our
system is some what the same as footers. We have a four
channel wall mount
dimmer from Lightronics. It has four memories per
dimmer so that there are 16 memories that can be activated by
switch closure. We have four rows of
house lights. If you enter from a hallway near the
stage, there is a
button, that will turn on just the row nearest the
stage apron at 70 percent. there is a rehearsal
button back
stage that turns on the first two rows at full. The is a
button in the ticket booth that brings everything to full, so that patrons can see where their seats are located as they
purchase tickets during the day. there is a four
channel Garage door opener attached so that during tech rehearsal, various combinations occur sitting at the light board in the
house.
button one is set to activate a
relay in latch mode, the opens the
DMX connection.
button two turns on the first two rows,
button three is just the third row that is directly over the lighting board at tech, and that goes to 50 percent.
button four is all rows to full. When
DMX is present all of the memories are overwritten. The one exception is the emergency input, which is from a
relay closure from the fire alarm. When that is activated, everything goes to full instantaneously. It must be activated a second time to get it to go off. each memory can be programmed to
fade up and
fade down times.
during a show, there is a
button in the booth, that is pressed to bring the
house to full. Only with
DMX from the board present it is held in memory but not seen. The board is in control. When the board is shut down, the memory takes over and the
house is at full, so that the audience is not left in the dark.
This is Lightronics architectural model. I got it on ebay for $220. The new on street price is approx $1200. Another $30 for the garage door opener
system. It took about 5 hours to install next to the
breaker panel for the
house lights.
Now of course there has to be a down side. to all of this
system. first it only comes with the
DMX address for channels 1
thru 4. To have an off, for the lights, one of the memories for each
dimmer has to be programmed at "0". There is no keypad for programming the memories, it has to be done with three switches in a sequential order. And each memory has to have dim up and dim down and well as
level programmed. It can be quite frustrating. I contacted Lightronics and had them burn me a new PROM with channels 201
thru 204, as those are the channels that we had been using for years with a different
system.
I paid less for the entire
system than I would for a controller from Fleenor. The
system has been in now for 8 years, and not a glitch.
