Chroma q 72 led patch issue

hm, we all agree, that this has to change at some point and rather sooner than later, and i'm quite convinced that ETC agrees.

but on a personal note: when you call support and they tell you how you can achieve what you want by presenting you the only available workaround, i would be quite happy and not call it absurd...

Ok so first of ETC tech support is amazing. Absolutely amazing. They are smart people who always work through problems with you until a solution is worked out.  However I would in no way consider the option presented a truly workable solution.

When hog and Grand MA have both figured out how to do something and etc has been left behind it is a problem.  I am the only company that does live work in the twin cities that uses ETC consoles.  I have tried to convince other companies that the ion or gio are workable but I can't because it has some big flaws in how it thinks and this LED issue is just another bump in the road.

Hi  KJ,

how do the Hog and GrandMA Consoles handle the 6 Rings of One Color LED?

Last I heard, they didn't have a direct solution either - only workarounds...

I don't understand what the problem is. If you want to treat a 72" as 6 different 12" fixtures. Do that. Patch it as 6 different fixtures. You said so yourself that you don't want to page through six different pages of encoders to have control of each cell if it were patched as 1 fixture. I don't understand what you want that you can't achieve. Easily.

-Tim

I don't understand what the problem is. If you want to treat a 72" as 6 different 12" fixtures. Do that. Patch it as 6 different fixtures. You said so yourself that you don't want to page through six different pages of encoders to have control of each cell if it were patched as 1 fixture. I don't understand what you want that you can't achieve. Easily.

-Tim

Yes this is possible to do however then you are really only getting fixtures that do HSI or RGB. There are effect channels that front load the larger fixture profiles that then don't play nice with the individual fixtures.  So if you want to patch the LEDs as just a 3 series of 3 channel units you can but then when you fill everything else in you need to account for the first seven channels of the fixture to make sure things don't get messy.  Basically does it work? Yes. Is it the solution I expect from ETC? No.  

I know ETC has put a bunch of work into there new magic sheet system but this seems like it should be a much higher priority.  These fixtures are coming out all the time and they are getting affordable where you are going to start seeing them more in theatres and ETC needs to develop a solution.

sorry just frustrated by the process.

Yes this is a known issue.

Yes ETC are working on it.

No, magic sheets didn't take up any of this development time because it's a different developer.

Is it  a big problem, well it is for you at the moment, but other people have big problems as well which developers are trying to fix.

Which mode are you running the ColorForce 72's in? Mode 1?

The best solution I would used is to copy that fixture but delete all the parameters for RGB apart from cells 1 + 2. When make another fixture which has 2 cells of RGB.

When in patch,

1 Thru 60 Offset 6 Type ColorForce Cell 1+2 @ 1 Offset 43 Enter

This will patch every 7th channel as the master channel with the effect parameters. Then go through and fill the gaps with the fixture for 2 cells.

2 Thru 6 Type Cells x2 @ 1 Next Enter.

Because of the  development that went into 2.0 this will find the next address available after 1, so address 14. Continue on and fill the other gaps.

Do you now have control of the whole fixture in one channel, well no but Groups are very handy when dealing with large numbers. Group 100 could be all the master channels with the effect parameters. When make a group for each whole fixture if needed and you don't want to type all the channel numbers.

I don't know these fixture, but this should work.

Attached is a showfile where I've made the two fixtures for you and patch some channels. This took me 10 minutes and this was also finding the manual online and having a quick read.

There are many shows running on Eos family console with hundred of LED's, most of us don't use the effect channels on the fixtures because we have better control with Eos effects and or pixel mapping. Maybe you should have a play with other areas of the desk where a lot of development time has been spent!