I use a x64 Windows 10 Pro HP desktop to run Show Cue with no issues after using the script and I use it at work to trim the bloat out of PCs that are deployed to our end users.

[alistermorton]

LTSB never does feature updates without being explicitly told to, and won't install a security update, even if it's downloaded it, until you tell it to. It's meant for things like x-ray equipment, cash machines, that sort of thing, where unexpected updates interrupting what you're doing is completely unacceptable.

 

So, show systems, too.

 

But as Tom says, you need to be on a volume licence, and you won't get them for one offs.

 

 

[TomHoward]

We do have enterprise licensing, as we are a college, but whether this includes LTSB I wouldn’t know. There seem to be licences from resellers for very little money but I don’t know how legitimate that is - I’ll have a look.

 

The boot at the moment to the actual tombstones of nomad is under 28s, which isn’t too bad. Replacing the explorer.exe shell with EOS works really well - when you quit though you have a block screen with a cursor and that’s all though so have to start explorer manually to do updates. This is without an SSD as well which should speed it up more - and I can’t get the non-gui boot to work.

 

Out of interest, with the touchscreen do you still use the mouse much? Is it better with cursor hidden?

[IRW]

We do have enterprise licensing, as we are a college, but whether this includes LTSB I wouldn't know. There seem to be licences from resellers for very little money but I don't know how legitimate that is - I'll have a look.

 

The boot at the moment to the actual tombstones of nomad is under 28s, which isn't too bad. Replacing the explorer.exe shell with EOS works really well - when you quit though you have a block screen with a cursor and that's all though so have to start explorer manually to do updates. This is without an SSD as well which should speed it up more - and I can't get the non-gui boot to work.

 

Out of interest, with the touchscreen do you still use the mouse much? Is it better with cursor hidden?

 

Mouse does still come in useful, for doing fiddly 'set up' kind of stuff and drawing magic sheets etc, so definitely still worth having one nearby if it's your main programming machine. My backup AIO machines have literally nothing except for the dongle and network cable attached, but they should in theory only be needed after everything is programmed and all you need is a 'go' and 'stopback' button.

[schooltechie]

I'd say touch screens are certainly a good way to go, I've not got much experience of X keys personally so can't comment on their usefulness but I know people do rave about them.

 

You say most of your current use is generics and LED so not that much need for the encoder wheels yet. You can do virtually everything you need to in EOS with a keypad (I suppose thats where the X keys may be useful). If it was me I'd be looking at whether there is any potential of adding moving lights or maybe scrollers to your rig in the future. It may be worth looking into getting a programming wing or a fader wing.

 

Computer wise there are people much more knowledgable than me but I've used and seen in several places the all in one HP machines running windows 7 and have never managed to make one fall over yet.

 

Hope it helps

Alex

[TomHoward]

Thanks for that,

 

We do hire movers on the occasion, we've pretty much resigned to hiring though as it means we can use the right ones for the job, but no doubt it'll make mover programming a lot, lot easier than the Zero88 offerings.

We did have 12x scrollers but we got rid of them in favour of LED! With 3 wires into each fixture and them having to be wired in a loop it made moving lanterns with them on such a pain.

 

What about firing Nomad from Qlab on a separate machine? Would you patch the two ethernet directly together and use OSC? MIDI's out the window without adding two USB interfaces and patching them together I guess.

[IRW]

Thanks for that,

 

We do hire movers on the occasion, we've pretty much resigned to hiring though as it means we can use the right ones for the job, but no doubt it'll make mover programming a lot, lot easier than the Zero88 offerings.

We did have 12x scrollers but we got rid of them in favour of LED! With 3 wires into each fixture and them having to be wired in a loop it made moving lanterns with them on such a pain.

 

What about firing Nomad from Qlab on a separate machine? Would you patch the two ethernet directly together and use OSC? MIDI's out the window without adding two USB interfaces and patching them together I guess.

 

Yep, relatively easy if you get all the settings right at both ends.