Is there any way to disable channel faders on a board for security reasons?
Here is the short story, we have a member in our crew who keeps on messing around with the control board and trying to annoy both the music/theater department teachers and I myself (head electrician/designer). Is there any way to disable channels temporarily like parking them @0 to prevent someone from going on the board and purposely leaving the lights on?
AH...Mischievous people can be annoying, While parking could work there will be a prompt on the screen to indicate it is active, if you mischievous crew member knows how to operate the console to any extent they will see though it, an alternative would be to UNPATCH the dimmers, there would be no prompt to this, and if you run a ONE - ONE format there is a patch reset in the setup, otherwise, just save to disk and put it away somewhere safe. There is no fool proof method to lock a console, and hopefully your annoying crew member is just walking by and pushing up subs and knows very little as to what makes a console really work.
Which kind of console is this? As was mentioned, there's no real security involved so it's mostly a matter of you being more clever than the unpleasant crew member. If the person screwing around is just pushing faders to full, then you could switch to a blank submaster page. Of course, that would have limited usefulness with something like an Express 48/96 where you have channel faders as well. Another option might be an inhibitive submaster for the channels you want to block. Again, it's not secure, but it's obscure enough that you have to understand how the console works in order to get around it. If you're looking to disable all outputs, you could just unplug the DMX cable from the back of the console.
The best option is to make sure the student understands that he or she won't be allowed to participate in theatre activities if they don't follow directions. There's a lot of expensive gear involved and a lot of ways that people can get hurt when someone decides to fool around.
Another option might be an inhibitive submaster for the channels you
want to block. Again, it's not secure, but it's obscure enough that
you have to understand how the console works in order to get around
it. If you're looking to disable all outputs, you could just unplug
the DMX cable from the back of the console.
It may also be possible to put that inhibitive sub on another sub page, so when that sub is down, and that page is not active, the protected lights are never going to come up, and the authorized experienced ops will need to know how to change pages and bring the inhibitive sub up. Unfortunately, as I think about this, you will lose the ability to use the sub on your main sub page, as when you change pages back, the inhibitive sub will remain on it's page until the fader is brought down, at which time it will pick up the current page, putting the inhibited lights back into their protected mode. If you can lose a sub though, I think this is a good method of securing your lights from a pesky "helper."
Or you could just get evil and work up some sort of finger trap when the unauthorized person touches the console. I don't have any specific recommendations, but I'm sure a creative type could come up with something, though I suggest you stay away from anything adhesive or corrosive. It will likely hurt your console. :)
Dennis Witte San Francisco
[edited by: Holztech at 7:39 PM (GMT -6) on Mon, Jun 16 2008]
hide the DMX cable on them :D or if you dont want to do that program a macro to park the channels. trust me i know how annoying that people are when it comes to stuff like that. There's two people i know who do that kind of stuff. 1 person thinks the lights should always be on (even when nothing is happening that needs those lights) and the likes to fool around for no reason.
[edited by: quadman9647 at 3:37 PM (GMT -6) on Thu, Oct 23 2008]
