PRG Ground Control Product Demo Video

Let see how this roles out at the larger stadium shows and festivals this summer. Instead of having massive Stage Co delay towers for follow spot nests it might be possible to go down to something a little simpler. Perhaps a long lens kit for the Bad boy to help with the punch would be a smart next move for PRG. We can talk about safety and risk management all day but there is nothing safer than keeping the operator on the ground.
 
I was wondering how long it would take to come out with something like this. I'm glad to see the first model is incredibly full featured and well thought out. Concert tours have been using movers as followspots with pan/tilt disabled for ages - going back to the mirror-less Cyberlight or Golden Scan. I am actually quite surprised it took this long to come up with a solution like this. Getting the guys out of the truss is huge - for many reasons. Safety is definitely a huge factor, but as others have mentioned, you can also now put followspots in positions where it was impossible before. And for spots out in the house for large tours, you can just put them on your regular frontlight truss and fly it to trim, you don't have to have a huge flown spot platform that either flies out with the guys in it before the show or has an access ladder of some sort.
 
And that's fine I've worked shows as a spot op where it was a mover that was all board controlled except pan and tilt which is why I don't see a use for it. Other than the obvious difficult placements. Touring shows with things such as gobos or fast color swaps or quick iris or simultaneous black outs, where this would be useful wouldn't need separate control by the operator. That's all I'm saying is to me the price tag is way over the top for a very niche product.

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Duck

There is one feature that might not be clear that is more than a mover with no pan/tilt. That is that the console can switch control back and forth with the operator.

We can argue just how useful this is .
 
Duck

There is one feature that might not be clear that is more than a mover with no pan/tilt. That is that the console can switch control back and forth with the operator.

We can argue just how useful this is .

I honestly think this feature won't be that useful. The only thing that most LDs would give a local spot op is iris control, and some LDs won't even give them that. At it's price point it will be used mostly for big music acts where everything it does will be heavily integrated into the show. The only time I see local controls being heavily used is for the rare one off here and there, or when something happens to the console and the LD has no choice but to let the spots ops have full control of the lights.
 
I honestly think this feature won't be that useful. The only thing that most LDs would give a local spot op is iris control, and some LDs won't even give them that.
I feel like people aren't getting this part of it. Say I have a whole truss of badboys as backlight (I can dream right) and for 80% of the show I just want the light to be one of the backlights, to wiggle and blink along with everyone else, it can do that, but once I need to break that light out of the group to pick up a solo from a sax player who likes to run around, at that point I could give over p/t to the spot op, THAT is something that has never been done before. Yes, spots have been able to do colors and stuff, but never has one light be able to go back and forth between being a spot and just another mover before!

May this be the death of living with spots from crappy positions!
 
The show I am on has 5 units spread out over two trusses The LD and local operators love them, the lighting crew not so much. Their is one spot per person so it really simplified the LD's calling of the show. All color changes and most of the intensity changes are done from the desk. The ops have iris and dimmer on the ground control yoke but that is mainly if their target is talking to their tech or way out in the crowd. One drawback the LD noticed was that for picking out members of the crowd truss spots would have been better. They have a wider view and can keep an eye on the audience to locate people before the band can call them out.

The units were a last minute add so it seems we got some iffy ones that have kept the lighting crew busy. Also the fiber run started out as a 450' piece which is a bit much to manage. Now it is broken up into a few smaller pieces and that has really helped speed things up.
 
I feel like people aren't getting this part of it. Say I have a whole truss of badboys as backlight (I can dream right) and for 80% of the show I just want the light to be one of the backlights, to wiggle and blink along with everyone else, it can do that, but once I need to break that light out of the group to pick up a solo from a sax player who likes to run around, at that point I could give over p/t to the spot op, THAT is something that has never been done before. Yes, spots have been able to do colors and stuff, but never has one light be able to go back and forth between being a spot and just another mover before!

May this be the death of living with spots from crappy positions!

Well BlackTrax is capable of doing exactly this, its a solution to the same problem, albeit with IR and RF tracking beacons and IR Camera's everywhere. THAT being said, Blacktrax is MUCH harder to implement in a touring system (although Cirque manages it on quite a few shows) which would be a win for the PRG product.
 
I'll be getting a chance to use one of these in a show environment today will post a review of ease of use and reliability tomorrow.
 
I'll be getting a chance to use one of these in a show environment today will post a review of ease of use and reliability tomorrow.
Hey Duck! R.U.O.K.? You didn't fall off did you? ? ?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.
 
Never seen one of these in the wild BUT, I did see this posted the other day after reading this thread so I saved it. Just thought I'd share12993463_1539583416338501_6520584492407016388_n.jpg
 
It's as if they were all being punished and had to face the wall.
 
Sorry for the delay busy week here for me. We had 7 of them in total 3 US, 4 DS. I was on the lead the entire night. The setup was simple much like plugging in a lighting desk. Granted this was a tour setup so it was really placing hardware not really addressing or programming. That said I was correct in the thought of how they were going to be used. The show controlled everything except pan and tilt. No color changes were made by ops nor iris. They were exclusively spot lights not used as movers for any amount of time.

I hope to work with them as more than a joystick in the future but we will see.

Movement was clean and smooth on the controller a bit jumpy at the fixture. These were almost the first time they had been used outside of tech, though so no long term thoughts on how well the encoders will last.

Camera was just a standard digital with zoom iris and low light/daylight switch. Zoom was preset and locked out. But iris and light amount was controllable.

One thing to note is in a sitting position you can't see the screen with the information for the fixture only the view cam. My suggestion to the guy was for them to put it as a HUD surrounding the main focus of the screen as there was quite a bit of room not used.

The screen has a cross hair where your light will hit so aiming is much like using a scope. Reminded me a bit of an arcade shooting game.

All in all my opinion is its an interesting product but not worth the money for this particular use. If you were to incorporate more features or actually need to be able to get spots in a weird position sure but in this instance. Way over kill.
 
Thanks for the review Duck. I'm really eager to see where the technology goes. If someone can get the price down, I think we'll see them all over the place both for safety and for position flexibility reasons. Think about how many theaters are out there with no decent place to put a follow spot. If the price came down to being just a little more than a normal follow spot, it could be huge.
 
Thanks for the review Duck. I'm really eager to see where the technology goes. If someone can get the price down, I think we'll see them all over the place both for safety and for position flexibility reasons. Think about how many theaters are out there with no decent place to put a follow spot. If the price came down to being just a little more than a normal follow spot, it could be huge.

Absolutely, I work in a theater that would benefit greatly from 3 of these. But in a standard concert I'm not sure it's really all that practical at this point. Once the price comes down I'll be surprised to use standard spots in the arena venues
 
Does anyone know if this is what Feld is using on the Frozen on Ice tour? Saw that production yesterday and the "movers as followspots" worked pretty well in that design....but I did notice a few times in the show where there was a definate lag in the tracking.
 

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