Some More Useful Features!!

[RAW Lighting Power]

Having just been using my Mambo frog with someone elses rig in an outdoor situation, I have a couple more sugguestions whether for software updates or for the Frog II when it is released.

 

Firstly : Channel Inhibit. I was running a bubble machine off a switch pack, but due to the event being outdoors and the wind changing, I needed to switch off the bubble machine. It would be nice if there was a way of parking the channel at 0% to ensure the bubble machine stayed off. Also useful if you have a moving light which is faultly and would be better switched off.

 

Secondly : Channel Inversion and swapping. Running a mixture of Golden Scan HPE and JB Variscan 4, the pan and tilt runs in opposite ways. I can swap this on a sirius, but not on the frog. (Somewhere in patching would be an idel location for this feature).

 

Finally this follows on from my earlier posts about strobing functions on macs where the shutter and dimmer are on 2 channels and I suggested having 2 brightness channels. Another possible solution would be to make brightness 16bit as happens on fine pan and tilt. Thus the 1st 50% of the desk channel could be dimmer 0-100% with the shutter set to open and the second 51%-100% the dimmer would be at full and the shutter channel would be controlled. The compromise would be that the strobing would always be at 100% but personally I don't really use a strobe function with a brightness of less than 100%. This would just make the Martin equipment behave more like Clay Paky equipment where dimmer and strobe are on the same channel.

 

One More thing specifically for a Mambo Frog II as this would require a major hardware change, would it be possible to put LCD displays above the fixture select buttons which change depending on which page is selected to tell you which fixture is on each button. (Possiblly also for labelling subs) It is quite hard to remember which fixture is patched to which button so when I'm shouting at a board opereator to "home" a fixture they spend ages trying to work out which button to push.

 

Thanks

Richard 8)

[felixgeiger]

hi. your second issue is being solved...

in the new software (now in beta testing) will allow to pan/tilt reverse and pan/tilt swap.

 

greetz

felix

[K-Nine]

Re: Shutter and dimmers on fixtures:

 

If the dimmer and shutter/strobe are on different channels on the fixture, then they are defined as separate parameters in the fixture personality file and are processed as separate parameters on the desk.

 

More importantly, the dimmer/brightness parameter is processed HTP and the shutter/strobe is processed LTP.

 

Trying to control two disparate parameters on different channels via a single desk channel (HTP or LTP ?) would require major changes to the way the software processes fixture data.

 

Having the dimmer and strobe on separate channels gives the user independent control over each function of the fixture, even though in reality, you may not normally operate the strobe with other than full brightness.