help with an avab console

Hi all

Crisis averted and defcon 5 has been achieved.

I have managed to get the Effect running on a master and am happy with the look. Think of the scene where Homer manages to prevent nuclear melt down in shelbyville by going "eenie meany, miney moh..."

Yes, I have no idea how I managed it.

many thanks.

eamon

Hi Eamon.  Well, I'm glad you sorted this out.  But have asked Anders - who is our lead Congo developer and also developed the Avab products back in the day - to provide you with an explanation of what you were seeing, how your might have gotten there, etc.

We don't have forums for the pre-ETC Avab products.  But if you post any issues you have either here or on the Congo forum, we will do our absolute best to help out.

Thanks so much!

a

Hi,

When you say that you have made links, does this mean that you have entered Wait times on all steps?

If you have Wait times on all steps, including the blank one, the sequence should run in a loop.

Anders

Hi Ann & Anders

Thanks for the replies.

To clarify what I did with regard to the link/loop of cues:

I had programmed 5no. cues and set link times for all. I then set cue 5 to link back to cue 1 hence creating a loop. The console would stop after cue 5 and fade to black. All cues had information and there were no dummy steps or black outs. The cues only contained intensity information. I had set the wait time in the Parameters set up to be as a follow. I am unsure how the presto differs between follow & wait but I had used Follow on before and it worked for me etc. I did not find information on looping cues and was unsure if the console could achieve this.

When I attempted editing in the SEQ menu, the presets started to be assigned to the masters. I am not 100% sure how that occurred....

An asterisk also appeared alongside the right hand side of the follow time when I inserted cue numbers for the presets to link too.

When I could not get the cues to loop as above, I looked at creating a 5 step effect to do a similar look. The effect was very simple and easy to program. My problem was trying to load it onto the master. I followed the manual as best as I could. I somehow managed to get the 2nd master to take the effect and my problems were solved.

The avab presto was the original desk in the theatre (theatre opened in 2001) and due to many different factors has lay in a store room gathering dust and becoming a door stop. I have resurrected said console and proceeded to use it for a couple of different shows. Half of my head scratching is a completely different way of thinking and trying to understand the syntax. Most of the above problems are down to PEBCAC.... (Problem Exists Between Chair & Console). Needless to say, I have turned off the Reverse Polish Notation!!

I hope that gives some background to my above post.

Many thanks for your responses

eamon

Hi Eamon,

Thanks for the explanation. I am glad to hear that you got it working. 

I am not sure exactly where it went wrong. Normally, entering Wait times for all steps (0.1 s would be fine if you just want the next step to start immediately) is the way to go for the main sequence. Follow-on times are counted in a different way so for a looped sequence, using Wait times is recommended.

For the sequence to loop when it reaches the end, you probably have to set a wait time to the empty step between the last step and the first (which is basically the resting point after completing a regular, non-looped sequence).

Anders