Control/Dimming - Motorised faders for a scratch build lighting control system

[elite1trek]

It really intrigues me that people have such an affinity for the physical faders and the visual feedback from them (I think the latter is why most like them). I use a couple physical faders for submasters, but never individual channel control. Keyboard input is so much faster; typing "1-25@50" is so much easier than running up 25 faders and finding the level you want them at. So, save the encoders for your ML attributes and use the keypad!

Sometimes when you have never used anything other than a two scene preset, you just dont trust GO boards.

It is one thing to tinker in your garage, but what happens when the system just up and dies in the middle of a show and there is no support number you can call?

When that happens, your screwed. I have had amps just die during shows. It sucks, and at least I could call Crown.

[David Ashton]

For colour mixing on a cyc or balancing key, fill and backlight on a special area, you can move and mix with faders while watching the area.That is why I love faders, of course this is mainly when I'm doing my own show, if there's a designer sitting there calling states a keypad is fine.

[derekleffew]

Originally Posted by allthingstheatre

For colour mixing on a cyc or balancing key, fill and backlight on a special area, you can move and mix with faders while watching the area.That is why I love faders, of course this is mainly when I'm doing my own show, ...

That's fine for recording the initial cue, but what happens if during the next rehearsal you decide you want/need to edit the scene? There's no console I know of that has motorized faders for all individual channel handles.

[Footer]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

That's fine for recording the initial cue, but what happens if during the next rehearsal you decide you want/need to edit the scene? There's no console I know of that has motorized faders for all individual channel handles.

That would be cool, but I don't think it would be that useful. It would not suprise me if AVO made something that did this, but I don't want to see 96 channel 2 scene preset monster boards come back.

Just my opinion, flying faders are great for audio, but I don't think that lighting out of the club environment needs them.

[ojno]

FYI our current board is this: Elara (Sorry that's not the manufacturer's website, but it's discontinued, and that page contains a picture, basic feature list, and the manual anyway.) It's a fairly old 12/24 two preset almost-but-not-quite-memory board - it does scene presets and sequences, but nothing more like a cue stack or anything.

Thanks icewolf08, a plain keypad would probably be a much more sensible idea for most of our purposes, however the reason for wanting to do the kludgy faders is exactly what you said, allthingstheatre - although design itself isn't my/varnis' primary responsibility, we don't have a professional designer and there *will* be "a bit more blue, a bit less orange, ok" changes during rehearsals etc, especially since we have some video-projected backdrops.

I think the only rational option at this point is to rig together a keypad using a cheap external numpad, and then get the Behringer... we'll have to look into some fundraising.

Thanks again all
- ojno

EDIT: We have found someone who has a Zero88 Fat Frog that we can borrow for the couple of weeks necessary for our show, so that makes a great backup option for us. I think we'll still develop the system we described, though, looking to the future; but at least now it doesn't have to be ready any time soon at all.

[paradoxism]

I can't actually see an answer to the original question - does anyone know of a supplier for motorised faders at a reasonable cost?

I have a large range of desks (including Fat Frogs, ETC SmartFade and MagicQ with a PC wing) at my disposal that I can use, but as an electronics graduate I have often built small desks and PC control software either for very specific requirements of shows (mostly animatronic props!) or to try and make my job easier.

I have often thought that motorised faders would be useful on a PC wing - having the ability to position the mouse over a group of faders on screen or example and the levels appear on a small set of 6 faders on a wing, then push them to their new levels and it is automatically saved as an edit.

And as for having faders in the first place, they are great for live theatre work - even if only as submasters. Typing 1 thru 24 @ 50 may give you the final output you want but not the control to get there in a nice way!