Stranded!!!!

newtech

Member
I'm new to the theater tech department and have been thrown into using a Strand series 300. As I have never before done theater lighting and the previous tech left before giving me any training on the system I am a little lost. Can anyone tell me where to find usefull tutorials or books that i could read to get a handle on this system. I find the manual to be either very poorly written or geared twoard some one with far more lightbooard experience than I. The basics are all I'm looking for at this point such as general usage, navigating through menus, setting subs and any good tips on work flow with this system. Any help would be great.
 
newtech said:
I'm new to the theater tech department and have been thrown into using a Strand series 300. As I have never before done theater lighting and the previous tech left before giving me any training on the system I am a little lost. Can anyone tell me where to find usefull tutorials or books that i could read to get a handle on this system. I find the manual to be either very poorly written or geared twoard some one with far more lightbooard experience than I. The basics are all I'm looking for at this point such as general usage, navigating through menus, setting subs and any good tips on work flow with this system. Any help would be great.

WOW REALLY!?! SOMEBODY TO TALK TO ABOUT THE STRAND SERIES 300! Anyway we've both been thrown on the same boat. I have the manual but the director would be all stingy about it if I lent it to somebody. Many many months ago, I asked the same question and sadly I got no reply that really showed me how to work it. But now that I've become more expierenced at it, I'll show you. So I'll tell you as much as I know thus far.

First off, you want to get to understand what everything does. As you may know, there are 6 "panels" that make up the lighting board (three on the top and three on the bottem). The first 4 (the top three and the bottem far left one) are all of the channels of your lights. I havn't figured how to get these working but I dont' use them anyway. I find it way easier to use the numeric keypad on panel 6 (which is on the bottem right). Panel 5 is in the bottom middle. Those are your submasters (30 of them I beleive). Ok now that you know what everything is, lets move on. (NOTE: BEFORE YOU MOVE ON, PRESS "LIVE" ON PANEL 6 TO GET TO THE MAIN SCREEN.)

Depending on how many lights you have (I have about 70), you can have up to 499 lights connected to the board. So lets start off by turning on some lights. Enter in the numeric keypad "1 ON". You have just turned on light number 1. Lets say you want to turn on lights 1 through 10. You will put down "1-10 ON". This will turn on lights 1-10. You will have to experiment and see where each light is and where it is located. Now lets say you only want to have lights 1, 7, 8, and 10. You will type in "1+7+8+10 ON" (note: you must type "+" otherwise you will be typing in light number 17,810). You can also turn lights off by pressing the light number, and then "OFF".

Lets program a cue. Type in "10-15+71-87+20-25 ON". It can be any numbers. I'm just typing in anything. So your basically saying turn on lights 10-15, then numbers 71-87, then 20-25. So these numbers should be on and it should say "FL" (full) under these numbers on the moniter. All you have to do now is press "REC CUE 1 *" (the "*" is the enter key ((it's a double key on the bottom right)) ). You have now made your first cue. To edit a cue, just type in the numbers that you want and press "REC CUE 1 *". It will tell you that you are about to record over something and that you cannot get it back once deleted, so just press enter again and you have edited your cue. I'm not sure how many cue's you can have. I've had up to 150 so far. I guess it depends on your hard drive. Lets talk about subs.

Sub's aka "submasters" are little slides that are on panel 5 and you can program any amount of lights on them and in some cases, I have used them as a cue to make really nice trasition effects. But when we're done with the season, I usually make them into recognizeable settings like one of them is all on. Another sub I set for all green, another for all blue, and another for all red. Then another for house lights and well, you get the point. First you will have to get into the subs menu by pressing "subs" on panel 6. Once your in the subs menu, find the button that is next to the numeric keypad called "sub" (NOTE: THIS IS A DIFFERENT KEY FROM THE OTHER SUBS KEY AND YOU MUST USE THE SUBS KEY THAT IS NEXT TO THE KEYPAD!!!) so anyway press the "sub" next to the keypad and press "1". It should have highlighted sub number 1. Now just enter any numbers that you want programed for that sub and press enter (*). It will show the numbers that you have selected. And press "sub 1 REC" (NOTE: THE SUB KEY. NOT THE SUBS KEY). Now you have recorded your first sub. Now that you are done recording, press "LIVE" to get you back to the main screen. make sure everything is off. Bring sub number 1 up by sliding it upwards and the lights that you selected should increase as you bring up the slide. You can also press the button that is below that sub that has a circle on it and may be lit up and it turns them all on but only as long as you hold that button.

Well I'm really tired of typing for now. But if you have absolutely any questions at all regarding anything I have mentioned here, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at "[email protected]". You can also put the lights at different levels but I'll explain that in a later post. Hope this has helped you.
 
Hiya,
just an FYI--you can go to the Strand website and download the operators manual which may help you figure things out too if either of you have questions and can't get to a computer to post them.

www.strandlight.com and click on SUPPORT and then scroll down to MANUALS. Its there....


hope this helps.

-wolf
 
well, thank you for your prompt response. I have these basics just about figured out. What has me reallly perplexed at this moment is the whole x fader thing. What is this function used for. It seems very powerful. It had recently been set in such a way as to deactivate all regular sliders exept for the subs. After much fooling around and reading of the short version of the manual(which I find to be most useless) I figured out how to get all my regular faders back. Does anyone know if there is a way to disable this function all together? As most times the theater I work in has very basic lighting needs the functions of the x fader seem a bit much. Any advice on the x-fader issue is greatly appreciated.
 
newtech said:
well, thank you for your prompt response. I have these basics just about figured out. What has me reallly perplexed at this moment is the whole x fader thing. What is this function used for. It seems very powerful. It had recently been set in such a way as to deactivate all regular sliders exept for the subs. After much fooling around and reading of the short version of the manual(which I find to be most useless) I figured out how to get all my regular faders back. Does anyone know if there is a way to disable this function all together? As most times the theater I work in has very basic lighting needs the functions of the x fader seem a bit much. Any advice on the x-fader issue is greatly appreciated.

I have that same problem at the moment. All of my faders except my subs do not work. I e-mailed an authorized Strand repair place but I havn't gotten a response. If you remember how to turn the faders back on, and type it, I will be one happy camper (or techie).
 
Sorry but I'm only rated for a Lite Pallet III. That said, beyond the manual you might take your questions up on http://stagecraft.theprices.net/stagecraft/ it's a wider pool to ask to and one on a more advanced level given the larger pool.

Control booth as it is is a very useful site, but at some points that reach beyond the help of it's members in talking openly to, you have to hit up the websites that others in the more highbrow hang out at.

Just edit twice to post once at that website or you might not get the response or help you need.
 
As for a manual you need the following page on Strand:
http://www.strandlighting.com/manuals.html in this page you will find an operators manual, which is a short sometimes unclear version, but there is also a full manual, with everything in it.

For those not understanding x-fader, it is used for fading from cue to cue, by typing for example [cue][100][left go button] it will go to the cue 100 and if on auto fade will place the next cue 101 (ie) ready, when you press the [left go button] again it will go to the 101 cue. It is also possible to run manual, then you move the faders up, load the next cue [left go button], move faders down, next cue will be ready, and you can fade up next cue, you will have to check the manual for switching between these modes.

About the submasters, please be more specific. Only thing I can say, if you do not make a sub it will be empty and you can not use it. Also there are 6 pages of subs, maybe you switched pages and nothing is in this page.

Maybe you can tell which lighting board you used to work with, making it easier to translate to strand, (how they do things)

Regards Arjen Bijtelaar
 
Hey There!!!

I wanted to let everyone out there know that there is a website with a forum that I have found very useful. They have several general forums and even some for individual control consoles. You may be able to look through the posts and find what you are needing. I would start in the Lighting Desks & Control Issues forum. I don't have any experience with the Strand series, but I'm pretty sure you can find additional help there.

www.lightnetwork.com

There are a LOT of strand users on that site. You will merely have to find the correct forum to post to. In addition, make sure you read the rules and regulations before posting a new strand. I've found that some of these sites are more friendly than others, but you always want to read the posting instructions before you start a new line.

Hope this helps.

Aaron
 
LCTLight said:
Hey There!!!

I wanted to let everyone out there know that there is a website with a forum that I have found very useful. They have several general forums and even some for individual control consoles. You may be able to look through the posts and find what you are needing. I would start in the Lighting Desks & Control Issues forum. I don't have any experience with the Strand series, but I'm pretty sure you can find additional help there.

www.lightnetwork.com

There are a LOT of strand users on that site. You will merely have to find the correct forum to post to. In addition, make sure you read the rules and regulations before posting a new strand. I've found that some of these sites are more friendly than others, but you always want to read the posting instructions before you start a new line.

Hope this helps.

Aaron

This is where I went when I was first learning how to use the strand light board. I found it MUCH easier to learn stuff here than on the manual. The manual gives vague directions and sometimes you get so messed up that you have to start all over again to figure out what you did. In one of the "smaller" manuals that we have aren't much better either. All they do is joke about how confused you are going to be.
 

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