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Lighting Control on Non-Windows Systems?
fgodfrey asks: "Being a computer geek during the day and a theater geek at night, I'm looking to combine the two and turn a non-Windows computer into a theater lighting console. All the products out there that I've seen (such as Martin's 'Light Jockey' and Rosco's 'Horizon') only seem to support Windows. I'm looking for a solution that works on Linux, or preferably, Mac OS X. It also would require a DMX converter (DMX being the standard in dimmer control protocols) that could plug into the computer. I'm looking to be able to run an entire theater show directly from the computer. Has anyone out there tried such a thing? Before anyone suggests X10, it is not really acceptable for theater lighting as it doesn't respond 'instantly' to commands and would require a ton of X10 boxes."
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=linux+dmx+control&spell=1
Get one of these dongles and you can roll your own light board. Comes with all the C libraries you'll need. Or if your feeling extra macho build your DMX frames by hand in VI.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
If you'll excuse an uninformed comment, it appears to me that your complaints aren't about PC-based control systems at all, but rather about the bad user interfaces on PC-based control systems.
In particular, it sounds like they make very heavy use of mouse-based control, when they should do as much as possible with the keyboard. With 100 keys, and tens of thousands of key combinations, a well-designed UI should allow you do do damned near anything, really quickly and easily, with just a simple keyboard.
The one exception, of course, is smooth changes. You asked: "how smooth can you move a mouse"? Actually, people can move a mouse *very* smoothly, over a relatively short distance side to side. But I suspect that the controls require you to slide up and down, since that seems to be the common orientation of sliders on window systems.
If side-to-side mouse movement doesn't do the trick, it seems to me that you could easily get some of the wheel and slider controls used on MIDI controllers and use those for smooth input -- that's exactly what they're designed for and nearly every PC can be connected to them.
To summarize: I suspect that a PC-based lighting control system could be excellent, if it had a UI that was constructed by someone who understood both UIs and theatre lighting.
OTOH, I don't know beans about either, so why listen to me?
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I use a really cheap MIDI keyboard to trigger the presets of my light show. It really saves a lot of key pressing to get to different pages of scenes. I can still grab a fixture manually and make adjustments on-the-fly
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
We have an as-yet-unamed solution that I funded and co-wrote back when I was making phat-cash in the dot-com days. It's GPL'd, written using OmniOrb/C++ and Python/GTK. It uses a PCI DMX card from soundlight.de and is fairly much rock-solid. I've used it for multiple shows, some of them fairly complex. Give me a shout if you're interested. We haven't spend any real resources on packaging it. We have a web page for us http://inaugust.com -- but you won't find links there. So just contact me directly and I'll hook you up with info.
I think you are thinking on the wrong level. Lighting control requires none of the features you speak of. The lighting control system I use at work is a custom pII system (designed for stability and has the lighting specific ports added) that is connected to a monitor and a board with lots of sliders, buttons, and a wheel. There is nothing intricate displayed on the monitor, its most common use is displaying what is basically a screen full of numbers (looks kind of like the more advanced console applications in linux).
What makes the system special is the board with sliders and the overall stability. Any computer with a DMX controller connected could run a cue based show, but its the ability to work on the fly that is valueable. Try to run a show if your cues go bad, a normal PC doesnt have crossfaders (with controlable time too) and multiple sets if dimmers (set up one scene while the other is in action, then switch)
The real uses of a powerful PC in lighting is with a program like WYSIWYG from etc(I think?) that works kind of like a 3d modling program for lights. Build your stage and lighting rigs and then start experimenting with color and angles. You can connect it to an in place lighting system and then transfer the cues over from WYSIWYG. It is a lot easier than physically adjusting hte lights just to see.
Bottles.
Look for a real lighting board. Most have computer links via serial and run from a dos based screen to display scene advances, programming and control.
Back in my old high school, my last year in drama (SR year) we got a hold of a light board that accepted programming from a serial pc. We used a lunchbox 286 with a monochrome screen non productionally. When it came down to the real production we just used the boards programmable scenes or winged it ourselves. I cant remember the unit brand we used but it also had a pcima slot for adding flash memory pcima cards (the years before flash came in those handy little smart media size and compact flash sizes) for storing scene data and other selections.
We never got really into the board as we were SR's in the school and the school was going to be renovated the next year for 6th and 7th graders. Its a shame we didnt have some real time to play with the thing. Our light pack only handled 12 channels and that thing was a clunker. 2 of the voice coils sang out loud but otherwise it functioned as long as the DMX card didnt get damaged.
God I miss being a theatre tech geek! At least I still get to twiddle with sound boards every now and then and cheapie dj lightboards for small concerts.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
You're going to need to weigh the pros/cons of having multiple consoles vs a single PC. On one hand, if you're short on space, the PC is more compact. On the other hand, as the original poster metioned, most PC based systems require MS-Windows. I've found in my experience over the years, the old fashioned two scene board with programmibility (presets, cues, chases) to be the most versatile and easiest to use on a moment's notice.
There has been one case over the years, where the PC based solution was superior to the console. We used to use an old Martin 3032 DOS based control system (on a 486) for a bank of roboscans. It was replaced with an Avolites Azure. The PC has proven more userfriendly, easier to program, more stable, and more reliable still than the replacement console.
As a compromise to having a PC do everything, you might want to look at the Express/Expression from ETC. They have an offline editor for the PC that you can use to create a show, and then upload it to the console for further tweaking/operation.