Control/Dimming - Idiot's Guide to using I-Cue with ETC Ion??

[mwood]

We recently just got the rosco I-Cue and are also struggling with working with our new ETC ion board (we recently upgraded to the Ion from the ETC Express, which we are pretty familiar with). I figured out all of the wiring for hooking up the I-cue via DMX, but am having trouble figuring out how to address it from my ETC ion board. A quick run-down of how to patch it in would be great!
The manual on the rosco site was not very helpful other than explaining how to manually toggle through the modes of the Icue using the LED displays, but I don't really know how to conceptualize putting it together with control from the board.

This is our first sort of 'moving' light toy, as well as our first season with this board so any help would be greatly appreciated!

[SteveB]

You need to "add" the I-Cue as an accessory device to the channel that operates the fixture's dimmer.

In Patch, place the fixture the I-Cue is dimmed by as "Ch, XX, @, Dimmer, XX, Enter". That patches the fixtures dimmer to the desired channel.

Next and still in patch, type "Ch, XX, Part, 2, Enter" (with the channel being the same as that which controls the dimmer for that fixture). Then while in patch, select Type and then Manufacturer, scrolling to Rosco. You will find 2 types of I-Cue, 8 and 16 bit, select on the screen whichever one you are using, noting that 16 bit allows greater resolution of mirror movement (generally). Then give it an address, either an address in the first universe above the range of whatever other dimmers and devices are in use, by pressing Ch, XX, @, 1/Next. Or if you know you want it in the first universe at address 350 then press @, 1/350, Enter. Using the Next key has Ion look at the patch of all dimmers and devices and figures out where to place the I-Cue. If you don't have the show fully patched, then Ion will not know that and may choose an incorrect address. Just FYI.

In Live when you turn on the channel with the I-Cue fixture, the encoder wheels will populate the Pan and Tilt wheels in Position.

[jstandfast]

If you are using any other DMX gags( IE: a DMX Iris and/or Color Scroller)as part of this
package, it's worth it to take the time and create a custom fixture in patch, especially if this is going to turn into a stock item for you. Having a custom fixture will save you a lot of time in patch down the pike.........

[chausman]

If you are using any other DMX gags( IE: a DMX Iris and/or Color Scroller)as part of this
package, it's worth it to take the time and create a custom fixture in patch, especially if this is going to turn into a stock item for you. Having a custom fixture will save you a lot of time in patch down the pike.........

Good point. And wouldn't this also meant that the same channel would not only control pan/tilt, but also add color options or iris options to the encoders?

[icewolf08]

You need to "add" the I-Cue as an accessory device to the channel that operates the fixture's dimmer.

In Patch, place the fixture the I-Cue is dimmed by as "Ch, XX, @, Dimmer, XX, Enter". That patches the fixtures dimmer to the desired channel.

Next and still in patch, type "Ch, XX, Part, 2, Enter" (with the channel being the same as that which controls the dimmer for that fixture). Then while in patch, select Type and then Manufacturer, scrolling to Rosco. You will find 2 types of I-Cue, 8 and 16 bit, select on the screen whichever one you are using, noting that 16 bit allows greater resolution of mirror movement (generally). Then give it an address, either an address in the first universe above the range of whatever other dimmers and devices are in use, by pressing Ch, XX, @, 1/Next. Or if you know you want it in the first universe at address 350 then press @, 1/350, Enter. Using the Next key has Ion look at the patch of all dimmers and devices and figures out where to place the I-Cue. If you don't have the show fully patched, then Ion will not know that and may choose an incorrect address. Just FYI.

In Live when you turn on the channel with the I-Cue fixture, the encoder wheels will populate the Pan and Tilt wheels in Position.

This is all true, but you have to also address the i-Cue itself. If you let Ion pick an address for you, then you would need to take that address and input it into the I-Cue or you can pick and set an address in the i-Cue yourself and then enter that in patch on the Ion.

[hazard]

This is all true, but you have to also address the i-Cue itself. If you let Ion pick an address for you, then you would need to take that address and input it into the I-Cue or you can pick and set an address in the i-Cue yourself and then enter that in patch on the Ion.

This is absolutely true and very easy to do with the buttons on the I-Cue and the LED numeric read out.

Someone above also mentioned creating a fixture profile...very good advice. We have run our I-Cues with an Apollo EZIris and a Wybron Forerunner Scroller on the same fixture. We created a fixture called 'Frankenlight' in our Hog3PC and it works wonderfully. I believe this is also possible with the Ion.

[SteveB]

This is absolutely true and very easy to do with the buttons on the I-Cue and the LED numeric read out.

Someone above also mentioned creating a fixture profile...very good advice. We have run our I-Cues with an Apollo EZIris and a Wybron Forerunner Scroller on the same fixture. We created a fixture called 'Frankenlight' in our Hog3PC and it works wonderfully. I believe this is also possible with the Ion.

It is, just keep adding parts and devices, then save as a favorite with a name.

[mwb19]

Hi guys, I'm a HS student that's trying to set up my school's new Rosco I-Cues and I'm a bit lost. I don't know all the specifics of our system, but I'll do my best to describe our setup and I can ask my teacher questions later if I need to.

Our board is an ETC Element and we're trying to run the I-Cues off of a DMX daisy-chain. We've been successful with DMX chaining color scrollers, but the I-Cues seem substantially more complicated and I still have a lot to learn.

We powered them on and set an address on the I-Cue, but this is where I started getting confused. I figured there would be two addresses, one for pan and one for tilt, but I could only figure out how to assign one. After patching the I-Cue address into our board we were able to make the mirror pan, but we still can't figure out how to tilt.

I figured the tilt address may be set on the board, so I set the proper channel to have an I-Cue as its fixture. This gave the channel icon a funky shape with two numbers, which looked promising, but now I don't know how to operate it. In the Element manual I read all the stuff about moving light controls and couldn't find much help (I never have in that manual).

So basically I'm really confused about how to operate these things. I read through another thread on here but it was way over my head, so any information and help for an inexperienced student is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[cmckeeman]

the I-cue in 8 bit mode will take up two addresses, the one you set it at and the one directly after it, so the address you put was the pan, the next one will be the tilt. if you patched it as a mover hit ML controll and select the channel you patched it as to get control of it.

[icewolf08]

Hi guys, I'm a HS student that's trying to set up my school's new Rosco I-Cues and I'm a bit lost. I don't know all the specifics of our system, but I'll do my best to describe our setup and I can ask my teacher questions later if I need to.

Our board is an ETC Element and we're trying to run the I-Cues off of a DMX daisy-chain. We've been successful with DMX chaining color scrollers, but the I-Cues seem substantially more complicated and I still have a lot to learn.

We powered them on and set an address on the I-Cue, but this is where I started getting confused. I figured there would be two addresses, one for pan and one for tilt, but I could only figure out how to assign one. After patching the I-Cue address into our board we were able to make the mirror pan, but we still can't figure out how to tilt.

I figured the tilt address may be set on the board, so I set the proper channel to have an I-Cue as its fixture. This gave the channel icon a funky shape with two numbers, which looked promising, but now I don't know how to operate it. In the Element manual I read all the stuff about moving light controls and couldn't find much help (I never have in that manual).

So basically I'm really confused about how to operate these things. I read through another thread on here but it was way over my head, so any information and help for an inexperienced student is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

When you are working with any device with multiple parameters, the address you set on the device is the starting address. This means that if the device needs two addresses, and you set the starting address as 100, the device would use addresses 100-101. On the Element (or an Eos family console), when you patch a device you have to tell the console what device it is. You do this in the patch screen by selecting the channel and clicking the "Type"box. Form there you can select from a list of manufacturers and devices. Chose the correct device and you should see the channel tombstone get a squiggly shape as opposed to square, or if you are in live table view, you will see the attributes. In the patch screen next to the channel number you should see the range of addresses that the device uses. Also, you will want to patch the fixture that the I-Cue is on to the same channel but in a different part. So if you patched the I-Cue first, you would patch the dimmer to channel part 2.

To control the device, in live you would select the channel, set a level for the light, and then you would need to bring up the virtual ML controls. You should be able to open this module from in the browser in the CIA. Once open you will have a range of controls specific to the type of device you are using and you can click on them to adjust them.

[mwb19]

Thanks so much for the help; I was able to get them working today (and they're awesome!). Maybe I was doing something wrong, but for my ML Controls to work I had to enter Patch mode, go to my I-Cue channel, and click on the "Pan" and "Tilt" buttons (which were located on a mock-up of the live ML Controls). Doing that put "Channel 97 Pan" and "Channel 97 Tilt" in the command line; pressing enter to both of those seemed to add those attributes to the channel...or something like that. Does that seem about right or am I doing something wrong?

You guys can probably tell that I'm still pretty inexperienced with this board and lighting in general, so thanks for responding. The ETC manual wasn't very helpful and I had to do a bunch of things not mentioned in it to get the I-Cues working, so I was getting pretty frustrated. You guys really helped clear up some of my confusion with addresses and channels.

I have a few more questions though:
1. How much of a benefit would I see from switching to 16-bit? Is it worth it?
2. When I was in patch mode I set the I-Cue channels to "DMX." Before they were set to something else, but I can't remember. Is this a necessary step when doing a DMX Daisy chain?
3. Is there any reason a daisy chain going:

Scroller > Scroller > I-Cue > Scroller > Scroller

Wouldn't work? We ran into problems trying to do that.

Thanks for all the help.

[derekleffew]

1. How much of a benefit would I see from switching to 16-bit? Is it worth it?

Two reasons for using 16b over 8b (applies to ALL movers, not just the I-Cue):
1. If a long throw distance, using 8b may not give enough precise positioning between steps (resolution).
2. Moving slowly over a very far distance, there may be some jerkiness, hesitation, or stuttering.
If you experience neither of the above, there's no reason to change to using 16bit.

3. Is there any reason a daisy chain going:
Scroller > Scroller > I-Cue > Scroller > Scroller
Wouldn't work? We ran into problems trying to do that.

What make and model of scroller? Most (all I can think of except Wybron's The Scroller) use a Central PSU controlling 4-24 heads. DMX goes in/thru that, and the scrollers are connected to the PSU via 4pin XLR "RAM" cables. Two of the pins carry DMX (or proprietary data); the other two carry power (24VDC). I believe some PSU s even allow one to mix scrollers and I-Cues/rotators/DMX irises. Either in a single chain or on separate outputs.

[danTt]

I was about to write a nice response about 16b vs 8b and scroller stuff, then I went to look up the pan and tilt ranges on an i-cue and realized rosco already has a good answer. I'd suggest reading I-Cue Intelligent Mirror - rosco.com

In general with 16b vs 8b, think of it this way:
The DMX standard allocates 8bits of data to each channel, in binary this is 2^8 or 256 possible values (0-255).
With moving lights that have 540° of pan and 270° of tilt, this means that for each "step" the dmx takes between 0 and 255, the unit will tilt a little more than 1° or pan almost 2°'s. With a throw of 30-40 feet, this because noticble and jerky. The solution was to take a second dmx channel, and for each of the 255 initial steps, add 255 more steps on the second channel. This ends up giving you 2^16, or 65536 possible values for the item. Much finer movement.

GrandMA consoles have taken it a step further, and allow you to have 24bit channels as well. For almost all uses this is a bit absurd, as it's rare to need 16777216 degrees of control, but I'm sure it will become useful as time goes on.

[mwb19]

What make and model of scroller? Most (all I can think of except Wybron's The Scroller) use a Central PSU controlling 4-24 heads. DMX goes in/thru that, and the scrollers are connected to the PSU via 4pin XLR "RAM" cables. Two of the pins carry DMX (or proprietary data); the other two carry power (24VDC). I believe some PSU s even allow one to mix scrollers and I-Cues/rotators/DMX irises. Either in a single chain or on separate outputs.

If I remember correctly, they're Apollo Smart Color PRO 7.25" scrollers. I believe our PSU is an Apollo Smart Power 200W. Their website confirms that the PSU is compatible with both I-Cues and scrollers, but we were having problems with a specific ordering of the devices - when we chained two scrollers, then an I-Cue, then two more scrollers, the last two scrollers didn't work. Everything works if the I-Cue is chained after all of the scrollers. It's pretty easy to avoid the problem with some extra wires, but I was wondering whether it's a known issue.

In general with 16b vs 8b, think of it this way:
The DMX standard allocates 8bits of data to each channel, in binary this is 2^8 or 256 possible values (0-255).
With moving lights that have 540° of pan and 270° of tilt, this means that for each "step" the dmx takes between 0 and 255, the unit will tilt a little more than 1° or pan almost 2°'s. With a throw of 30-40 feet, this because noticble and jerky. The solution was to take a second dmx channel, and for each of the 255 initial steps, add 255 more steps on the second channel. This ends up giving you 2^16, or 65536 possible values for the item. Much finer movement.

Thanks for the link and the explanation. When I was playing around with it today it seemed pretty smooth, but I'll have to see what it looks like on slower movements. One of them will be hung far back in the theater, so I may opt for 16-bit on that one.

[danTt]

If you are not running a return line back to the psu, you need to. Theres a lot of power drop off in the smartcolor scrollers and those power supplies, and depending on which psu you have, you might be overloading it.