Light board for High School Theater

Hi Wes,

I work at a high school as well, and when I saw this post I wanted to give you our 2 cents on a good ETC console for conventionals, movers, and students. I would have to agree with Sarah. The Ion is a fantastic board for all of your needs listed above. We currently have the Element which is the "little brother" to the Ion and our students immediately started utilizing it to the fullest potential. The software that the Ion runs is a great software for just bringing up lights, to doing high involved moving light displays. The UI is very user friendly and the Command Line interface is very intuitive and easy to use. The manual that comes with the Unit is extremely helpful for understanding, but the best way that our students found to learn the board was to use it. There is also a "learn" button on the console that you can press and then select other buttons and learn what that button does and how to use it. Finally, you can also contact ETC tech support 24/7 if you ever need any assistance with your console as well as training sessions from your local dealer.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend the ION to you, and recommend that you try both the Congo jr. and the ION before you make any definitive decisions.

Cheers,

Jared R.

Hi Wes,

I work at a high school as well, and when I saw this post I wanted to give you our 2 cents on a good ETC console for conventionals, movers, and students. I would have to agree with Sarah. The Ion is a fantastic board for all of your needs listed above. We currently have the Element which is the "little brother" to the Ion and our students immediately started utilizing it to the fullest potential. The software that the Ion runs is a great software for just bringing up lights, to doing high involved moving light displays. The UI is very user friendly and the Command Line interface is very intuitive and easy to use. The manual that comes with the Unit is extremely helpful for understanding, but the best way that our students found to learn the board was to use it. There is also a "learn" button on the console that you can press and then select other buttons and learn what that button does and how to use it. Finally, you can also contact ETC tech support 24/7 if you ever need any assistance with your console as well as training sessions from your local dealer.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend the ION to you, and recommend that you try both the Congo jr. and the ION before you make any definitive decisions.

Cheers,

Jared R.

Hi Jared,

     Could you say why the Element wouldn't be enough board for your high school with the movers?

ken

I work with a lot of High Schools and frequently teach the teachers and students the consoles. I've also taught loads of community theater volunteers.

Don't forget to do the math on channel counts. 30 movers x 10-20? channels each + dimmers is pretty close to the Elements 500 limit. 

The big benefit of the ION for you is the physical encoders for the movers. The Element has on screen ones that are more difficult if you are using lots of movers.

A big reason to go with Element is its help prompts. The constant listing of what to do next is ideal for students.

The Element 500 supports 500 channels, regardless of how many DMX addresses each channel uses. You could patch 500 movers with 20+ DMX addresses each to an Element 500 with no problems.

Are the intelligent fixtures LED wash lights, or full moving lights? If you're dealing with mostly color changing fixtures and the occasional moving light, an Element may be a better bet in the educational environment.

As Sarah said, contact your local dealer and get a demo of all 3 boards. (Congo Jr, Ion and Element)

Good Luck!

Hi there -

Kevin's math is a bit off - Element supports two DMX universes of output for a total of 1024 patchable addresses, so that would be 500 channels with 2 parameters each, plus or minus a few left-over addresses. :-)

If you have 500 devices with more than 20 addresses a piece, I highly recommend taking a look at Eos, since 10,000 parameters would be a bit much for a console without encoders, I think. ;-)

As for which desk is best, I still recommend contacting your dealer and arranging for some demos.

Thanks much -

Sarah

Sarah is right!

I was under the impression that the Net3 gateways could expand the output of Element, which is not true.

Reason # 2827 you don't let hardware guys comment on software features.

Happy searching!

Say it aint so!

I recently proposed an Element based on the 500 channels via ACN. No hardline DMX involved. Am I going to get bitten?

Hi there -

You won't get bitten. Element can patch up to 1024 addresses on any of the available Ethernet protocols. We speak in "universes" mainly because it's a quantity we're all comfortable with, however except for SmartFade and SmartFade ML, all of our consoles can communicate with a rig entirely over Ethernet now.

Element supports output over ETCNet2 (EDMX), Net3 ACN/sACN and ArtNet protocols. For more info on patching, I'd recommend taking a look at the Ion manual as it will contain more details than the Element manual at the moment. Patching is the same in Eos, Ion and Element.

I hope this helps -

Thanks -

Sarah

Thanks for the info - I was aware that all ethernet communication was possible. It's the 1024 limit that I was concerned about. I had made the same calculation as Kevin, that the limits were based on channels.

I thought the 1024 limit was the two DMX jacks and ethernet would bypass that limit. I also see I was reading an old data sheet.

So one question still stands. Can the Element patch to 3+ universes, as long as only 1024 addresses are used?

(? You replied almost immediately, but it didn't show up to me till this weekend. Still some things to learn about this forum software...)

Hi Rick,

you can patch your available addresses to anywhere on the 64 universes.