Advice for lighting console $200 range

jake1

jake1

Member
Hey guys
I've spent the last few days solid on this forum. Seems like a really great place.

We are adding stage lighting to our church sanctuary and I was nominated to research and buy everything. I think I've found all the fixtures we need, now I need to make sure I get the board that will control it all the way we want. Here are the fixtures we will be adding to the system that we will control with DMX:

-3 trusses of par 64 cans (4 per truss). Each truss will have a dedicated dimmer pack. This is for the preacher wash, and will all be non-gelled. So I hope to only use 3 channels (?)

-14 total par 64 LED lights (Venue LED Par 64). They are 6 channel fixtures. I do not need individual control over all of them. They will be grouped in different areas on the stage.

-Possibly a couple of other LED fixtures

I need to buy a board for $200 or less. I am open to the idea of buying a USB>DMX (dongle?) in order to run from a laptop, but the software and converter needs to be close to $200

I'm a newb with a technical mind. I'm learning by the minute. Please forgive me if I should have found my options by now. I've read many threads on what board to buy etc. Hopefully you can list the options that come to mind.

Thanks so much for any advice or input you can offer. I'll reply to questions as promptly as possible.
 
Chamsys MagiQ & and an Enttec USB/DMX dongle will run you ~$150 total (it's a really, really nice piece of hardware, so if you don't need indestructability you could get their "Open" flavour for $50, never tried it though. EDIT: Wow, Chamsys has a crippled-but-still-acceptable one for $16). I've never used the software, but it seems popular in this area, and you can't beat the $0 pricetag.
 
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MagicQ would work.
If you know very little it would take some work, but I'm sure that you could get help on here.

I was using it last night and I use the HogPC and It would be near impossible without the wings.

You'd want this along with the DMX>USB interface,

ChamSys :: MagicQ PC Wing

Now that I look at it, it's a wonderful thing to have, but it's way out of your budget. So if you wanted to possibly work up to it you could. But I have a feeling you will be able to do what you want to do with just the software.

http://www.chamsys.co.uk/download

Go and download it and take a look at it. Manuals were made for people like you, you're trying to learn about it so defiantly read it.
It's an adobe file to the right of the linked page.

And this interface should be perfect for you
http://www.chamsys.co.uk/magicdmx

The basic only works for 5 hours contineously though. You would have to unplug, replug and restart the software.

16$s is a good deal though. I'm not even sure if you would ever use it for more then 5 hours. Programing wouldn't take that long. Church runs for an hour and if you had a drama production or concert, at most 3.

Lemme know if you need help with anything else.
 
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This definitely sounds like MagicQ would be a good candidate. Definitely get the Enttec USB DMX Pro. The Open and the inexpensive ones from Chamsys are a little iffy and the Pro is still within your budget. If you can get a few hundred more, a touch screen (Elo or similar, not optical) is a great addition.
 
For fun and perspective, I'm going to present the "other" point of view on this based on a hardware approach. It sounds like you are wanting to put up a few static scenes, and may not always have a board operator involved. If this is the case, firing up a PC and loading up a software based program may be problematic.

I work at a church and know that I get the occasional phone call at night that some event is happening and someone needs to get some lights on. I could not imagine talking someone through booting up a computer and running that software over the phone with five minutes available!

For this application, a simple and cheap DMX based board, such as a stage setter 8 ELATION Stage Setter 8ch. Lighting Console or slightly bigger brother, the 16, may be the answer. If you need a broader range of channels, a Chauvet OBEY 70 Universal DMX-512 controller may be the answer. It is designed as a super cheap moving light controller although it will control conventional lights on a DMX dimmer. You would be able to program in eight preset static scenes, covering 384 channels, and be able to get an untrained person to have the right lights on with two or three button pushes. The actual capacity is 240 scenes, but that would require a few more button pushes.
 
JD said:
For fun and perspective, I'm going to present the "other" point of view on this based on a hardware approach. It sounds like you are wanting to put up a few static scenes, and may not always have a board operator involved. If this is the case, firing up a PC and loading up a software based program may be problematic.

I work at a church and know that I get the occasional phone call at night that some event is happening and someone needs to get some lights on. I could not imagine talking someone through booting up a computer and running that software over the phone with five minutes available!

For this application, a simple and cheap DMX based board, such as a stage setter 8 ELATION Stage Setter 8ch. Lighting Console or slightly bigger brother, the 16, may be the answer. If you need a broader range of channels, a Chauvet OBEY 70 Universal DMX-512 controller may be the answer. It is designed as a super cheap moving light controller although it will control conventional lights on a DMX dimmer. You would be able to program in eight preset static scenes, covering 384 channels, and be able to get an untrained person to have the right lights on with two or three button pushes. The actual capacity is 240 scenes, but that would require a few more button pushes.
Click to expand...

I second MagicQ. Most people have used a computer before, and with a touch screen the instructions would literally be, turn on the computer, double click MagicQ, bring up fader 1. Plus there is much more to the console if you want it.

The Obey series is a nightmare for me, I can't imagine teaching someone to use it (especially since most people have never used a light board before).

As always YMMV

Mike
 
A touch screen would be a good option to look at later, but it would put you over budget right now.

I'd stick with the software/dongle if you are looking to expand your rig later. If you're not worried about that, then one of the smaller boards will do fine. I keep a Chauvet Obey 8 around just to be able to bring up smaller DMX fixtures real quick for testing. It's not a bad option for a starter.
 
And for about $20 more, you can have a case for it too!

proxy.php
 
Ok guys, thank you much for the replies so far. Your advice is utmost helpful. I downloaded the MagicQ software and began to play with it. It looks to be very complicated. I have operated a DMX Operator board by Elation I believe. I am now beginning to lean towards getting a simple board instead of software because of the complexity of it (no budget for touch screen at the moment). After all, we want the training to be simple as possible since we will likely have more than one or two of the same people always operating.

I am beginning to see that the boards within my $200 reach are limited in the amount of fixtures you can program (I've been seeing 12 fixtures regularly).

Can you recommend a board that will work for me? I'm controlling 15 LED fixtures and 12 par cans. I would like to be able to allow several of my LED fixtures their own assigned fixture on the board, if possible, so as to avoid slaving several together and thereby having less control/freedom
 
I don't know about the price, but the Elation Stage Setter boards are insanely simple to use. You'd have to get one of the larger ones, to accommodate all the fixtures you want. And, the Elation aren't bad quality.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Hey, Jake, and welcome to Control Booth! I am originally from Jonesboro, AR, so nice to see a fellow Arkansan around. I recently started learning MagicQ myself and although there is a steep learning curve, I think it would be well suited in this instance. Once you get some scenes programmed it will be simply playing back cues on the faders. And there are plenty of people around here using it so if you get stuck we're here to help you out.
 
jake1 said:
I am beginning to see that the boards within my $200 reach are limited in the amount of fixtures you can program (I've been seeing 12 fixtures regularly).
Click to expand...

Remember not to confuse board channels with fixtures. You could run a near infinite number of fixtures off of one channel if all the dimmer addresses were the same! To make matters worse, companies like Chauvet somewhat misuse the term "fixture." In the case of the Obey 70, they say "12 fixtures of 32 channels", but there is nothing to stop you from programming 384 independent dimmers and fixtures off of the board! The reason they group them like that is because it is designed for moving fixtures, which take up a lot of channels. Think of them more as groups of channels. You would hit the "fixture 1" button and set all the lights in the first group of 32, then hit the "fixture 2" button and program channels 33 to 64 and so on. Once you got the scene right, you would memorize it on the first "scene" button.

So, several days later you want to explain to someone how to bring that scene up:
To call it up, you would turn the board on, make sure "blackout" was off, and push the scene 1 button.

All the programming for all 384 channels would come up. You could also set up seven other "one touch" scenes for different usages. The board actually has 240 individual scenes, each allowing independent control of 384 channels.

Bottom line, the more money you pay, the easier the board will be to run as a rule of thumb. Still, if you have a hard cap at $200, then this would give you the biggest bang for the buck if you wanted a physical board, even though it is designed as a "moving light" board.
 
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Adding to JD's comments, this is pretty much a similar concept to ETC SmartFade boards, which start at ~$1000, while they are in single scene mode. Unlike less expensive boards, though, SmartFades have an actual soft patch. However, even with the Obey 70 one has the ability to, on each "fixture" page, re-assign the position of faders. Essentially, this is a form of soft patching. With thought out addressing and thought out fader assigning, one could realistically create a layout that is quite easy to use. Fixture 1 could simply correspond to your dimmers, which would need to have addresses 1 to 12. Label this fixture, with tape, in a way that tell you this is your dimmers. Repeat with the LED/intelligent fixtures. For something where you don't need much quick changing ability, you would be able to control quite a bit from just a few fader pages.
 
Yea, really a question of two needs:

How much can you work out in advance?
or
How much do you have to plan on "the fly" ?

If you can plan out up to 240 scenes in advance while things are quiet, then the $200 board will work.

If you need to be changing arrangements and programing during the show, then you are stuck above $1000, which is still cheaper the the therapy will cost you for Post-Traumatic-Stress-Syndrome should you try to do it on the $200 board!

There are some tricks to using a "mover" board to run conventionals, but nothing you can't work out ahead of time. Plus, you can leave lots of "do everything" scenes set up for when you are away and an untrained (or should I say, "lightly trained") person needs to run things.
 
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Wow, just reading the explanations of those $200 DJ boards makes my head hurt. Those seem far more complicated than MagicQ would ever be. And without a monitor how do you ever get anything done?

I sell the Obey series and Smartfades, but I tell my clients I really can't support them because I have no idea how they work and thinking about it makes my head hurt. Just too complicated.

Give me my GrandMA or my Whole Hog.
 
Esoteric said:
Wow, just reading the explanations of those $200 DJ boards makes my head hurt. Those seem far more complicated than MagicQ would ever be. And without a monitor how do you ever get anything done?

I sell the Obey series and Smartfades, but I tell my clients I really can't support them because I have no idea how they work and thinking about it makes my head hurt. Just too complicated.

Give me my GrandMA or my Whole Hog.
Click to expand...

I don't use cue stacks. Busk everything.

Don't you think learning about the SmartFades or the Obey series would be better then just saying, "I don't support them because I don't know how to use it without a monitor.

That seems like a totally acceptable solution. ;)
 
So I've been reading lighting console manuals and LED fixture manuals all day in order to prep for my purchase :)

I ordered the Chauvet Obey 70 board. I think I have a good grasp of how to use it. I've been drawing diagrams of my stage design as well as DMX cable runs, etc, which fixtures will be addressed where and so on, so that when I receive everything it should be pretty much plug and play, with a bit of experimenting. I have some experience with the DMX Operator board and this one seems similar and should suit our needs. The beauty of our situation is that we will be relying heavily on scenes, and I will have the liberty to put them in ahead of time. The controller will change scenes at will.

I think we will eventually be upgrading to run from a computer and like someone suggested a touchscreen. Right now, I think I made best decision for where we are at.

I would love to learn MagicQ and make this upgrade ASAP. BUT HOW DOES ONE GET STARTED??
 
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