Element 2 Pan and Tilt

Question

Put my first moving heads on the stage this am. I found trying to P&T very frustrating. ELE2 doesn't have encoder wheels and pulling the little dot around the XY screen is - well - to put it mildly klunky and erratic. I was wondering if I could put the Pan and then the Tilt onto the main roller wheel? Or perhaps I could use a sub. In that case as we're using 16bit P&T I guess I would have to make a FP at their max and save that. Ideas welcome. 
 My other questions is about MHs in general; We have a real cheap pair but they work well> However, both point in different directions when turned on and/or reset. Trying to get the beasts to dance together is causing major hair loss. Is this normal for MHs? and if so does one point them in the same direction and then save that as "Home" FP?

ueliriegg · Answer

it is not normal for MHs that are rigged the same way (and don't have settings (in the fixtures themselves) to calibrate P/T to a different position) to not point in the same direction. Home preset is a solution as long as you you move both of them with encoders (or virtual encoders), but if you use numbers to control the parameter then you're off again. 
 the XY screen is not helpful in your situation. but next to it are onscreen pan and a tilt encoders. those do help. 
 and last but not least there is a thing called lighthack box1 that would help you as well. https://blog.etcconnect.com/2017/12/lighthack-community-supported-eos-project-kit/

Mike A · Answer

An easy option is to setup 4 buttons on a magic sheet that nudge the pan and tilt by a value like +/- 5 
 To do that record 4 macros 
 Pan + 0 1 enter 
 Pan + - 0 1 enter 
 Tilt + 0 1 enter 
 Tilt + - 0 1 enter 
 then create a magic sheet and add 4 macro buttons that run each one (lay them out sensibly ie a cross shape so its intuitive which one does what. 
 Then all you do is select the channels and press these nudge buttons to position. 
 
 Note: 
 Once you've mastered that you can extend it and add 4 more with bigger values so rough positioning is quicker ie instead of 0 1 which should give a 1 degree movement I have 0 5 as well (laid out on the magic sheet to the outside of my fine control. 
 You can use the same technique for colour ie Saturation and Hue ( with saturation ie use @ / 105 and @ / 95 as that does an actual % increase decrease rather than a fixed 5 value increase. 
 Hope that helps 
 
 Re the positioning even cheap ones would normally be the same. With no dmx signal when they power up do they when the complete their usual calibatation moves home to the same angles and/or is nothing obstructing them when they do that calibration process and they are rigged the same. If they dont home to the same angles with no DMX then see if they have a reset all settings on the front panel and do that in case someone (in the store or factory set something accidently). If after all that they wont home with no dmx to the same position its possible they are actual different versions of the same fixture but look identically. I had a pair of cheap movers and bought another pair from the same store and the second pair were only 8 bit pan/tilt with a completely different patch and no apparent way of getting them into a different mode. 
 If they do home with no DMX the same then we can look at your patch settings to try to figure it out.