I have two Smartfades here, a 1248 and a 2496.
The 1248 was originally to go with the Congo Jr. in the
theatre. It has a mode to pass
DMX through, or playback recorded presets, so they installed it in-line with the
DMX out with the idea that it could be used as either a backup, or a quick solution to bring up lights without starting up the Jr. It worked great in that purpose, but those pushing the "Now I can put less people with less training in the booth!" lead to it being removed when they realized how well that worked.
Now it
floats around, and I use it for our
arena (~15 channels of
LED house lights and a SmartBar). I've re-patched the channels to fit the non-sequential way they retrofitted the LEDs, and it works well.
The 2496 runs in our recital
hall. The room only has 48 dimmers (including
house lights) so it's technically overkill. But it's easy enough that I can let the music department turn on lights themselves without worrying that they're going to break or erase anything.
SmartFade has a target market. That market
doesn't want the standard
ETC key
layout. They
don't need multiple universes. The problem comes up when all people see is the price tag and brand, and decide that this is
ETC's budget
console. It's not.
I've seen the same thing with the Cognito in person. One of the local dealers got a demo
unit in when they first came out, and was trying to convince me that it would go well in our
theatre (replacing our Congo Jr.). I knew enough to tell him that it wouldn't. But there's a small concert
venue across town that has one and
loves it. Again, you need to pay attention to the target market for a
console when shopping around.
@BillConnerASTC: You can hook it to a laptop to get a little fancier for programming, but I've always seen that more as a tool for install/programming rather than during a show. It still seems to me that if you need/want a
screen, you're probably better off looking at another board. I've never seen it with the ML though, so I could be way off
base there.