Midi Show Control

[djred2000]

I volunteer at a local community theatre as the lighting designer and board op. I am working on our next production and am looking into controlling our light board and DMX software simultaneously. Our board is a Leviton Innovator 24/48 and it is used to control all the conventional lights. I have recently added some RGB lights and scanners. The board does not handle these lights well so I am using a Windows machine running PC Dimmer with an Enttec DMX Pro. I came up with a free way of controlling both devices using Midi Show Control.

I use CTRLR to generate a midi control change message. That gets routed to PC Dimmer using Midi Yoke to trigger the next cue. It also gets routed to Midi OX which converts the control change message to Midi Show Control (SysEx) and outputs that to the light board using a USB to midi dongle. Each time I press the button in CTRLR it triggers the next cue in PC Dimmer and in the light board. If I need the conventional lights to change only and not the RGB lights, I create a blank or dummy cue in the software.

Has anyone else come up with something similar? Unfortunately, we are PC only. I would love to use Qlab.

 

[JChenault]

Not exactly, but similar. in The early days of Plexus ( before it did conventionals ) I used an express for the conventionals and Plexus for the movers. We had the express output midi show control, and plexus responded by executing the cue.

 

[dbaxter]

At Blackfriars Theatre, a profesional 126 seat venue, we use the combination of Cue Player Lighting and Cue Player Premuim to control sound, lighting (conventional and LED), and projections with one operator on two computers. At The Ziegfeld Theater they do the same, but with just one PC computer.
The communications between programs is via either local network or Windows messaging, not introducing the translation to and from MIDI.
<disclaimer>I am the Cue Player support person<>