Teach an old dog new tricks

[ocguard]

Hello, and thank you for creating this forum.

I have been out of the field of lighting for about 13 years -- left it after high school and didn't keep up. My last board was a strand LBX and source four PARs were brand new at the time. DMX512 was the industry standard, and analog 12-pins were still pretty common. My experience is with the LBX, as well as "LightJockey" and Martin automated lighting.

Well, I've decided to get back into it as a volunteer at my church. They are adding additional services, and need more help with people to run the board. It's an ETC ion, and, after just brushing the user manual, I can tell that some things have changes. I was a master of the Strand LBX, but I can see that there will be a learning curve for me.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? Good reading to catch me up? Any other online resources?

At first, I'll be executing cues provided by another person, but the goal is to eventually have each venue programming their own shows.

In the mean time, I'm just going to read on in the manual and see what I can pick up.

 

[zmb]

I'm mildly familiar on the ETC Element which is the little brother of the Ion which I transferred to after being a Strand user for a couple years. YouTube and the offline editor are your friends. Here's ETC's official Ion training on YouTube. I haven't watched it but the unofficial one for Strand was very helpful when I needed to learn it. DMX is still in use, but now we've found ways to have an seemingly endless number of universes run over IP-based networks in addition to the five-pin XLR connections.

 

[TDN]

This page here: Theatre - Ramblings of a grumpy Strand user

is the sometimes hilariously angry ramblings of a Strand user learning an Ion. Might be useful.

The training videos for the Ion are slooooooow. I watched them at 1.5 speed on DVD on my laptop, which made them bearable. But I was transitioning from an ETC express so a lot of the syntax was the same.

I like the Ion, but it does take some training to learn how it "thinks" and how to talk to it. Stick with it. Also, even though its not that exciting, the manual for the Ion is useful. But you do have to learn all of its vocabulary to really follow.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

The ramblings was fun. Thanks. No wonder I have never learned ETC speak.

 

[zmb]

The biggest annoyance that I've found with the Eos family software is that setting a channel at full requires you to hit enter where the Palette software auto terminates some commands keeping you from hitting enter. Also, I think you might need to use two digit entry to set levels in the command line, so 50 for 50%, not 5. Palette I believe you can change the entry mode.

The biggest perk I've found with the Eos is the Flexi channel view which works great if you split up your different systems in the patch by having unpatched channels in between your front and back light, it inserts a spacer in the Live view. But the Palette could let you add comments and color code channel tiles instead which I also miss.

 

[sk8rsdad]

In an effort to correct some misinformation:

Double tapping Full will auto-terminate.

Setting a channel to a single digit appends a zero so (channel) At 5 is the same as At 50. To set a channel to 5 you have to type 05.

Magic sheets let you set the background and border colour for a channel icon. They can also be set to show the channel colour and/or intensity as they change.

 

[zmb]

In an effort to correct some misinformation:

Double tapping Full will auto-terminate.

Setting a channel to a single digit appends a zero so (channel) At 5 is the same as At 50. To set a channel to 5 you have to type 05.

Magic sheets let you set the background and border colour for a channel icon. They can also be set to show the channel colour and/or intensity as they change.

Thanks, I've been away from it for a while and wasn't aware about double tapping Full instead of hitting enter.

I haven't set up magic sheets yet, but as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to use them someday.