Controlling intelligent lighting with the smartfade 24/96

Yes. SmartFade is a DMX console and can control anything that complies with the DMX-512 standard.

It may drive you crazy programming everything with just faders (no palettes or encoders) though. I've done this in the past and it can get very tedious.

- If you have more than a couple, I'd look at borrowing a moving-lights console like SmartFade ML, which gives you a host of extra features designed to make it easier to program moving lights.

But yes, it's perfectly possible.

Hey Richard, I had the same question, and it's good to know the answer is yes. Now how about an app note or white paper picking a typical DJ type light and giving us a guide to the best practice or the cookbook steps?

I know that our children's theater is not the only Smartfade user out there without any real lighting professionals to fall back, and this board is sold as an entry level DMX controller for small groups like ours, so a Dummy's Guide to moving light programming would be great.

Hey Richard, I had the same question, and it's good to know the answer is yes. Now how about an app note or white paper picking a typical DJ type light and giving us a guide to the best practice or the cookbook steps?

I know that our children's theater is not the only Smartfade user out there without any real lighting professionals to fall back, and this board is sold as an entry level DMX controller for small groups like ours, so a Dummy's Guide to moving light programming would be great.

Hey guys,

Just so - you understand, the Smartfade is sold as an entry level DMX controller. It is not sold as an entry level DMX controller for Moving lights. We would not recommend that you attempt to use it in that way. We do offer that product - The Smartfade ML. You can learn more about operating it here.

David Lincecum

Marketing Manager, ETC

Unfortunately, when the grant monies were spent last year our dealer did not suggest the ML in case we ever wanted to use a moving light in the future.

I am told by my local stage rental supplier that people with simple requirements for moving lights have been using regular DMX control boards for years for that purpose. His opinion is that it's certainly NOT the best way to go, but if your only doing a few special effects with a light or two, it's not the end of the world.

I would still hope that at least a minmal white paper recommending how to buld a sequence to get a simple moving pattern turned on and off would not be out of the question.

Thanks PH

Hi PH

It is possible to use the SmartFade for moving lights although you should be prepared for it to be incredibly fiddly and a bit of a pain - I would recommend if you can (not all moving lights have this option), first thing to do if turn off DMX reset and DMX lamp off on the fixture before you start - you don't want to hold up your plotting session/s having to wait for lamps to cool and restrike etc just because you've pushed the fader up too far.

The other problem you have, is depending on the moving lights you are using they can use an extraordinary amount of channels so you can quickly fill your desk with moving light channels - I very rarely use moving lights with less than 25 channels.

The easiest thing to do is take a look at this manual (this is only an example): Martin MAC 250 Krypton

Have a look at page 36.

This chart tells you what each channel does.  If you imagine everything as an intensity channel ranging from 0-100%.

Using pan as an example, at 0% the moving light is panned all the way in one direction, at 100% it is panned all the way in the other direction.  Using the MAC 250 Krpyton as an example, have a look in the left column of the chart and look at channel 9 and 10.  Both of these channels control pan, channel 9 does 'coarse' movements and channel 10 does 'fine' movements.  You can ignore channel 10 if you wish, but basically it allows precision movements of your moving light and on more sophisticated desks it makes "live moves" look nicer.

Unfortunately it gets a lot more complicated when you start looking at colour wheels.  Have a look in the left column again for channel 3.  Between 0% and 56% moving the fader for channel 3 turns it continuously.  0% being at white, 56% being at white again having done a full revolution of the wheel.  When the fader is at 82-88% the colour wheel spins continuously giving you a colour changing effect on stage.  Basically, what would be an intensity channel becomes a 'control' channel.  Essentially, the moving light interprets the value that is being sent from the lighting desk and you telling it what to do.

Hopefully that makes sense to you but the best thing to do is to have a play.  If you can, get the moving light you want to control next to you and the lighting desk.  Run a cable direct from the desk to the moving light.  Ensure your desk is set 1-to-1 in the patch and that the moving light is set to DMX Address 1.  Then have a play with the faders and see what they do (I would suggest seeing if you can get hold of a manual do so, most come with a handy grid like the example above).  Use the faders to set what you want the moving light to do and record the presets as normal, just be aware though that when you are using this console for this you may get some really random effects.  Once you're done playing, put the moving light somewhere useful, change the address to somewhere above your dimmers and then try using your generic/dimmer channels alongside the moving light.

This is not the easiest way of doing things by any means but if you're in a position where you have to use what you've got this should get you through it.

One tip though - when controlling moving lights, when 'blacking out' the desk, just move the intensity channel and not all the other channels, this way your moving lights will fade to black without random colour changes/strobing/pans/tilts.  And if you want to go one step further - set colours and pan/tilts in the previous cue with the intensity at 0.  This way you won't get any horrendous colour changes/pans/tilts whilst fading the intensity up.

:-)

Tom,

Thanks for the excellent reply. When we rent the light we're going to use, I'll play with it as you suggested.

Just to make your advice specific to the Smartfade, here's what I think I'm going to do:

Background: For our shows (using parent volunteers for light board ops) we usually set up scenes with channel faders, program them as memories, then manually fade in and out each scene throughout the show following cue sheet.

Goal: Use a Rosco X-effect projector to put an undulating underwater pattern on the cyc wall. It's a set pattern, it fades up and fades out. Twice.

Proceedure:

1. Hook up the Rosco as you describe and pick a bank of unused channel faders on the Smartfade. Monkey around with the channels to get the right color, pattern rate, intensity,etc.

2 Once the pattern is right, close the shutter (or pull down  intensity to zero)  and save all the remaining channel settings as a memory (it's a discharge lamp, so I'm not sure how dimming works).

3. Program another memory for just the shutter (or intensity) channel.

4. At the beginning of the show, push up the memory slider for the pattern stuff (no intensity) and leave it on. It will constantly send the same parameters to the light, but I don't care(?)

5. To bring up the pattern, slide up the fader for the shutter memory, To take it out, slide it down again (duh).

Sorry if that makes no sense, but of course I'll know more when I actually have hardware to play with.

PH

Hi PH

The manual for the X Effects.  Page 18 is the one you are interested in.  What you've said makes perfect sense.  I'll try to answer all your queries and highlight any issues I can see...

2 - discharge lamps do not dim, the lamp stays on at 100% and  instead they use a shutter to control the intensity (or in this case it is referred to as a 'dowser' as it's technically a projector).  Channel 1 is the one you need to be careful of as this is the control channel that has the capability of turning off the lamp in which case you will have to wait for the lamp to cool before you can restrike it.  Once you have struck the lamp (by putting the fader to between 50 and 54%) I would suggest taping the fader down at 0% to keep it out the way).

4 - nope! You don't care!  Providing that you have not recorded any of the channels for the X Effects in any other memory...

5 - spot on!

Good luck!