It's a bright new day, so I went and looked at the
manual. novel concept, eh?
I'd be curious to know why
ETC chose to do certain things:
-) whether you patch in
channel or
address mode, it's still the same info but with different syntax. this would seem to add potential for more confusion; with a target audience of beginners, this (confusing) option doesn't make sense
-) "standard format" for addressing into the 2nd and higher
universe -- believe me, it's only "standard" in the world of
ETC to bother board ops with numbers higher than 512. it's much easier for me to comprehend using the port/offset
system. I normally let the
console do my math for me; after I patch the
console I then go
address my movers and dimmers. it simply doesn't make sense to have to translate 513 (and it gets less intuitive the further into the higher universes) into univ 2
address 1. using port/offset, the number in the
console is the same number the
fixture gets addressed to.
-) in the rest of the world, a
channel is simply a control
channel or the equivalent of 1
dmx address. a
fixture is a number of channels/
dmx addresses that the
console groups together and maps to controls such as encoders. in the
ETC world, a
channel can be a
dimmer or an entire moving light. in the wider world, most consoles have a way to assign a unique
fixture or
channel number to a device to
ease data entry. it seems
ETC has bypassed this step by calling everything a
channel.
When Fred says he likes to start his channels a 1001 for movers, the
console has to have more than 1000 channels to do so. yours only has 250, so it would be impossible on your
console in any case. on a higher
level console, one could make the unique
fixture number anything, since it's different than the control
channel. in that case, on a hog or grandMa for instance, one could easily start their movers in the 1000 range.
even then, making such a long
fixture number would really slow down keypad entry. it wouldn't make a
bit of difference if one used palettess.
peace,
Tim O