For my school's theatre production, which may be using moving heads and/or scanners. A friend and i are developing a computer control system, which, when finished, will be open source - yay - and hopefully awesome.
One apparently insoluble problem, however, is a method of manual control. We do have an existing lighting board, but it is a) only 24 channels in wide (no-crossfading) mode when we will be needing to control > 50 channels - not too bad since if we have the control system up and running, we can assign groups of channels to it and so forth I guess - and b) is a raw DMX board with plain faders, meaning that if we switch into manual mode at any time the channels won't be at their appropriate current value.
What I am looking for, therefore, is some kind of motorised fader component which can be purchased on our quarter-shoestring budget. We have a design for a completely DIY one using a rack and pinion gear (in bright colours, hooray) from Acme Whatever Educational Supplies (Rapid Online I believe it was) which would work out at about £3 - £4 + making-time per fader.
Does anyone have any ideas where I could get premade ones for only slightly more than that (£6/£7 each maybe)? I've seen websites which will, but they are of the order-multiples-of-10,000-from-Thailand variety. Any relevant anecdotes would also be welcome. (In case you haven't guessed from the spellings and currency, I'm in the UK.)
Thanks,
Doug/Jono
One apparently insoluble problem, however, is a method of manual control. We do have an existing lighting board, but it is a) only 24 channels in wide (no-crossfading) mode when we will be needing to control > 50 channels - not too bad since if we have the control system up and running, we can assign groups of channels to it and so forth I guess - and b) is a raw DMX board with plain faders, meaning that if we switch into manual mode at any time the channels won't be at their appropriate current value.
What I am looking for, therefore, is some kind of motorised fader component which can be purchased on our quarter-shoestring budget. We have a design for a completely DIY one using a rack and pinion gear (in bright colours, hooray) from Acme Whatever Educational Supplies (Rapid Online I believe it was) which would work out at about £3 - £4 + making-time per fader.
Does anyone have any ideas where I could get premade ones for only slightly more than that (£6/£7 each maybe)? I've seen websites which will, but they are of the order-multiples-of-10,000-from-Thailand variety. Any relevant anecdotes would also be welcome. (In case you haven't guessed from the spellings and currency, I'm in the UK.)
Thanks,
Doug/Jono