kgallen

Hi, If you look in the System Text pane in System information under the Z key, is there an error message logged during boot? If you program some more then power cycle the desk, is the new programming recovered? Kevin

Just intrigued; Jon on your Orb screen shot, "Next: 2", yet the orange bar is next to cue 1 "Audience enter", and if "Current: 1" shouldn't that bar be green? Sorry... just interfering...!

That's a really interesting paper Jon. It's from 2014, do you know where the standard got to and what industry adoption is like? I've not heard much talk of this so maybe not much? It looks to me that a lot of the complexity could be in the fixture rather than the controller, so maybe not attractive to manufacturers except for high end fixtures?

Oh-yea, that's really nice now grouping them under the subgroups - looks good on phone and desktop! Thanks!

Hi Jon, Thanks for the feedback! I can handle known "irregularities" versus am I just being thick/going mad! Cheers, Kevin

I've finished the show and I want to reset the desk back to a fresh state ready for setup of the next. I want to remove the current show and everything that is specific to this show. I can use Clear All - but that leaves the patch in place for all dimmers and fixtures, including their modified names. I can use Reset Desk - this removes the patch but also removes my additional fixture definitions, so I need to reload them from USB (ok, a simple job). Factory Reset - what does this do in addition to Reset Desk? The manual doesn't clarify this. Thanks, Kevin

Thanks Jon! It would be nice to still have the release notes as a separate (i.e. small!) pdf file as it takes a long time to download the 80MB gzip file, Also the release notes are handy to pull up on the phone quickly when 3G access or worse can be all that's available! The new ZerOS page looks nice on the laptop/desktop, but on a phone it's quite hard to navigate - took me a few moments to find the links as they are over to the right of the page/half way down (I was looking top, bottom, tapping the pictures etc, which got me nowhere!) Thanks, Kevin

Hi Peter, Might be worth dropping Keith a direct line, either with your text or to point him towards this Forum entry: KeithRogers@eaton.com Failing that, then Ian at CTS might be able to give you some knowledgeable support: ian@centraltheatresupplies.co.uk Hope you get this sorted soon. Regards, Kevin

Likely candidate is the 100k sync resistors. I've posted on this so will try to find the details for you. Here - Just a couple of topics down in this same sub-forum: http://zero88.com/forum/topic/7712-betapack-1-channel-fault/

Ah the dipswitches mixed with an "oh yes.... I had been having a little firtle under the hood..." Those dipswitches are used to tell the processor information about the fader panels - the larger consoles in the Frog range (Leap Frog, Bull Frog) have more faders and the CPU needs know which is which. It looks like you had two fader panels with the same ID which confused the interpretation of the fader position which is why you had 'n' vs 'n+12' channel issues. Glad your problem is solved now! Good luck, Kevin

If you're still having issues, then worth dropping Keith an email on KeithRogers@eaton.com as it could be a voltage reference issue on the fader card. If you use ch13 on it's own does that behave properly or does that get stuck at 81% too? Kevin

Just use a dry air spray nothing more unless advised by Zero88.

Come on Ian, you're from Coventry, so be a bit more realistic. I think you should aim at.... Rugby! mardy - I'm assuming our southerner friends found it as the first item from Google! Sorry to Amy for going off topic so far...!

Oh, sorry, 'fraid not. Secret language you see. We can't let you in on everything, Devon is certainly in the 'down South' camp 😂

Well it's a good job you're responding to a fellow Midlander. I've had to explain this regionalism more than once to my Southerner wife! Down there they have no usable equivalent!

It's the season for it... I was helping a local school on Tuesday with close to the same problem. Seems the "lighting only comes out once a year for the school concert"

So are you fully up and running?

Alex, you've "only" got 24 dimmers, not 42 (or 48), so you have 24 dimmable "things" as per my original post. You don't have the kit to have independent control of all 42 lamps. 4 x Betapack3 = 4 x 6-channels of dimming = 24 dimmers. However I would like to note that this is a nice setup (and a properly dimensioned setup) for a school, so don't feel hard done by that you've "only" got 24 channels. Using your Jester in 2-preset 24-channel mode with the 24 dimmers is the ideal configuration for easy walk-up lighting for your school shows. It's common to have say 2 lights commoned to one dimmer channel where the lighting design needs a bit more "umph" from a certain lighting direction. Of course with Jester you can get into programming, as per the manual. Kevin

Get the manuals for the Jester and the Betapack3. You need to do a 1:1 DMX patch. That means the Jester talks on DMX addresses 1-24 for faders 1-24 [Preset A] (and also DMX addresses 1-24 using [Preset B], controlled by the Preset Masters) and each Betapack responds to a group of 6 DMX addresses, so your 4 Betapacks should show addresses 001, 007, 013, 019 on their front panel LEDs (*). You've got 24 dimmer channels but 42 lights so some of your lights will need to be commoned (i.e. will come on together). Your lighting design might not require all 42 lights but essentially you have dimming to control 24 "things", where a "thing" might be one light, or multiple lights providing you don't exceed 2kW/10A total load per dimmer channel. You'll be using the Jester in 2-preset 24 channel mode, not 48 channel "wide" mode. (*) Betapack3 supports per-channel DMX address configuration. You need to make sure they are in the "simplest" mode where you give one "base" address (as per my list above).

Hi Amy, (Answering here in the context of Fat Frog, but Illusion 500 is probably the same). The cft is the set of fixture files "built in" to the desk. On Fat Frog, the cft is 20 fixtures and if you reset the desk to "empty" then these are the 20 fixture types that you can patch straight away. Any other fixture definitions you can load from floppy disk as required (via an ift file), but the cft are always available in the desk. When you load a new release of operating software, this includes a set of fixtures that Z88 consider the most likely, or common to use. However as a desk owner you might prefer your own mix of "common fixtures" and this is the purpose of the Common Fixture Editor and cft file. You use the Common Fixture Editor to create your own cft with your choice of 20 fixtures pulled from the standard or your own fixture library [see Edit below before running off and doing this!]. For example, my cft has the LED fixtures I usually use, and I removed the Clay Paky, High End and other fixtures that I don't usually use. This means my desk has everything it needs internally for me to patch once I've finished rigging - I don't need to go searching for my floppy disk(s) of fixture definitions. On the larger/newer desks like FLX, pretty much the whole standard fixture library is held in the desk. However even then I load my own custom fixture library, which I have to repeat whenever I upgrade the operating software on the desk. Sorry that ended up quite a long post... however I hope that explains the cft versus the ift! Regards, Kevin Edit: This is discussed on p1-2 and 3-11 but it looks like your desk doesn't need/use the cft file, you just directly load the required fixtures into the common fixture set stored on the desk. This would make it a bit more of a faff when upgrading software but I guess this is now a mute point in 2016 as you won't be getting any more software releases...! http://zero88.com/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/11/47/illusion-500-operating-manual-en

Ah so that's my bright idea for the problem banged to rights then! Reg, if my revised profile is still no good then we need to look deeper!

Hi Reg, I had a quick look at your profile in the Fixture Tools and it looks superficially ok (I didn't check against the manual). I notice you haven't allocated any wheels to any function - you say in your title that it's for Fat Frog, so you'd need to allocate each parameter within the "3-Wheel Groups" tab. I've assigned these in the attached. You might want to edit this profile and group them a little more to your liking! Note there are multiple pages of Beamshape so you'll need to press the Beamshape button to cycle through the pages to get the required parameter available on a wheel. Let me know if it's still broken or this wasn't the problem you had (I've never tried it but its possible the Fat Frog will auto-allocate wheels if the fixture doesn't define them!). Re the 360 spin - this sounds like either a programming problem or maybe the HOME value for pan is not the "dead centre" position? Or maybe the MSB/LSB is the wrong way round for the 16-bit parameters pan/tilt (sorry didn't check the manual). Regards, Kevin Sharpy_Clone_v2.ift

Hi Matt, I've reviewed the 7.9/7.9.1 Release Notes and I was over-confident in my original post regards move/copy changes in 7.9.1. However there are lots of updates and bug fixes in that release, so your issues may well have been addressed. If they haven't we should get them raised with Jon! I can't say I've noticed this happening with 7.9 (although I've probably not done this often), but let me know if you have a specific example and I can try on my desk, or we can get the Zero88 folks to investigate. I just tried on 7.9.1 PhantomZerOS: Created a group of ch1-6, named it, then updated for ch1-7 and my original name remained (and indeed the group did then also select ch1-7). Likewise I created a colour palette, named it, then changed and updated it. This seemed to work fine and the name remained, so hopefully the issues you are seeing on 7.8.5 are now fixed. Regards, Kevin

Hi Matt, It's worth upgrading to 7.9.1 software as I know there have been quite a few enhancements to move/copy functionality since 7.8.5. When you say "preset" do you mean a cue on a playback? Is this enough information from the user manual (http://www.zero88.com/manuals/flx-user-manual-version-1.pdf) to get you going with Highlight? Regards, Kevin Assigning advanced functions to a UDK A UDK can be assign an advanced function to a UDK. These functions include Park, Highlight, Rem Dim, etc. These functions are detailed elsewhere in the manual. To assign one of these functions to a UDK, first make sure the UDK is blank (using the delete command listed below) and then hold down Setup and press one of the UDKs. This will open a window on the internal display where the function you wish to use can be selected. The “normal” option is how the UDK will function when pressed normally, and the “Shifted” option has the same options, but is how the UDK will function when pressed whilst holding the Shift button. A bit on these Forum entries, which refer to older software (probably 7.8.5) and show the intended use-model which should work in 7.9.1: http://zero88.com/forum/topic/7257-highlight/ http://zero88.com/forum/topic/7247-using-next-and-prev/

Reg, Can you post your profile file - at least that gives us a starting point, and when you get it back you can see how it was adjusted. Kevin