Tablet / controller suggestions

[UniCav]

Brain picking time! I really love FS but I've had a mixed bag of control results. For those who aren't familiar with my story, I'm the lead singer + light tech for a cover/party/wedding band. I started using FS a couple years ago with 8 SlimPAR 64s and a couple ADJ Mega 24s with plans to expand.

I started with a Windows laptop but it was too hairy near the front stage area.
Tried an external number pad, not enough buttons.
Got a USB control pad, awesome but during shows I kept losing control and had to shut down FS, unplug everything and restart. I burned this forum up and had a lot of help troubleshooting but every time I thought I had it fixed it happened again.

Finally I bought a Dell Venue 8 Pro and used Touch Screen mode with a micro USB cable to a powered hub to save battery on the tablet. This has been the most stable so far but I still have issues with the micro USB cable getting loose or going bad, and the screen isn't great for sliders for speed and tap sync is completely unreliable.

With a new member coming in we're about to expand to 16 PARs, a Swarm 5fx, a Chauvet 4Bar and a laser. The PARs will be on a truss in back, the 4Bar will be a front wash. I need to program chases for the back lights and generally plan to switch the others to auto sound during chases, then turn off the Swarm and laser and set the 4Bar to a static color along with the PARs between songs.

I need to upgrade my tablet or change to some other controller that's more reliable and easier to use. Either a better tablet, some kind of Bluetooth controller, or possibly step beyond this to a different system.

So for those out there who have to control lights while performing, what do you use?

[UniCav]

After looking at all kinds of controllers, tablets and everything in between I've decided to just get a convertible touch screen laptop and keep it off to the side or back somewhere. Now that we have a new keyboard player I won't have to keep it right up front anyway. If anyone has more suggestions on what works well for someone actively performing on stage please let me know thanks

[ewdieckman]

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I'll make the recommendation that has worked well for our band. I'm the guitar player, sound guy and light guy for our band. In order to deal with all that, I had to keep my setup relatively simple during the show. I also wrote a piece of software to help me along as well. I'll just post the link as I describe my setup there. If you want more details about a particular aspect, let me know and I'll dive into it more. But I will say that my current setup works VERY well for us.

viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6277

[UniCav]

Very nice solution ewdieckman. I picked up a Dell Inspiron X2 at Office Depot for $420 last Thursday and stayed up until about 11pm Friday night with it hooked up to every DMX fixture we have except the old laser addressing and adding them to my existing chases. Saturday night I got everything rigged up and with the laptop standing in tent mode on the bass player's cabinet or the "fridge" as we call it, it worked flawlessly all night. I've got a couple issues to work on but they aren't controller related and I'm going to ask in another forum about them.

[UniCav]

A shot of the band with the new truss, snowball and 4-bar. The Swarm is out of view to the left. You can see the new laptop behind the keyboard player on top of the bass cabinet. This is really a testament to how awesome FS is and why ultimately I decided to stick with it instead of throwing way more money into a good programmable DMX controller and trying to learn a whole new system. I was able to reprogram every chase I had to include activity on all those new fixtures in about an hour and the system ran perfect all night.

[Nathanrs93]

Nice tidy rig there, Unicav. Looking good

[UniCav]

Thanks. It looked better last weekend when I got my Chauvet CLP-10's on the PARs so I could mount them 4x4 like I wanted as you can see in this pic.

20150221_122721-1.jpg

We had a benefit going on and we provided PA and lights for the day. That's one of the other bands from the day. I got some very nice compliments on the rig. I also got to try out the Android App which was surprisingly easy to setup. I only had an issue with FS crashing a couple times and stop responding, I believe it happened whenever I closed the app on my phone and tried to reconnect later. I managed to add the Shinp DL-22GP to the fixtures and using one of the fixture files I found here I was able to turn it on/off. Made the show look a lot better and I added a new chase called "FREAKOUT" for the end of some songs where I kick in the strobe effects on the Snowball and 4Bar and flash my PARs back and forth really fast. I'm going to have to add DMX foggers soon