If you are looking for something simple that you can use yourself, you might check out
ETC Nomad.
Done that. I can see it has a good reputation, so I will look at it again after the show I am doing now wraps (in about a week). My first glimpse was not encouraging, as I found it incomprehensible, but one of our colleagues here told me that it copies the company's hardware, and I can see the advantage to that. Certainly worth a more in-depth review.
Unless you think you really can re-invent the wheel better than the people who are already making computer lighting controllers (or you just want the challenge), why do it?
I am a computer
programmer. We
always think we can re-invent the wheel better
.
More seriously, I can see some contexts in which features that aren't obviously desirable become important. For example, having worked closely with the cast and crew on a middle-school show, I could see that the Innovator 24/48 was a fine choice for the theater we had, but also that it was actually an impediment to producing the best show that was within the reach of our sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade children. Why? Because it was just too complex for them to learn to use
in that context. (To be specific: no one on school staff knew how it worked, the rehearsals put performance at the top priority--over things like technical issues--and there was no non-rehearsal time available in the theater to learn how the
console worked. This means that most shows have been done entirely with the kids shoving the
channel faders around, not using any recorded cues. The powerful Innovator is reduced to being nothing more than a set of 48 dimmers,
in that context. Now that computers can cheaply be made to emit DMX-512 commands, I can see a reason to write a lighting program accessible to middle school students.)
There are a lot of software based controllers out there now, it seems like finding something that meets your requirements shouldn't be hard.
Agreed. But I do like to tinker and will probably write my own at some
point. If it fills a currently empty niche or two, so much the better. I'm still a beginner at all of this, and humility is something all beginners profit by, so I'm taking my time and trying to learn from what's already out there. Just completed our second full rehearsal of "My Fair Lady" with a local community company. We're actually renting a middle school's theater, and it has the same model Innovator 24/48 I used before. But, like the first one, it's crumbling a
bit (some bump keys don't work; diskette drive is broken; faders are scratchy), so I took a leap and downloaded DMXControl (using it with an
Enttec Open
DMX USB). The program is cranky and has a lot of GUI issues (among those being that the "English" version of this
German software is not a complete translation: to dim a light to a soft
level, for example, one sets its "helligkeit" to about 15%). But, it flawlessly memorized and sent all the of cues I defined. At yesterday's rehearsal, I never even turned the Innovator on. The cast members are mostly experienced performers, but none of them had ever seen a laptop replace a lighting
console before. I heard, "that's amazing" more than once. (As a
safety net, I would have liked to pass the DMXControl traffic through the Innovator, as it has a DMX-in port, which is supposed to replicate its commands on the Innovator's DMX-B output port. I simply could not get that to work, so I dumped the Innovator entirely and plugged my laptop directly into the DMX-in port on the wall. Smooth sailing after that.)
Alas, DMXControl may be free, but it's not open-source code. Their Web site explains, in somewhat snide terms, that they think open-source code becomes messy and unmaintainable. I guess that means Linux will never go anywhere. (Or, being a
programmer myself, maybe it means there is something about their code they don't want anyone else to see.) So, again, I may feel the need to write my own. Certainly
not feeling the need to search further, for now, for a dedicated
console. The software option, especially if hardware like wings and what-not can be added, is looking very good to me.
We have our first actual performance tonight. Wish me luck, eh?