Amy Worrall

It does seem a bit ominous, deprecating the 'high end' (really, lower mid range in theatre console terms) product without a replacement announced. However I'll try to give the benefit of the doubt! I suppose you can't talk about future products -- I'd love to know if/when there'll be another syntax-based ZerOS console released…

Thanks for the responses Edward. Point taken about the console being better/easier with an external monitor -- I was a bit limited by what the venue had available (unless I wanted to press into our hire budget for one, and the sound department had already eaten most of that). I'll certainly be looking back at this thread next time I use a FLX to remind myself. I tend to use whatever's in the venue, so currently I'm not sure when I'll next encounter one, but when I do I'll be prepared That makes sense, but in that case what happens if I select both the palette and the cue in the top of the update dialog? I figured that doing that was the way to achieve this functionality -- does that do something different? Ah, it was the record without smarttag -> paused feature that I was not understanding. Yeah that makes total sense -- I am not sure why it was confusing me. Maybe because pressing it caused a screen transition (i.e. showing the groups on screen), so in my mind it wanted to be by the screen! From this (and the manual page), I think I understand that: "Remove" in the Update dialog always only applies to tagged parameters; there's no way to apply it to selected fixtures other than by using something like Home to tag all the parameters. Is that correct? Also, all your examples were done with smart tag disabled. Does Remove ever do anything when smart tag is enabled? If not, could you maybe grey out the Remove button when smart tag is enabled in the update dialog? It was displaying parameter info for selected fixtures on the internal touchscreen I think (unless I'm misremembering and that only happened in Phantom ZerOS where I was using a virtual external monitor). That was useful, but I'd still like a mode to see the info inline for all fixtures. That would have been marginally quicker; I was selecting the fade time, hitting enter, typing a new time, hitting enter again. Orb had a Time key, right? I think Orb would have been closer to my ideal console than FLX is. Any plans to release a more syntax focussed ZerOS console in the future? (I know, no comments on future products!) But given that ZerOS must support the concept of a Time key, you could maybe add it to the things you can make the UDKs do on FLX? I'll consider this for next time. I guess I just figured it's such a useful window, I expected most people to want instant access to it!

Well, I survived! First night was yesterday. With very little time in the venue and no tech run (gotta love amateur theatre), I'm glad I prepared myself by getting help from you guys If anyone's interested, here's some thoughts: I was using a FLX without a monitor. A few things were annoying because of that: having to use shift+view to get the output window, as opposed to having it as one of the things that View will cycle through. (I constantly wanted to swap between the cue list and the output window, and I pretty much never cared about the fader display -- LX tape was sufficient to label my faders!). I didn't like how you had to press and hold record or update to get the record options, and when you did, you couldn't see the command line. I frequently wanted to issue the command "record cue N", where N was the number of an existing cue I was replacing, and to also specify tracking mode or some other record options. I wish that the current and next cue numbers were persistently displayed somehow, even when e.g. looking at the outputs window or a set of palettes. Maybe they could go on one end of the command line? I wasn't so keen on how the command line just fills up with multiple unrelated things. For those that don't know Eos, it clears the command line after each command is finished -- Eos maintains selection separately to the command line, so clearing the command line doesn't lose your selection. This wasn't too big a deal, I did get used to it. I really really really missed having a Time key. On Eos, to edit the time of the cue you're in, you can just type "Time 3 <enter>", or for a different cue, "Cue 6 time 3 <enter>". Time entry by navigating with the arrow keys on the cue list was probably my biggest slowdown. I loved the auto colour and gobo palettes feature. They saved loads of time. I did record a few "everything" palettes (e.g. having intensity, colour, position etc in just one palette, aka Eos Presets). They worked fine -- I put them under Colour, fairly arbitrarily. I think it'd be more understandable having a separate home for them, but this was fine. Am I correct that the desk only holds one show file at once, and auto-saves? I was very confused about whether the Save option through Setup, and the save option through the Z key, did the same thing as each other and whether they always saved to USB. Is there an Undo? I couldn't find one. Would have helped a lot when i replaced colour palette 8 instead of position palette 8! Is there a way to swap the encoders from fine to coarse mode? They were scrolling very slowly for me. Probably a small thing, but I missed Eos's "expanded" output tile view, where every parameter of every light was visible. (I'd want it as an option, since it would drastically increase scrolling!) I liked how Zeros displayed the fixture types above the output window items (And that I could name my dimmers and those names would appear there.) The Update button: It was great to show all the possible things that could be updated, but the tap targets were very small! It wasn't immediately clear to me what "also update references" did -- was it so that if I changed a palette it would update the cues that referred to the palette? If so, when would you ever _not_ want that? I think I mostly grokked how to remove things from cues (via update->remove), but I still wasn't perfectly clear. There was a toggle for Smart Tag in the update dialog, but I wish there was also the toggles for selected vs tagged, and all params vs tagged params. I wasn't sure how to specify "remove this entire fixture" vs "remove this parameter of this fixture", and I didn't grok what smart tag remove would even do. I know you guys explained it to me, it just hasn't quite sunk in! I still miss the Eos Blind Spreadsheet though. The ability to see precisely which move instructions are in any [cue, palette, preset, submaster, etc], with blank spaces where no instructions are found… and an easy press of "at enter" once you targetted the thing you don't want, and you get instant feedback by seeing the number go away… Minor nitpick, but I kept wanting the Groups key to be near the Color/Pos/Beam/etc keys. I'm not actually sure why, since on Eos they're nowhere near each other either. Playbacks were pretty intuitive. I managed to set one up that did LTP mixing of intensity params, and it worked fine. Clear-clear to remove manual values was fine. I wish there was an option to remove them with a fade, aka Eos "Sneak"… if there had been, I'd have used syntax to modify lights during the live show, knowing that I could put them back when I wanted without the audience noticing. Patching was fine. I liked the <channel> <at> <address> syntax for updating DMX addresses. I wish that if you typed that into the patch window for a non-existent channel, it'd get created automatically. As you've probably guessed, I'm very syntax focussed (I see faders etc as shortcuts, not as my primary interface to the console). My personal preference would be for ZerOS to allow all consoles to use all bits of syntax, even ones they don't have hard keys for (e.g. the Time button, which apparently existed on an earlier console!). Then, there could be a way (shortcut button, dedicated key on future hardware, reprogrammed UDK etc) to put a "complete" keypad onto the touchscreen, just like Eos does when running in Nomad. This would also have the benefit that Phantom ZerOS could have a console independent mode, that didn't show a facepanel, just the equivalent of one or two monitors, and this Keypad button got you access to all the inputs you need! It should also be obvious that I'd like to see a future ZerOS console that had an even more expanded syntax keypad than the FLX. I missed the Eos "%+" and "%-" buttons. I liked having easy access to make a bunch of lights brighter/dimmer all at once. (I didn't try using an intensity encoder on ZerOS though -- I know you can lock that on if you want, but I didn't get time to see if it would have been an intuitive workflow for me.) We ran into an odd bug where the grand master was down but the desk ignored the fact. Once we moved it to the top, it started working normally again. I didn't quite get the logic of when the "pause" button would immediately do a "back" action, vs which situations pressing it once would cause it to flash and you had to press it a second time to go back. I would have expected the latter to only happen during a fade… but actually it happened _most_ of the time, but not all -- sometimes a single press of pause _did_ go back. I was bitten a couple of times by the fact that bringing the master fader down released the cue list and reset it to cue 1. I was trying to edit some moving light positions, and I went to the relevant cue, then brought the master fader down so as to see what I was doing (with manual values in the movers in question)… but it released the cue and I had to start over. I solved my issue by only bringing it down to 10%… How do you "clear" (aka release/sneak) just _some_ manual values? I know you could do it by manipulating the command line, but suppose my command line was ages long. This was definitely a workflow I missed -- often, I'd bring intensities down on some other lights while I was editing the ones I cared about, then I wanted to clear that intensity reduction but keep my other changes ready to update into the current cue. I miss my "@ enter"!

Ah, I found an answer about inhibitive subs here!

If I go to a cue, make a few edits, untag something, then do Update… in the newly updated cue, does the thing I untagged remain at whatever it was set to before the update (e.g. in eos just not including it in the parameters to update), or does it get removed from the cue entirely (e.g. in eos doing @<enter>)? Another Q, does Zeros have inhibitive subs? As in, a sub that defines the 'max level' for a set of fixtures? I'm considering using one to allow the board op to limit the amount of haze (where the haze triggers are programmed into the cues).

Essentially, because my mental model from Eos is all about being specific about what stuff to record into each thing (cue/palette/etc), which seems to map best to being in control of the tagging myself on ZerOS. On Eos, I'm used to it recording every manual change by default, unless I specify a specific list of channels/parameters. That seems to map to ZerOS tagging everything I change, unless I go back and untag things I don't want it to record.

I'm about to start programming a show on ZerOS (due to the venue having a FLX). For the past several years I've been entirely on Eos — I used Zero88 gear in the pre-ZerOS days but that was many years ago! I'm looking for some advice on what concepts I need to get my head around, etc. Is there an equivalent of Eos's blind spreadsheet? If not, what's the best way to see exactly which bits of information are recorded into a cue? I know that I should turn SmartTag off, and things that are manually tagged will get recorded. Does this just apply at a parameter level, or is it also a concept at a fixture level? For instance, can I un-tag a whole fixture in order to not record it when creating a cue? If I've accidentally recorded too much into a cue, how can I remove a certain thing? (The equivalent on Eos of going into blind, and doing <thing> <@> <enter>.) Does ZerOS have the equivalent of by-type palettes? (i.e. I set the colour on one fixture into a by-type colour palette, and any others of the same brand, even if they're patched in the future, will get that colour.) From the manual, I think I read that there's a way to e.g. store non-colour data in a colour palette, etc. I don't want to do that -- is it the sort of thing I might end up doing by accident? What's the easiest way to select a bunch of cues and adjust things like their fade time all at once? Is there an equivalent of copy-to/recall-from? Especially, is there an equivalent to how on Eos you can go into blind, select e.g. cues 1-20, then do channel 15 copy-to channel 18, and it'll apply that copy operation on all of those cues at once.

I just did a show where I needed a chase to start slow and get faster. It wasn't in time to music, it was an effect we were using for a flashback scene.

Sure! I'll try and write some of it up at some point. The idea was to build it as a hobby project using a raspberry pi, but like so many projects it hasn't happened yet

Hehe. It wasn't my thread to begin with It's weird now I live in the South. People use all kinds of odd words. But mardy is perfectly normal (Yes, Coventry is definitely in the South. I think Nottingham is about where the South starts.)

I would… probably be up for helping with that! (I've had a desk design running round my head for a while. It involves motorised faders, and a strange hybrid of HTP/LTP for submasters. A girl can dream!) The multipart cues are a shame but probably workable with… as long as I can test things as I go! I was programming blind for a lot of this show, so couldn't tell when things broke. The other bug that's annoying me is that the desk sometimes interprets a cursor up/down keypress as a Go. For instance, I'm outputting cue 1, I use the down arrow to scroll down the list, at some point (e.g. cue 30) it'll switch to the currently selected cue. It pretty much does it every time if I "Edit blind" a cue I'm not currently on… afterwards, as soon as I press a cursor key, it'll jump to the newly selected cue. It doesn't seem to do it if I use the mouse instead of the arrows. Amy

I'm not expecting anything, as I'm replying over ten years later, but I'm experiencing this bug as well. Illusion 500, latest software. I'm not sure what triggers the bug… when it starts happening for a cue, it'll keep happening until I edit the other parts, make a slight change, and re-save each part. I'm pretty sure it's an edit mode bug of some description, since if I've got the cue into a state where it behaves properly, playing back the show multiple times doesn't seem to trigger the corruption. When a cue is misbehaving, it still has the correct data stored in it (which I can see if I press Edit or Preview), it just doesn't play back properly.

I'm having trouble here. I'm confused on the difference between .ift and .cft files. I have some .ift files. The desk can load them when I patch a new fixture, choosing "from disk". I also have the main fixture library as a .ift file. This is too big for a disk. I'd like to move a subset of it to the Illusion, so I open the Common Fixture Manager and insert the fixtures I want. BUT, it'll only save as a .cft file, and I can't work out how to get the desk to read a .cft file! What am I doing wrong? As luck would have it, I solved the problem immediately after this post — use the fixtures editor rather than the common fixtures manager! Can anyone tell me if the Illusion can accept .cft files at all? Amy

Great, thanks! It is indeed for my Illusion. It gets its first outing in a few weeks I've tried the fixture editor, but only for making a floppy disk out of a subset of the main library. (All my other fixtures were found in there already.) Thanks, Amy

I'm trying to patch this: https://www.amazon.com/ccbetter-DMX512-Automatic-Sensor-Handle/dp/B016QI7TCG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 (well, more accurately the 36 LED version). On the box it's just called "Party PAR", without a manufacturer name. I don't have the manual, but from trial and error it has channel 1 is brightness, 2 is strobe, and 5, 6 and 7 are RGB. I don't know what channels 3 or 4 do. (Please don't judge me for using a crappy light — mostly I'm using Stairville LED PARs, which still aren't good but are at least a brand that people have heard of.) Amy

On my Illusion 500, I had this happen when trying to upgrade the software. I managed to get it to work by pressing down slightly on the edge of the inserted disk. I kept this slight pressure while rebooting the console, and it correctly read the disk and performed the update.

Oooh! Could you share the schematic? Amy

I'm looking to obtain a Sirius 24 remote masters board. Does anyone know of a place I could get one? Thanks, Amy

Is it possible to perform such an upgrade? That is, acquire another main board, a bunch of faders, and then connect them up to the Sirius 24's main board and DMX card in order to give it the capability to drive 48 channels? Amy