Moving Head Basics

the position the fixture goes to when powered and there is no information from the console, the channels go to the Home position. you can change the fixtures home position either by editing the fixture profile or by setting a home preset.

to limit the fixtures movement you would need to edit the fixture profile. you will need to go to the Range section and there change the column DMX Min and DMX Max. those are the values that get output. the UserMin UserMax columns define what values you see (e.g. a value in degrees).

if you have more than one MH you will probably need to copy the profile and separately edit because since the MHs will not hang in the same place their limits will also be different.

I think I would ask why do you want to limit them?

if you do limit them you create at least a couple of issues for youself

The obvious one is that how do you know you don’t want to be able to point them off the stage in the future eg at someone that walks to stage from the back of the audience or you are lighting a band and you want to sweep beams above the audience in mist or just use them as blinders.

The other issue comes from you needing the different edited profiles due to the different hanging positions. That means you loose the “by type” capability on you colour pallets etc.

It’s unlikely you will ever be doing live moves of the lights from encoder wheels as if you are busking you create focus pallets and then just do thing like group 5 sneak 3 FP 10 so the lights move to that position over 3 seconds.

I guess was more fishing then proposing a setup. So your comments about 'limiting' are noted. Though if we really wanted to then we could copy and rename a profile (per ueliriegg). Your last para is above my pay scale right now but it is copied to bench notes for "when I get there". At moment my experience would be limited to encoder wheels so the group 5 sneak etc etc badly needs my attention. If we had to move a light "live" that would be the way to go, nd moving head from cues; I'm OK with AutoMark

One question (may be mute now) is that if I did restrict the pan to say 20 - 80 deg would that be seen as 0 - 100% on an encoder?

If the personality is done correctly (and you don't need it up to much while editing ;) ) Eos will show real life values. So at first Pan would be something like -270° to 270°. And after editing it could be -20° to 80°

Excellent - that got that one out of the way. Thank you

Yes you could copy and rename the profile,  but as Ueli said that would mean having several copies as the limits would be different for each light you hung on the bar.

That was what I was saying was creating the second problem of you would then have multiple “types” of fixtures even though really they were the same type.  That would mean the “by type” features of EOS would be sacrificed.

What I was trying to say about moving the lights live is you’d really struggle to position them with an encoder during a show so the position would be saved in a queue or in a focus pallet.  Therefore there is no actual requirement to put the limits in place as it doesn’t matter during setup if you point them off the stage area accident.

Picking up on Pallet generally, they are something you really want to use when using RGB lights or moving heads.  They let you save the colour you mix or the position of the light in a number “memory” so that in the cue you refer to the pallet rather than having directly saved RGB or pan tilt saved in the cue.   You can then alter the colour or position in the pallet when something needs changing globally rather than having to edit each cue when they don’t like the shade of blue you’ve picked for night scenes etc.

The “by type” part of this allows you to set the RGB values once and share across all fixtures of that type in the pallet again meaning not having to change or copy things around when you need to change the blue colour or ending up with some of the fixtures a slightly different blue when you edit things.

So using those things if you were busking instead of running from cues can be as simple as keying Group 5 Focus_Pallet 20 enter and all the lights in the group move to the position you saved earlier.  Or Group 6 Color_Pallet 100 enter and the lights in the group go to your night setting.  Even while recording your cues this is often a much easier way to work.

My comment about sneak is you can tell the desk the time for the transition so if you want to sweep the lights slowly to a saved focus position you can just type Group 5 Sneak 10 Focus_Pallet 20 enter,  just as Group 5 sneak 5 out would fade them out in 5 seconds.  Sneak can be really useful for doing things live.