Design Patching House Lights to the Board...?

[TravisT123]

• I'm currently designing lighting for a musical at my local community theatre. The board I'm using is an Encore XL 24 x 48. I'd say about 2 shows ago, a designer had the house lights patched to a board in the same theatre, but it was moved to another theatre within the theatre, and the Encore replaced it. Now, I can't find any way to patch the house lights.

• The house lights are controlled by a touch-panel, which is fairly outdated and moody. Also, since it's not on the board, I can't time it, so the house lights just fly up or down so quickly.

• If you could give me a step-by-step solution, that would be much obliged.

• Also, the manual for the Encore 24 x 48 helped me none whatsoever.

 

[SteveB]

• I'm currently designing lighting for a musical at my local community theatre. The board I'm using is an Encore XL 24 x 48. I'd say about 2 shows ago, a designer had the house lights patched to a board in the same theatre, but it was moved to another theatre within the theatre, and the Encore replaced it. Now, I can't find any way to patch the house lights.

• The house lights are controlled by a touch-panel, which is fairly outdated and moody. Also, since it's not on the board, I can't time it, so the house lights just fly up or down so quickly.

• If you could give me a step-by-step solution, that would be much obliged.

• Also, the manual for the Encore 24 x 48 helped me none whatsoever.

You need to find out the DMX addresses of the house lights. Assuming the house lighting dimmers are in the same DMX universe (likely as you state a previous LD has done this), you can have the touch panel take all house lights to a level of zero, then do a dimmer check on the console. If your stage lighting dimmers start at 1, assume the house lights are addresses above the highest number of stage lighting dimmers and start your check there.

Then go to the patch section of the console and patch those addresses to console channels. I don't have access to an Encore manual so can't offer add'l advise except I'd be surprised if methods to do what I've described aren't in there.