From the LS-8 brochure cited:
I'm curious as to how this was accomplished, as I thought the outputs were simple analog. Dimmer Load Monitoring would not come into widespread use until much, much later; and even today is seldom implemented.
Was this a feature only available in conjunction with certain EDI dimmers? How many LS-8's were actually installed with EDI dimmers, or installed at all for that matter?
The Speed of Light says the second installation was at ACT in San Francisco, with F. Mitchell Dana designing lighting and Dirk Epperson programming.
Funny, I was just thinking about this the other day. Maybe one of y'all can help me remember what this console was.
When I got my start in middle school, circa '90, we had a console with handles for channels, and maybe 24 or 48 submasters. No cue stack, but each submaster had a button to assign it to either the x or y crossfader and a little red/green LED that showed it's assignment. So you could record cues as subs, then alternately assign each sub to x and y. To run the show you'd push up the first two subs, with the crossfaders on x, then crossfade to y (switching from sub 1 to 2), then push down sub 1, push up sub 3, then you could crossfade from 2 to 3. I thought I was the smartest thing ever.
The Speed of Light says the second installation was at ACT in San Francisco, with F. Mitchell Dana designing lighting and Dirk Epperson programming.
From the LS-8 brochure cited:
I'm curious as to how this was accomplished, as I thought the outputs were simple analog. Dimmer Load Monitoring would not come into widespread use until much, much later; and even today is seldom implemented.
Was this a feature only available in conjunction with certain EDI dimmers? How many LS-8's were actually installed with EDI dimmers, or installed at all for that matter?
You can go to United States Patent and Trademark Office and look up patent # 4,158,132
for a description. Basically the idea was to use a photo cell to record the overall illumination level as part of the cue. When you replayed it on the console, if the photocell did not read the same output you had lost a lamp (or so the theory goes). Some of you may also remember that in those analog dimmer days you had to occasionally trim your dimmers. Supposedly with this photocell information you could adjust your cue's output if the dimmers were out of trim as well.
Now I have had an EDI engineer swear he saw this actually "work". However, I've not see it myself and other than this patent and the comment on the LS8 data sheet I've not seen it. I don't believe EDI actually sold it to anyone.
I do not think that patent was ever reduced to practice. However, even if it had been, I think the old "See note 7" applies to the design mentioned in the patent.
Note 7: This won't work.
ST
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