Nomad 512

I agree. I'm sure the unlock benefited many Nomad users, but smaller educational programs like ours, who can't even run their Nomad as a backup are left out in the cold.

If redundancy is not worth a $1500 investment to your venue, your theater is probably not in a place where having that redundancy is necessary. You're certainly not left out in the cold with your nomad, you can use it as a separate programming surface, an SM monitor, or any number of other things.

It would be nice if there were an affordable educational pack upgrade to 1024 and two universe. The gadget II supports it. Even in small college venues, it would be nice to have LEDs and moving lights on a second universe. In the space where I assist students, we only use 170 channels directly connected DMX to our dimmer racks, but we are starting to use some LEDs and Moving mirrors. I would nominally prefer to have these on a second universe. Our GEN 1 ION support this, I would like the Nomad to mirror this. It can if it remotely controlling the ION but ideally it could duplicate this as stand alone if needed. Perhaps ETC could authorize this for schools that are instructing with an existing product with at least 1024 channel capability. (@ say $200). Not a deal breaker for me, but it would have been nice.

I will end up just configuring the ION to address these channels in the same uninverse and use a DMX Hub, or mirror the two DMX outputs so I have two cables on the same universe. With LEDs even small operations can chew up large channel counts, so >512 is not necessarily exclusive to larger operations any more. When we put our system in 1993, and even when we got the ION over a decade later, we didn't envision large channel counts in our venue where we only had 170 circuits. But simple LED instruments can chew up many channels.

Agree 1024 channels as an option would be nice but just picking up on the comment about not being able to have two universes.  

I dont think that is the case, you can run many universes, its just the number of channels in total across all patched fixtures is limited to 512.   (So two incomplete universes is ok)

So you wouldn't need to "end up just configuring the ION to address these channels in the same uninverse and use a DMX Hub, or mirror the two DMX outputs so I have two cables on the same universe"

Agree 1024 channels as an option would be nice but just picking up on the comment about not being able to have two universes.  

I dont think that is the case, you can run many universes, its just the number of channels in total across all patched fixtures is limited to 512.   (So two incomplete universes is ok)

So you wouldn't need to "end up just configuring the ION to address these channels in the same uninverse and use a DMX Hub, or mirror the two DMX outputs so I have two cables on the same universe"

Mike A. Thank you for the clarification about running 2 universes as long as only only 512 channels are patched.

In my facility at my University this will suit us fine until for a few years then. I will only be addressing just over 200 channels until we get a bunch more LED instruments. As the cost of a single color ellipsoidal instruments is more than the full upgrade price for the Nomad, I suppose its not unreasonable to pay the price in the event that we buy enough inventory to require more channel capacity. Still it would be nice to have a $ 200 dollar 1024 student/faculty upgrade option. Again requiring proof status to purchase the code.