Help - Patching a FLX S24 2U from scratch

[Lena]

Hi guys,

I work as a guitar teacher at a local music school and during events and shows I'm responsible for the lights. Our venue used to have small Elation DMX Operator Pro which has now been replaced by a Zero 88 FLX S24 2U. For the lights, we have like six par cans as front light and eight moving heads in the back (Cameo spots/washers/Showtec led pars). My job's now to setup everything from scratch and make it work according to my needs. As I'm not a "trained" light technician, I'm used to figure out everything on my own, which worked quite well with the Elation desk. My programming logic for the moving head there was to work mainly with scenes on the 8 buttons per page which I programmed like palettes of colors and different moving effects. However I don't know which way of setup logic would be best for the FLX 24. How do you distribute your faders in the best way? Do you use the faders like scenes? Or do you take several faders for controlling colors and others for controlling positions? The only thing I'm sure about at the moment is to take one set of faders to control the front light (which is just on/off). I tried to find tutorials or guides on this, but I could only find stuff about the patching itself. Just to make sure: My problem is not about patching itself or understanding the cues and stuff. It's more about how to setup the desk in the best possible way. Ah, and maybe it's also important to know that I'll be at the desk all the time so I don't need fully automated shows or something! 🙂

Thanks in advance for your help and all the best 
Lena 🎸

[Edward Z88]

Hi Lena,

Welcome to the Zero 88 Forum.

24 minutes ago, Lena said:

However I don't know which way of setup logic would be best for the FLX 24. How do you distribute your faders in the best way? Do you use the faders like scenes? Or do you take several faders for controlling colors and others for controlling positions?

The short answer, is you can pretty much configure the console however you want to, to find the most flexible way of working for you.

For example, you could have a single scene on each fader, or you could have several scenes on each fader.

24 minutes ago, Lena said:

Just to make sure: My problem is not about patching itself or understanding the cues and stuff. It's more about how to setup the desk in the best possible way.

In that case, hopefully by now you are all patched up, meaning when your faders are in "Channels" function, each fader controls an individual fixture.

One of the simplest ways of controlling your fixtures, is simply by using Groups and Palettes. You will see at the top of the touchscreen you have a groups icon. Tap this, and FLX S24 will give you the ability to automatically create some groups for your lights. You will then be able to use these buttons on the touchscreen to select those lights, to allow you to control them. Double tapping a group will turn those fixtures on. When you have selected the fixtures, you will then be able to access the fixture's attributes, using the tabs such as "Colour" and "Position" at the top of the touchscreen. The console will be able to create some automatic palettes to get you started. However, you can then start to create your own colours, using the encoder wheels and colour picker, and when you're happy, tap RECORD, and choose an empty palette. You'll be able to do the same for positions. You will then start to build lots of presets you can quickly jump between to control your lights.

24 minutes ago, Lena said:

The only thing I'm sure about at the moment is to take one set of faders to control the front light (which is just on/off)

This is definitely a good place to start. From there you could then start to program some more playbacks of other lighting states. For example you might want to program a few playback faders of different looks for each different bunch of lights. This will then allow you to mix and match giving you lots of different combinations. You could then mix between using palettes, and also pushing up playback faders of key lighting states.

Or you could have your fixture's intensity on one playback, a cue stack of different colours on another playback you can overlay, and then some different playbacks with different positions you can fade in over the top.

If you want to know almost everything there is when it comes to controlling your fixtures, take a look at the training session below...

 

This will give you a good idea of all the tools available to you and how you can use them, to allow you to decide what will work best for you.

For our full online training material, see below...

https://zero88.com/live

 

If you have any questions at all, please let us know.

Edward

 

[Lena]

Dear Edward,

thank you so much for your help and all the information regarding the training material. I've already started watching some of the videos and I'm pretty sure they'll help me a lot. As I'm at home right now, I've also started to spend some time with the Phantom ZerOS application which is a really great way to work with the console without having it a my hands. One thing I tried so far is to program some faders to certain positions/scenes and some only to colors. However, I can't really make this work right now, as the position parameter always gets stored in the color faders. I know there must be a way to do this, but I didn't figure it out yet. So do you have any tip for me what I'm doing wrong? How can I programm a fader to just control one parameter? It's supposed to be like that:

For example, pushing fader 1 up creates a certain postion, while pushing fader 7 up turns all these lights into blue.

Thanks in advance for your help and all the best for a great weekend

xoxo
Lena 

[kgallen]

The information on this page will help you:

http://support.zero88.com/Consoles/FLX/1014413041/RGB-Colour-Mixing-on-Faders.htm

Similar works for Position and Beamshape as it does for colour.

There are other similar support topics here:

http://support.zero88.com/Consoles/FLX-S/

HTH

Kevin

[Edward Z88]

Hi Lena,

11 hours ago, Lena said:

One thing I tried so far is to program some faders to certain positions/scenes and some only to colors. However, I can't really make this work right now, as the position parameter always gets stored in the color faders. I know there must be a way to do this, but I didn't figure it out yet.

If you want to just record certain parameters, rather than the whole lighting state to a playback fader, you will need to disable SmartTag. You can find the SmartTag option by pressing and holding the RECORD button. This will open the Record Options window on the internal touchscreen. In here, you can tap SmartTag, so it has a blue stripe on its button rather than red, meaning it is now disabled. You can then tap RECORD to save and close. Now, only tagged parameters will be stored. 

11 hours ago, Lena said:

For example, pushing fader 1 up creates a certain postion, while pushing fader 7 up turns all these lights into blue.

After you have disabled SmartTag, you will be able to do this by firstly simply turning the fixture on to full, and then record this to a playback fader. Then, push this new playback up, select the fixtures, and put them in a position, and record that to a new fader. Then, change their colour, and store that to a new playback. You will then have 3 separate playbacks, one for intensity, one for position, and one for colour.

For more information on tagging, see below...

http://support.zero88.com/1014189311

I hope this helps, if you have any questions let us know. 

Edward