Movers with an Express 125

SuperCow

Active Member
Zac asked this elsewhere, and I'm also very interested to know, because we just got five HES TrakSpots. Our lighting board is an ETC Express 125 with WYSIWYG.

So, what I want to know is; can I run them easily on the fly. Obviously, the Express 125 is no GrandMA, but can I, say, record something that will have my lights swirl around the audience in a predefined pattern, record that onto a submaster, and then be able to just start that sequence by bringing up the sub? I have a big inventory, so I would want to use the movers as accents rather than as workhorses within the plot. How easy would something like what I described be to do? Can it be done?
 
You beat Zac to a post about this very thing. My question is very similar, how easy would it be to program some looks from 2 moving heads into sub's on an Express 125, and how many subs would I realistically need? I have about 5 or 7 sub's open now...
 
Heres how I would set it up:
Make the last sub page or two for movers. So page ten would look like this panF1 tiltF1 colorF1 goboF1 shutterF1 dimF1 optional speedF1 panF2 tiltF2 colorF3 goboF4 and so on. This will let you quickly select the attributes as needed. Im not sure how fine you will be able to get.

To get a swirl pattern I would make an effect sub on page one or two where in each step you change the vaule for pan and tilt so it makes a circle. Or you can make cues for it, what ever flots your boat. Example step one pan 128 tilt 0 (this is half of 255 so it will be looking straight with no tilt so down) Step two will be pan 160 tilt 30 or so (this will pan a little to the left while bringit up a little) step three pan 200 tilt 90 (more left more up) step four pan 255 tilt 128 (all the way left and half way tilted)

Hopefully you can follow that...

A few key things to rember with movers 0, 128 and 255 are key numbers to rember as far as pan and tilt go. Save often and go back and check your cues once or twice.

I know you dont want to hear this but on a low end moving light board this takes me about 5 minutes to do four 4 moving head lights becasue of effect engines on a grand MA I can do it in less than a minute but working threw the hard times of making a board do something it really wasn't made to do will give you knowelge.
 
I'm just waiting for our LCD intellabeam controller to die...then I can use the expressboard to control them! :D
 
Express/Expression/Insight consoles, in general are poor choices to control ML's. The attribute wheels on the Expression/insight 2&3 series make things a bit easier, but these consoles are NOT ML consoles.

That said, they can be made to function, just needs patience and time.

I found the fastest way to program a circle was as a series of cues with autofollows and a link back to the start. I would write a new cue for every new position of the beam as I manually drew a circle - the more cues/movement TO locations, the better so as to avoid the look of the beam cutting the circle.

Remember that un-like a Hog or GrandMA, or even Emphasis effects generator - where you can choose circles, ellipses, delays or following fixtures, even diameter of the circle, on the Express you are basically drawing a circle as a set of stopping points in a circle. One trick is to make the follow a 1/2 second faster then the cue to the next point, so as to avoid having the beam stop at a point then starting again.

It helps to have a sub configured as inhibitive for motor rates - Pan/Tilt, gobo speed, etc.. You can then write e fast cue loop and simply slow it down with the sub.

SB
 

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