CMY studio spot

[juanboquin]

Hey guys(and girls) i have a question. I just bought 2 high end studio spots cmy's for my school's auditorium. We are running the horizon program off of a PC to our dimmer rack. I was wondering if you guys would suggest bypassing our dimmer rack and running the lights out of a regular plug. Or would it make more sense to run it through the rack and deal with it? The original plan was to get a Jands Hog 500 board to run the studio spots and keep the rest of our lighting the same. We just recently realized that the Hog 500 has 2 DMX outs and we can run the spots as one out and the old lights as a separate out.

So now the plan is this. Hook up the Hog 500 next to our PC running Horizon basic...Run the lights to where we want them to be...Eliminate the PC and run those lights as DMX out 2(eliminating a really expensive crossover)....and run the studio spots out of DMX out 1.

Plz give me loads of feedback on this one. I have never tried anything this risky in my 3 years of lighting work in theater.

 

[Grog12]

You're talking two different things here:

1. Power
2. DMX (Signal)


Question 1, the CMY's should not be run through your rack. They should recieve their power from a clean source not chopped up by the dimmers (even set to non-dim).

Question 2, Depending on how many dimmers you have you should have no issue running the dimmers and the CMY's on the same DMX Universe from your Horizon.

 

[kicknargel]

To expand on what Grog said:

We need to make sure when we're talking about power and when we're talking about control (DMX). For your conventionals, Your Horizon sends control signal to your dimmers. The dimmers then send dimmed power to the individual lighting circuits. For a moving light, the units plug into normal hot power (a normal wall outlet--completely separate of the dimming system). They each receive control signal from the console that tells them to turn on and off, makes them move and everything they do.

Control signal can daisy-chain, so you can plug DMX cable into the DMX out (or thru) on your dimmers and run it to the movers. If your console has two DMX universes (as you describe) you can also put the conventionals on one and the movers on another. The control to the movers will daisy-chain one to the next.

As for the consoles, IMHO, you may be better off upgrading your Horizon to Gold (if it's still available--Horizon now make a system called Marquee and may not sell the Horizon upgrade anymore) and running your conventionals and movers from that. I use it and think it's pretty good interface. The Hog 500 is good for running movers but very clunky for conventionals. If you're doing a pre-cued play/musical type situation I wouldn't want to do it on the Hog. Some people run one board for conventionals and another for movers, but it takes some work to integrate them into one show.

 

[Lotos]

As for the consoles, IMHO, you may be better off upgrading your Horizon to Gold (if it's still available--Horizon now make a system called Marquee and may not sell the Horizon upgrade anymore) and running your conventionals and movers from that. I use it and think it's pretty good interface.

I was speaking with someone fron Horizon Controls the other day regarding a few unrelated things. The topic of the Horizon interface did come up.

From my understanding they are still selling Horizon itself on request, usually to smaller schools and churches that are unwilling or unable to shell out the funds usually required for full console.

I can't speak to exactly where this stands on the upgrade front, however, but at the very least I'm sure someone there will be willing to discuss the options with you.


@juanboquin

You may also want to look into the Marquee product itself... Or possibly a Strand Classic Pallette... Both run essentially an upgraded version of the Horizon software you are familiar with and provide a control surface as well as multiple DMX Outputs.

This would provide you with the functionality you are looking for from the Hog, while maintaining the interface you are familiar with.