how do you control the strobe on a SS-CYC-100 Spectra-Cyc from altman?

[zailabouni]

My facility reccently added 3 Altman SS-CYC-100 Spectra-Cyc lighting fixtures and 3 Apollo LED pars as well. I love the apollo fixtures but am having an issue with the Altman Cyc lights. On the Apollo pars I was able to set the fixtures in 4 channel mode: 1-3 are the RGB, and ch. 4 is master and strobe control. I love this feature. However, with the Alman Cyc lights, from reading the manual and experimenting All I seem to be able to do is set them up in 5 channel, RBGA and master or varients thereof. When not hooked to a dmx control, they do have a strobe feature. But according to the manual, I can't find a way to use the strobe feature with a board. Is there anyway to use the fixture as a strobe without disconeccting the dmx and reseting the fixture as a strobe? The strobe feature is utterly useless to me that way. Is there any creative way to getting around this design flaw using my ETC Express 24/48 board? Other than pushing the bump buttons really quickly I can't think of way. Is there a way to program a strobe effect with my board? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[mozsey]

Looks like the cyc lights in the house I'm at. As far as I remember, they don't strobe at all.

 

[bcronenwett]

http://www.altmanlighting.com/altma...ctra Cyc/ss-cyc-100-manual-rev-2010-11-04.pdf

Hope this helps!

 

[jglodeklights]

Best way to use them for strobing is to build an effect cue. I usually use two steps, one with high level full, the other at 00. Dwell times of .4 or .5, in and out times of 0. Then adjust the rate of the effect to taste. I find that at a calculated 20 cycles per second or so they, in conjunction with my DMX architecture, start to lose synchronization and will eventually fall to a random flash here or there and then nothing.

You may also place this effect onto a sub.

 

[Champion]

On board addresses 801-899 are various built in strobe effects.

 

[jglodeklights]

On board addresses 801-899 are various built in strobe effects.

Champion, the question was specifically on how to control the strobe feature from the OP's console. If they had a new console, maybe it could be possible to use RDM in order to set that address, although I don't know if this is possible in the RDM format as 800 is well above the 512 addresses in a universe. However, with the Express 24/48, RDM isn't supported. An effect as I described or a loop of follow cues linked back are the best options. Theoretically, you could use an RDM controller and an RDM compatible splitter like the Enttec RDS4 to at some point readdress (again, if addressing to 801 or above is possible via RDM) to the strobe setting, but this would require somewhat expensive equipment and would likely still not accomplish the desired result due to delay in the addressing change and not rapidly being able to undo it.