Hey guys -

My band is looking to replace our current limited light rig. All of our drums are run off a laptop through a sequencer and I want to be able to program lights for all the songs and be able to play them back from the board via midi in the sequencer. Here is what we are looking at.

We have 3 trees. 2 on the sides one in the center. We play room that are about 100-250 people. Not huge stages, 12ft across maybe 20ft tops.

Were thinking 3 Led lights on each side of stage. 2 scanner's on back tree, possible adding 2 more down the road.

LED's? Are the Octopod 30's very bright? We only use like 75 w flood lights with gel's right now so I would hope they would be much brighter than that. Looks like there availble at good closeout prices and would be cheaper than getting entry level LED's. Plus it's a set of 8, so we could put 2 on the back tree. Also does anyone know how many DMX channels these Octopods are and can they strobe?

Scanners? From what I have read there are some decent 250W scanners to be found. I want to be able to do some cool slow moves and I have read there is some bad tracking with some of these. I guess 16 bit should be the way to go. Are there any good ones in the 250-350 price range out there? Also, are these bright enough that the room won't have to be fogged completly to see the beams>?

New board, Intelligent control. What should we get. I was looking at the DMX operator 192 but don't know if that will do enough. I want to basically be able to program 50-60 songs each with there own lighting cues and moves. The drums will never change so I want it all be synced up perfect. I'm confused on basically what the banks and chases mean. I basically want to be able to do as many moves as I want within a song and save that as a program or show or song. And then tell the computer, ok song 1 trigger midi note 5 for Show or song 1 and it will play back the lighting for that song. Make sense?

A lot of questions I know but we have about $1000 budgeted and want to get the best bang for the buck, and be able to upgrade down the road and add to the show, not replace things.


Thanks!

Chris

If you buy the DMX operator 192, this should work for what you want.

BUT,
you will NOT be able to record entire shows per song and save them.

You CAN make this work for your application:
The Operator can save up to 240 scenes.

So, after saving 240 scenes, you can access them via MIDI NOTE command.
Of course this means playing along with a sequencer. Hopefully your drummer doesn't mind playing to a "click" track.

There are many pluses in doing this.
1. Automated lights synced to your show.
2. Songs start at right tempo. hahaha
3. Drummer is forced to play a consistent tempo throughout the song. No changing tempo half way through. woohoo

Actually all the drums are sequenced in a computer, so they will be the same every night, this is why we want to sync it midi.

This is a newb question, but what is considered a scene? 1 movement on the light board? What is considered a chase?

i told u what it was!! LOL. a scnes is one button and what ever u have recoded on it. a chase is a series of scenes and what u have recorded on those! the trick is to play it back in order to make it look nice and smooth! peace! jingles!!

Yes,

To break it down, you adjust all of your lights (position, color, gobos, etc.. ) using the controls on the controller. When you're done, you save that setting in one of the 240 scenes (Operator).
You can recall the scene from the controller or MIDI.

Thanks Steve - Okay, one other newb question, what control of the scanners, if I say want a light to sweep across the stage, how many scenes will it take for me to acheive that effect, is that a simple move of the joy stick and considered one scene?

Hi Chris,
A simple sweep accross the stage can be 2 scenes.
scene 1 is right side of the stage, and scene 2 is the left side of the stage.
If you decide that you want the light to hit say the drummer or speaker as it sweeps across the stage, then that would be a third scene in between left and right, so now your sweep would be a 3 scene chase.
You can control how fast your sweep is using the fade option on your controller.

i will agree with elation pro. sor i didn't know exactly what you were asking.