As ruinexplorer said, on the
Express, you need to program either a sequence of follow cues or a subroutine to create motion effects like circles.
Please elaborate as I have an
Express 24/48 to attempt to program two technobeams on.
As made uinclear by other posts in this thread, you can indeed program effects on the
express line of boards. Hit these keystrokes [Blind] [Cue] (what ever
cue number you want to have the
effect be) [Type] [S3 (effect)]. This will allow you to create the
cue as an
effect and give you more flexibility in your
effect. Which you will need because this is a complicated
effect to write.
Make 4 focus points one for each corner then make a step for both lights to hit all 4 corners but make sure pan and tilt is set to different steps. This should take 8 steps in all.
step 1: pan fixtures 1 and 2 to
focus point 1 (SL)
step 2: pan fixtures 1 and 2 to
focus point 2 (somewhere CS)
step 3: pan fixtures 1 and 2 to
focus point 3 (SR)
step 4: pan fixtures 1 and 2 to
focus point 4 (somewhere else CS)
step 5: tilt fixtures 1 and 2 to
focus point 1 (somewhere CS)
step 6: tilt fixtures 1 and 2 to
focus point 2 (US)
and so on.
Then just
play with your timings so that step one and step 5 are immediate (taking you moving lights to the CSL of your circle. Then step 6 fires so that the movers start their trip US before they begin moving across
stage but step 2 begins a little later and finishes as step 6 finishes, and so on. Mess the with timings and you should get something that looks something like a circle (although it technically still won't be one).
And using the
focus point method allows you to modify the circle by only modifying the focus points, just remember that on the
express the focus points take up slots of the groups. So if you have a group 10 and try to make a
focus point 10 it will write over the
focus point.
Just don't forget to save record your
effect cue before navigating away from the
effect page. That is really annoying. Also, this solution will teach you the inherent value of an
effects engine.
Obviously the
macro solution is better, but if this is the route you choose... good luck. It will definitely take some time.
And no, you cannot attach a joystick to an
Express 24/48, it has no inputs. You might beable to export to an
OLE and use one to make the cues offline, much like how you can only label things on the
express using the offline editor, but that won't really help you.