NZ

Hi You will need to plug the smoke machine into the DMX cable run somewhere along the line. I would generally patch it as Channel 48 and then with the desk in wide mode hitting the flash button for channel 48 will make smoke or raising the fader will leave it on. If you wanted you could write a profile for a smoke machine and then use it on one of the fixture buttons. Hope that helps.

It is I believe the metal work that is different. You could probably hacksaw another hole in your desk :roll:

Yes!

There have been lots of questions and ideas. As a quick guide any new desk we do build will aim to be above the existing Frogs in terms of features and operation. It won't however aim at things like Grandma, Maxxyz etc. Rather it will offer you value for money with several of the features found in the bigger desks. It would be in the region of £5000. As to Sam's question the RRP for a Diablo is £539.00. As we all know this is not what you are going to pay for it if you shop around. Regards

Now that would be telling! It is safe to say that there will be a Frog II. It would be wrong to say exactly when it is due out, or perhaps I simply don't know yet :wink: . At present we offer a product that addresses a part of the control market and has a good share of the segment where it fits. When we bring out a new desk we will seek to broaden our share of the control market. That means we will offer a product that features many of the advanced features users are now asking for in Frogs. We have learnt a long time ago that not everyone is going to be happy though . It will also cost more than the existing Frogs. If you want the features that go into an Pearl or an Ultralight etc then they come at a cost of substantial development time and hardware costs. Once we have an idea of when this product will be available we will post it here. In the meantime though we will continue to develop software for the current Frogs and will implement more of the things that are being asked for, if they are possible and can be achieved in a way that is useable without you haveing to hold down three buttons and then push three others to get the effect to work:P . If you want many of the things being asked for like parameter level programming, unlimited fixtures etc then you really need to look at the Illusion as it does all of these things. The main difference is that it has no faders. That said you can plug in a fader wing and assign channels to these faders. How important are faders for channel levels or are you happy to program using a keypad? In the meantime though we are about to launch a new desk at Rimini, it is a small club style controller called Diablo. There should be data on our main website this week. Cheers

Hi we have a sister company iLight that is in the architectural market. By combining elements of their products with the Frog's it is possible to get a range of options. You can use an astronomical time clock, get a RS232 bridge or we do UIG's which have 6 or 9 switches. In all these cases a memory can be assigned to a switch or can be triggered by specific commands from Crestron or the time clock. If you can tell me exactly what you want to do then I can get you specific information.

Two things govern releases, when there are enough things to change and when we have time in RnD given we are also constantly delivering new product. I am not sure if a lot of you realise that the updates we do cost us in the region of £70,000 per year. Given that we don't charge for these we can't do an upgrade every two months. We will aim for one more upgrade this year. Bug fixes are different and happen as quickly as we can. Perhaps we should adopt a Windows approach and change the operating system every two years and charge a large sum to get it. best

Hi Haytech Let me know if you want a job I like your thinking.... We will have some more shirts made and we do sell them at cost which is about £12 to £15 depending on quality. We usually only give them away when we have new products.

How much are you prepared to pay for nice t-shirt?

Sorry Guys That picture was used to launch the Bull Frog, I think the ads said something about a new addition to the family... There are no new Frogs planned for the moment. We will be launching a new controller at Rimmini. It is aimed at the club market. It can control up to 18 movers of 6 channels or 9 of 12 or 4 of 24 channels. I am sure you get the idea. It can also run 18 dimmers. It has 108 memories which can be played back in 12 stacks of 250 steps each. You can overlay a page chase ontop of a playback stack. it has basic effects and a fan function. 19" rack mount size but can also be used flat on a table. It is called Diablo. There will be a spec sheet on the main Zero 88 web site later this week.

Hi Often there will be phantom power that is enough to run an egg strobe. I have never been able to do this successfully.

Sorry but it is difficult to launch new product if you tell people too early as it means you stop selling the old product in the meantime....that means losing business.

Hi No we are not going to implement a trackball in the near future. It is not something that would be easy to do. Yes it can be done but would cost considerably in development time which is I am afraid going to be going into Frog II.

Hi This won't happen in the next update unless you want to keep waiting for it for ever...every time we finish specing something we seem to add to it. I can see why you would like this feature but I do think that it starts to blur what the desks are about. It is a feature that will use buttons in a way that is unusual and does not fit with the what they are labled for or meant for. It will also eat up memories. We are giving you 20 subs in the next release, will this not go a long way to answering your problems. On a Fat Frog doing what you suggest will only give you an additional 24 looks.

Hi Mark If you need more memories and functionality, our sister company iLight has a more sophisticated network software that will also run with Frog Box. I am using one at the moment to trigger light shows in Malaysia that have around 300 memories triggering off an Astro time clock or being over ridden by a SMPTE show that is run for specific occassions. If we can look at what you are trying to do then we can spec the best pieces for it. Think of it as a bunch of building blocks that allow you to build a small apartment through to a Beverly Hills Mansion! I will be in LA for NAMM. If you email me off forum with a Phone number I will try and hook up with you while I am over. My email is geales@zero88.com. Cheers

What buttons do you see as being SX buttons on a Bullfrog?

Hi Mark Frog Box essentially is a cross over product with iLight which is our sister company that speduckes in the architectural market. Basically as a stand alone unit Frog Box can be triggered by an on board clock, by a simple remote go closure of which there are six so it is possible to select a different memory with a closure and then trigger it with a different one, run the cue list off a remot touch screen or trigger using SMPTE or Midi show control. Alternatively you get into the full range of products that can be used with it from the iLight range. This includes linking to other systems using RS232, a astronomical time clock, remote closures as many as you want, PE cells etc. If you can tell me what you are thinking of doing I will be happy to work through this with you. Alternatively you can call our dealer ACT lighting who are in LA. The best person to talk to will be Mike Falconer or Bob Gordon. I will be in LA next week if you want to discuss. Best

There is another brutal way which only works with lights that don't have HTP addresses. In other words the beam on/off is on an LTP attribute. You can write your own fixture that has multiple channels. If you had a simple 4 channel fixture then you would do it as follows: Chan 1 Pan Fix 1 Chan 2 Tilt Fix 1 Chan 3 Colour Fix 1 Chan 4 Beam Fix 1 Chan 5 Pan Fix 2 Chan 6 Tilt Fix 2 Chan 7 Colour Fix 2 Chan 8 Beam Fix 2 You would patch it as one fixture so for instance if you patched it to DMX 1 you would have to make the start address on Fix 1 DMX 1 and Fix 2 DMX 5. When programming you would select the fixture button, selecting colour would see Fix 1 on one wheel and Fix 2 on another. It would be very nasty to do this on a 20 channel fixture. That said I have programmed quiet happily 36 fixtures on Fat Frog using this. They were all 12 channel fixtures and I treated the brightness as a LTP parameter and put them into the beam area. Using the fixture editor software you can set up quiet nicely how the wheels work and give the attributes names so you know what is where. Hope that helps.

Just to clarify it is implemented on the bigger consoles in the range, Leap, Bull and Mambo Frogs.

Hi It should work fine. It will simply lose the additional 12 heads which as you say you don't have!

Hi I think Latching pallets is in the next software update. At the moment it would be beam, colour and focus, not sure about combining them.

Hi I am honestly not sure about the fixture patching.....It is easy on faders but with the fixture buttons it is a whole different thing. If memory serves the fixtures are I think fairly reliant on having a single HTP channel...K9 will be better able to answer. As to the article at the moment Lighting Dimmensions have said they will publish it, it will hopefully go into LSI or ???? It should be on our web site next week as well.

To get the files we all have to wait until Mr K9 Returns!

Hi Frog Two is a little way away. I was more trying to explain why Sirius was discontinued. We do have ideas for Frog two and will post this as we develop the idea.

K-Nine: I have added my comments in this post where appropriate: Hi A long list!!! Will try and go throught them in a sane way :wink: First off thanks for the support! 1) Countdown on playback, will put on the list for possible upgrades. This has already been requested in this forum, CLICK HERE 2) Mambo Frog patching, good point, will talk to the software guys. At present it is only possible to patch generic channels to multiple DMX addresses (duplicates). Fixtures (whether simple parcans or more complex scanners or moving heads) cannot be patched to more than one DMX address on any of the desks in the Frog Series. This is something we may wish to consider for future updates - Frog Reference 5463. 3) This is probably possible in some way. I am not sure how we would implement as we are using the F keys for some things in the next upgrade. I usually program a Cue that has the functions that you want...Yes I know you need the parameters and their levels. Fixture Reset has been raised on a number of occasions in the past and is not a trivial matter due to the fact that different manufacturers use totally different mechanisms to carry out the reset function. Some mechanisms involve several channels and/or times, so it is not simply a matter of setting channel x to y %. 4) Not sure how to solve this one at present. Interesting idea of having an LTP parameter in Brightness. Will see if we can change the software but my gut says this will be a major issue. I look forward to K9's pointed comments! The way that the fixture personality data is defined at the moment means that a fixture can only have a single brightness parameter. Brightness parameters are always processed as HTP; colour,beamshape and position parameters are always processed as LTP. There have been requests for both additional HTP (brightness) parameters for fixtures and the ability to put LTP parameters in the Brightness attribute. Both of these would require changes in the desk software and the fixture editing utilities. By adding more HTP parameters/fixture, the potential increase in processor load may well be significant. There are also other isssues to be considered re submasters and SX buttons as to how additional parameters in brightness are handled in terms of their outputs (HTP or LTP). Therefore , I believe that NZ's gut is correct 5) I think that this is probably going to be a lot harder to implement than you may think. K9 can no doubt be more specific about how the patching function works. I think something similar has been suggested on the Illusion forum. Assuming we are looking at individual generic channels here, perhaps we could look into the possibility of adding an 'output' function when patching the generic channels to the DMX outputs enabling you to flash the DMX channel ? 6) The whole use of the keyboard is being reviewed in the next update. 7) Back maybe Is this a "Go Previous" type of thing :?: 8 ) Beat is being added to the next upgrade 9) In the next upgrade. 10) Being reviewed 11) This is not an easy upgrade as it would mean changes to metal work but will be done on any new desks that we are doing. 12) I am afraid the whole concept of the desk is very different to Sirius 500 and I am not sure this is possible. 13) Frog Run is on the desks, there was one version of software which it was left out of but is there in current versions. As to Sirius 500, if it had of been as well accepted as Frog has been it would possibly still be around in a different version. Unfortunately outside of a very small loyal band of followers it was not shall we say one of our all time best sellers! Due to the hardware and firmware platforms it was built on it also become very expensive to upgrade and maintain. Frog on the other hand has been very successful which means we are able to continue supporting it on a regular basis with software and we will use it as a platform to build Frog Two on.