Elation Rayzor Q7 questions, not etc, but...

ok, the strobe is easier so i answer that first.

Strobe is part of the Form category. press the Form button in the top right hand corner of your Ion. one of your encoders reads Shutter Strobe. press and hold the encoder, your softkeys will repaint and one of them will read Mode. press this softkey once. you're now in Strobe Mode. turning the encoder (maybe combined with the shift button) will regulate the speed of the strobe.

the cells are a bit more complicated because there is a software limitation in the eos family. the limitation is that we only allow one color picker per channel. but what you ideally would want is four color pickers so that you have one for each one of your cells. to work around there are two methods. both involve editing the fixture profile in patch and need the Extended fixture mode.

version A (less work but less comfortable to work with): go to patch, softkey Fixtures, arrow keys to the q7, softkey copy, softkey edit. navigate down with the arrow keys, you will see multiple sets of Red, Green, Blue, White. you want to change that so the second set is Red2, Green2, Blue2, White2, the 3rd one with Red3, and so on.
this is less comfortable because to change the color of cells 2, 3, 4 you have to either use encoders or the virtual ribbons in ML controls, but you can't use the color picker.

version B (more work, but you can use the color picker for all four cells afterwards): as i said before, you only get one color picker per channel. so if you want to have more than one color picker for a fixture this means that you want to split your fixture across multiple channels. you would have one "mother channel" and multiple "child channels". mother would include everything that applies to the whole fixture plus one cell, the 3 children would just be RGBW.
because of how the different parameters are allocated to DMX addresses within your fixture type, this editing needs some creativity. if you want to go that path i will write some more stuff down.

so far so good?

So far, so good. Version B sounds preferable to me, does sound more involved to set up but will be easier to use in the end

ok. first i suggest you patch them with the regular Extended profile. go to Live, select the first of your rayzors, enter and hit About, click Patch in the bottomish right corner. you want to write down the numbers in the Address column for Pan, for the second instance of Red, the third instance, the fourth instance and for Macros. repeat for all your rayzors.

go to Patch, softkey Fixtures. arrow down to the rayzor, hit softkey Copy, Label, add "mother part1" to the Label. softkey Copy, Label, add "mother part2" to the Label. softkey Edit. Delete everything except Macros. Return, arrow to mother part 1. Delete everything after the first instance of White (so starting with the second instance of Red) including Macros. whatever is further down from Macros you leave. Return. Return

you're back in regular patch now. select all your Rayzor channels. At Enter, and confirm with Enter. select first channel, click Type. click Favorites, click mother part1, type At and the number you wrote down for your first channels Pan (this is the start address you entered in the fixture itself). Type Part 2 Enter, click Type, click mother part2, type At and enter the number your wrote down for your first channel's Macro parameter. that's your first mother fixture!
think of 3 channel numbers for the first fixture's children. select them, click Type, Manufacturer, click " > " until you see Generic and then navigate to LED RGBW, click, click 8B. type At and enter the number you wrote down for your first channel's second Red parameter.
this should mean that you patched your first fixture! now rinse and repeat :)
ok. first i suggest you patch them with the regular Extended profile. go to Live, select the first of your rayzors, enter and hit About, click Patch in the bottomish right corner. you want to write down the numbers in the Address column for Pan, for the second instance of Red, the third instance, the fourth instance and for Macros. repeat for all your rayzors.

go to Patch, softkey Fixtures. arrow down to the rayzor, hit softkey Copy, Label, add "mother part1" to the Label. softkey Copy, Label, add "mother part2" to the Label. softkey Edit. Delete everything except Macros. Return, arrow to mother part 1. Delete everything after the first instance of White (so starting with the second instance of Red) including Macros. whatever is further down from Macros you leave. Return. Return

you're back in regular patch now. select all your Rayzor channels. At Enter, and confirm with Enter. select first channel, click Type. click Favorites, click mother part1, type At and the number you wrote down for your first channels Pan (this is the start address you entered in the fixture itself). Type Part 2 Enter, click Type, click mother part2, type At and enter the number your wrote down for your first channel's Macro parameter. that's your first mother fixture!
think of 3 channel numbers for the first fixture's children. select them, click Type, Manufacturer, click " > " until you see Generic and then navigate to LED RGBW, click, click 8B. type At and enter the number you wrote down for your first channel's second Red parameter.
this should mean that you patched your first fixture! now rinse and repeat :)

Thank you again. I won't have the chance to get behind the board until Tuesday but hopefully I will be able to figure it out

So far I figured Strobe out. Not quite as described but it got me there. Essentially once I selected the channel and pressed the form button all I need to do was rotate the encoder. Did not have to hold it for anything. When I did try to press and hold, I did not get a mode sk.

The led zones I only got as far as copying some of my addresses down, there were a lot of people at church that love to talk :) One thing I noticed was that there is 2 addresses in the Pan Address column. Am I going to need one, the other, or both. Or is there something funny with the way the board was patched and should only have 1 address there.

There are two addresses, that's correct. You need the first (lower) one

I followed the directions to a T and I have nothing, lost control of all the fixtures. The only word thing I came across is that I can't delete macros from mother 1, as soon as I get to it, it greys out. In mother 2, I am deleting EVERYTHING except macro, including macros 2 and effect macros
A little more confusion. Select all Rayzor channels at enter. This removed the channel patch from them? Then I am going in and just selecting the first Rayzor channel, not all of them?

ok, you're right about the Macros step. in a current software version i don't think that it should be greyed out however. but when you try to delete it should tell you you can't delete because of Lamp Controls. so you would then look for the softkey Lamp Controls. there will one single line in there, which you can delete (softkey) and then Return. you should be now be able to delete Macros. so that should settle all the mother1 issues.
in mother2 i found something else i haven't accounted for: when you have deleted all parameters except Macros, you have to move over to the column DMX where it probably still says 29. put 1 in there.

yes, you only leave Macro in mother 2, not Macro2 nor EffectMacros

the select all issue: you can't do everything for all channels at the same time. that's why is said you would have to repeat. i meant that you would have to repeat the steps for all your fixtures: create the channels with the different types and address them according to the numbers you written down.

Thank you so much for all the help. I did get I figured out and working the way I thought it would work, but was not extremely impressed with the effects that I get from it. Also having to train the other volunteers how to work the new setup would be a challenge. It was great learning another aspect of how the board can control different fixtures too. I have another question about another light that isn't an etc, which I can start another thread for, if you don't mind. You seem to be an expert in the field and I am sure can help me out...