Basic Effects on the Innovator 24/48

[Scenemaster60]

As to the yoking situation:

If the pipe is properly rigged it should not actually rotate when you yoke instruments out. It will tip a bit, so you have to take that into consideration when focusing. If the pipe actually starts to rotate, there are solutions for that issue, namely various stagehand "pipe stiffening" methods.

 

[Les]

Dear Lord, you're not kidding! I did some Googling on that and found that the cost of a comparable set of faders and buttons to what's on the Innovator would, just as you say, cost more than the Innovator did itself. That's insane! Where do theaters get the dough for all this stuff? Dramatic arts people are known for living in poverty. I guess now I know why: all the money went to buy a lighting desk. There's got to be a cheaper way.

When I was a toddler, my parents hung a thing called a "busy box" in my crib. It was just a set of knobs and wheels and what-nots that made noise and changed colors (you know, kind of like what I'm doing in that theater now ). Seems like somewhere in the world, there ought to be a USB busy box, one with purely generic controls that could be assigned to whatever a programmer assigned them to. I could handle that much coding, and (I think) make a pretty good DMX 512 device. Somewhere in all this, there may be a product idea, if we pursue it far enough...

Insane, isn't it? My theory is that a lot of these playback wings are designed to go with particular software (say, Chamsys MagicQ for example). MagicQ software is free in most cases, so this is how they make their money.

In my day job, I work with special effects, including lasers. One piece of software we use is called Beyond (which costs several thousand dollars). The benefit of it is that it can be controlled by a MIDI controller such as this one for just a few hundred bucks. It's a shame that there aren't more software lighting consoles like that, but I guess they do have to make their money somewhere, and you'll either be spending it on the software or the control surface - never neither.

 

[JimOC_1]

If you have any lighting side arms, they can be used to prevent pipe rotation. Clamp them next to the chain supporting your pipe. Point the bar up the chain, and attach it with something dependable (like hose clamps). Extra C clamps from unused instruments can also be pressed into service with the correct size of carriage bolt.
You will get some cantilever action working against you, bringing the lights back toward the curtain. Can you use the above suggestions to hold the two pipes far enough apart and dead drop the lights?
Glad to see you are attentive to safety! Loudoun has larger school budgets than most around here. Can you start lobbying for a safety evaluation by a theater consultant (especially if the county has one, or has one they like)? Then you would have documentation as you try to get $$$ and long term progress within the system.

 

[Stevens R. Miller]

If you have any lighting side arms, they can be used to prevent pipe rotation. Clamp them next to the chain supporting your pipe. Point the bar up the chain, and attach it with something dependable (like hose clamps). Extra C clamps from unused instruments can also be pressed into service with the correct size of carriage bolt.
You will get some cantilever action working against you, bringing the lights back toward the curtain.

That sounds like a very practical idea. I believe there already is a short length of pipe or other inflexible structural element at each end of the pipe that points up, and the chains are connected to those. If that's not enough, extending it up the chain with your technique might do it.

Can you use the above suggestions to hold the two pipes far enough apart and dead drop the lights?

I'll have a look on Monday and see if this is an option, but the number one electric is so close to the curtain that I don't think there would be room enough to do this. Yoking does sound promising, especially if we can cope with the moment arm created by holding the instruments at right angles with your plan.

Glad to see you are attentive to safety! Loudoun has larger school budgets than most around here. Can you start lobbying for a safety evaluation by a theater consultant (especially if the county has one, or has one they like)?

I would think a fire marshal would be the right person to document this problem.

Then you would have documentation as you try to get $$$ and long term progress within the system.

Heh, that would be mildly ironic. I was an elected county supervisor here, from 2008 to 2012. I did try to provide a healthy school budget, but, even though I voted to raise taxes to do it (infuriating fiscal conservatives), I never voted to give the schools as much money as they asked for (infuriating a lot of liberals). Me lobbying for school money at this point would confuse a lot of people.

On the other hand, this doesn't look like a terribly expensive problem to solve, and parents are often willing to donate to the schools for the sake of things just like this. There may still be a way...