Mixing ETC and Strand

[gafftaper]

It would not surprise me at all in the future if they come out with an encoder side car for that line. It would be a simple USB device. ETC did the same thing with the express line a few years back.

I asked that specific question to the Strand guys at LDI. I was told that there are not going to be any sort of wing panels or other add on attachments available. Which I found really dumb because the software is clearly capable of handling it... why not sell physical upgrades to the system. Maybe they will see the light.

It's also really interesting to note that there is no difference in software between the lowest priced Palette at less than $10k and the highest priced Light Palette at around $35k. All you get for your $25,000 is encoders, a few extra buttons (maybe a lot if you get the VL), a faster processor, and they unlock the software to allow more circuits and attributes. Don't tell me it costs $20,000 for a faster processor and some encoder wheels.

ETC on the other hand took the opposite approach with the $25,000 Congo. They knocked the price down ten grand, shrunk the case but didn't change the functionality... the only difference is a few less banks of buttons and sliders, and there's no room for the handy LCD screens on the console to tell you what you have loaded in those buttons and sliders. Everything else is the same. You still have all the programmable buttons and faders, just less of them. That's really cool because it brings a very powerful system down into the price range of a lot of smaller theaters.

Remember, "EOS Jr." (or whatever they call it) is coming next year. The ETC rep at LDI told me it would have all the functionality of EOS but in a smaller package for around $15,000. That's going to be one killer product.

 

[icewolf08]

It isn't really that interesting that the software on all the new Strand Consoles is the same, it was like that with the 300, 500, and i series consoles. All of those consoles ran essentially the same software. It mean that you could take a show from any console and load it in a different one and as long as you had the same number of channels the console could handle it.

However, we are fund raising and trying to install a bunch of intelligent gear as well. In which case the 500 channel/1000 attribute limit and lack of encoders put that console a over it's head pretty quickly.

I think that you will find that a 500/1000 console will not get over it's head too quickly. That is kind of like saying that a 300 with the same channel count would get over it's head. 500 channels doesn't seem like a lot, but you have to remember that unlike the pre Eos ETC world ML attributes on a Strand don't need channels, hence the 1000 attributes. I have worked with a 300 and plenty of MLs and it hold up just fine. I dont' know about you, but I don't have enough power in my theatre to run 500 channels of fixtures (conventional or MLs).

Sure, i have found that the lack of encoders is sometimes annoying, but you get used to it. Plug in a Microsoft IntelliMouse with a trackball and scroll wheel and you gain back almost all of the funtionality of the encoders. It is a little bit slower, but it works.

 

[Footer]

I asked that specific question to the Strand guys at LDI. I was told that there are not going to be any sort of wing panels or other add on attachments available. Which I found really dumb because the software is clearly capable of handling it... why not sell physical upgrades to the system. Maybe they will see the light.

If i remember correctly the home/end/page up/page down... etc... keys server as the "encoders". It would be a project, but you could easily remap these keys to a USB device. Remember, the pallet runs on top of Linux, anything is possible. Don't ever under estimate the power of 3rd party products.

 

[fredthe]

If i remember correctly the home/end/page up/page down... etc... keys server as the "encoders". It would be a project, but you could easily remap these keys to a USB device. Remember, the pallet runs on top of Linux, anything is possible. Don't ever under estimate the power of 3rd party products.

Actually, the Palette never really ran on Linux.... It did for a while, but with the acquisition by Genlyte, and the switch to the Horizon software, it's now running on Embedded XP. (Embedded meaning that the OS feature set is limited, and you can't load other software on the console).

My understanding for the Palette is that there is a single encoder wheel, the function of which is changed depending on which key you press. So to switch between say pan and tilt, you just hit a different key. Not great for live applications, but probably sufficient for pre-programming a show.

 

[gafftaper]

My understanding for the Palette is that there is a single encoder wheel, the function of which is changed depending on which key you press. So to switch between say pan and tilt, you just hit a different key. Not great for live applications, but probably sufficient for pre-programming a show.

If I remember correct there are four ways to set moving light values. You can activate the single encoder wheel and toggle between functions. There is a set of keys that you can use pressing up and down. You can also use the mouse scroll wheel. Finally, I think you can use the mouse to click and drag encoder values on the screen.

My experience in the past with Horizon software has been that it's great software that is very intuitive to learn how to use. Everything is in normal English terminology so it's simple and straight forward. But it's not something you want to mess with live. You want to pre-program stuff and have it on file ready to execute. Some of that has changed with the Strand merger and new interface, but unless you get one of the three big boy models you are going to be using the mouse or keyboard a lot to do anything beyond conventional programing. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just different and a little slower until you learn all the short cuts.