kgallen

Just re-reading my initial post it’s a real dogs dinner! I’m glad @Davidmk and @Archie D have brought some clarity to the exercise with the neat use of a chase on the ‘master’ playback. Great work chaps!

Yea, sorry @Davidmk that’s just my slow brain. I wrote my initial response and thought ‘that’s awful’ and subsequently thought of using the master playback as triggers. Completely forgetting that was what you’d proposed initially… brain like a sieve!

I’ve read with interest what @Davidmk has written. I agree the key to this will be fixture Release to get back to your background colour. However I can’t as yet think of a neat generic way to do this. All I can think of at present is you will need a set of playbacks equalling the number of ‘white’ lights you want to overlay. Each of these playbacks will light one of those lights. Each has 2 cues. The first cue lights the light and releases the previous playback in the sequence. The second cue triggers the next playback. This ‘next’ playback has the two cues as above, the release being for that first playback. Repeat playbacks like this for each sequence light. You could have a ‘master’ playback that triggers the first playback in the sequence and a second cue that releases all of the sequence playbacks. This is not readily expandable and quite clunky to implement. Also changing the speed will require exiting the cue times on each playback. Yuk. Possibly you could have a master playback that triggers and releases each sequence playback, that would probably make time editing far easier and all the sequence playbacks need to do is light the light. As yet I can’t think of a better way. At least on FLX/S there are no real shortage of playbacks and the sequence playbacks could be buried on a later page. We’ll all keep having a think as this is fundamentally not unusual as a requirement.

No problem Bob.

Had a quick peruse of the manual. Didn’t see anything about auto-go but I could have missed it. Other option which I’d probably use on my Alcora (Jester predecessor) would be to programme your snap lights onto a sub master and also into your fade cue. At the cue point press and hold the flash button for the sub master and press GO. After the fade up time of the fade cue, HTP will hold your snap lights on and you can release the flash button.

I doubt you could do this directly, you can’t on an FLX and that is a much more advanced console. I don’t know Jester so happy to be told I’m wrong. Can Jester do auto follow cues? I’d do the snap as the first cue then auto-go to a next cue that does the fade cue. That’s how I’d do it on Frog which is much closer to Jester in functionality. If no auto-go then a quick finger on GO is what you’re left with (On FLX we’d have other option like triggering other playbacks but I think the above would still be simplest to programme and maintain). Good luck! Kevin

Old post I know but your only hope now is one of the distributors: https://www.zero88.com/distributors/list/united-kingdom-and-ireland 5 are listed in the north west, but I don’t know which if any are still Zero88 dealers, or can offer repair services. Keith and Ian Knight are both gone (in different ways unfortunately).

The manual page 51 says the DMX input port performs a merge into the DMX output. See also page 20 item 4. So if you patch to different addresses it seems like this should work after cabling the DMX output of one Jester into the DMX input of the other. So have a read of the manual, and more importantly, try it out. https://www.vari-lite.com/b-dam/vari-lite/discontinued-products/jester/english/jester-manual-3-4.pdf Note: All our friends from Zero88 are gone and no one from Vari-lite has any interest in their current consoles let alone legacy ones they had no involvement with. So unfortunately we’re ’flying solo’ now. So us users (or non-users in my case with Jester) is all there is now. If you find out that you can (or indeed if you can’t) chain Jesters like this to expand your controllable channel count, it would be good if you’d take the time to document your findings here, to help other users. Good luck with your show.

Is it related to ‘Hide Fader Pages’ here? https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/setup/settings/operational

I was going to suggest inhibit but I think that’s more a sticking plaster over the issue rather than a proper approach that David described above.

I believe you’re correct. I think MIDI and OSC can only trigger pre programmed cues. Others will know better than me though.

OSC or MIDI would be the usual remote control methods. Others on here have experience of these and will no doubt be along shortly (I have no experience of using them). You could search the Forum for OSC, there are quite a few detailed threads. User @Davidmk has a lot of OSC experience so you could look at posts by him in the FLX/FLX-S and Solution forums. examples:

There’s the USB Creator flow for FLX (not FLX-S) console recovery: https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/software-updates/zeros-usb-creator

You create a chase on a fresh playback. Then you trigger and release that chase playback from cues in your main cue stack. To be able to get at states in your chase you use SHIFT-Playback GO to get to the state you want to edit without the chase running on. Then you edit the state using UPDATE as you would any other cue. https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/chases

The AI overview on search term ‘what is a transmission line in digital signalling’ seems pretty good. It has characteristic impedance and signal termination sections. Sorry to the OP, we’ve probably gone a bit over board now! 🤓

Actually in audio the shell shouldn’t be connected to pin 1 either. Pin 1 is signal ground, shell is chassis ground and they aren’t the same thing as they deal with different types of interference (electrical, magnetic). https://www.ranecommercial.com/legacy/note165.html

For analogue audio cables, the impedance is not really an issue because the signal frequencies involved are very low. For digital signals the edge rate is very important and the capacitance of the cable has a big effect on this. Even for DMX at 250kbit/s the required frequency components can be well into the megahertz. Analogue audio cables of any appreciable length as can be found in DMX runs will severely attenuate the high frequencies required to convey a digital signal properly. For a digital signal like DMX, the cable acts like a ‘transmission line’ (Google that). That’s why we use terminators.

An ohmmeter won’t help you. The cables don’t have a different dc resistance they have a different ac impedance. The most practical way to tell is from markings on the sheath of the cable that will tell you it’s ’DMX’ or ‘digital’ cable maybe. If it says ‘microphone cable’ it’s not really for DMX use. You can use ‘DMX cable’ for microphones but ideally not ‘microphone cable’ for DMX. (My response coincided with David’s posting, I’ll read that now!).

@Davidmk unless the desk is continually rebooting due to intermittent power I doubt such a fault would only affect the LCDs. Happy to be proven wrong!

If you have no luck elsewhere, it's probably worth posting on the Blue Room too as there will be a lot of these desks (and the others I list) out in the wild. https://www.blue-room.org.uk/forum/2-lighting/

You were possibly referring to a post on here or the Blue Room by our good friend Ian Knight @iank99. Unfortunately Ian is no longer with us and I don't know what happened to what would have been an extensive stock of new and used Zero88 spare parts. If anyone reading this knows if that stock was salvaged and can be purchased, then it would be useful to make this community aware.

There's a non-gen one here. Can't vouch for it though (one user commented "don't work"): https://ultralightsound.co.uk/product/replacement-power-supplies-for-zero-88-desks/ I find this thread but the other two supplier links (10-out-of-10 and Stage Gear don't work any more). This page has the part number, which might be useful in searches as the same PSU is used by: Illusion, Jester, Juggler, Leap Frog 48/98, Solution in addition to the Frog series: https://www.vari-lite.com/global/products/frog-series#_spareparts There is this non-gen (maybe a ULS one): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/316738459895 There's a Jester thread here: https://www.blue-room.org.uk/topic/75786-zero88-jester-power-supply/ The OEM model number seems to be SPU41-13D-1 but having a google, other output connectors can be used. I suspect the Frog only uses the +5V with +12V only for the lamp; I suspect -12V isn't used.

Ok good stuff. If I have a few spare moments some time (when it’s not sunny!) I might have a bash at building fixture definitions. I’ll post here if/when I do. Feel free to remind me if you need them!

I’ve been having a look around the manuals/forum (without much success/clarity). This post seems to essentially confirm what you observed earlier - 16-bit dimming was added for ZerOS. I assumed, but not it seems, that my Fat Frog would support 16 bit dimming as I have fixtures defined as such. Seems I must be wrong as this thread was about Frog range. I would have thought however that Jester TL would do full 8-bit dimming rather than percentage, but again this seems maybe contrary to your earlier observations. This does bemuse me, because of course the processor is working in binary (and I very much doubt they went to the pain of using BCD!).

I’m not sure if this would help but might be worth a play, if Jester supports Virtual Dimmer. Define a beamshape or position (something that will support 16 bit parameters) onto the channels that the fixture uses for MSB:LSB intensity, then a define a Virtual Dimmer then scale that 16 bit parameter with Virtual Dimmer. I wonder if that might be a method to get you better control at the bottom end. Might not work as a scale on a 16 bit value but as you seem up for a few wacky trials, might be worth a play.