Simple menue or overlay?

[Badcat409]

I'm a total newbie. Once I get everything set up, is there a page in the existing software that just shows a board with faders on it? So our students can control the fixtures on the fly, without scenes or sequences? Or is there a plugin for that type of interface?
Thanks for your time reading this.

[Rod_Horning]

Depending on how many instruments and how many channels each instrument requires DMX400 (click on the link in the Freestyler Menu bar) might be what you want.

Of course you can simply select the instruments you want to control and use the sliders in the upper right hand corner. Note it works best if all the instruments you select are the same. Set those and then select the next set of instruments. Groups can help here.

Curious as to why you want to just use faders. Many modern boards use faders as submasters which mean you have to assign channels functions to the submasters - not much different than creating a scene/sequence.

[Rod_Horning]

Also:

https://www.freestylersupport.com/wiki/external_control

[Badcat409]

Rod;
Thanks for the reply. We have smaller laptops at the school where we are using FS. The upper right hand sliders are very small as is the mouse arrow, making it difficult to quickly set each fixture. So it would also be helpfull to have the ability to pick a fixture and have the sliders/controllers come up as a larger menue with a more traditional graphic that looks like a physical board, just to be able to demonstrate with. Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Rod_Horning]

Not exactly what you are looking for but perhaps a workable solution:

- Chose a computer to use as the development computer and do the following on this computer
- In Setup, Freestyler setup, Extra Options, check Cue multiselect always active
- You, the instructor, create 1 scene sequences. Each sequence sets the intensity of an instrument to 100%. In my test I set the fade times 500 (1/2 second) and the speed to 1000 (1 second).
- Load each sequence into a submaster.
- Save everything
For the students to play they would click on the submaster window - the link is in the top menu. For each submaster they need to click run after the submaster window opens. Now the slider to the right of each submaster can be used to control the intensity of its assigned instrument. (note: you can also do something similar with the colors if you RGB LED fixtures) - of course that will quickly use up the available submasters).

(If you send me your lighting set I can do this for you if you do not have to many instruments).

The way to distribute this to the students is to use the Freestyler Backup/Restore function to back up the development computer. Save the backup to a USB flash drive or network drive if the students can access a network drive. Each student computer would use the Freestyler backup/restore function to restore the system from the development computer.

As I mentioned, not exactly what you want but the sliders on the submaster should be a bit larger.

As an aside, I've tried lighting software on smaller screens. Lets just say that is not ideal.

The power of Freestyler really is the Sequence! However, if the USB to DMX interface is an ENTTEC PRO you could also experiment with ENTTEC PRO MANAGER software. While ENTTEC no longer publishes this software I have found other sites from which to download it - or - I think I could save it to a cloud drive and send you a link. Other interfaces may have similar software but I am only familiar with the ENTTEC app.

BTW you can, via WINDOWs settings, increate the mouse pointer size, shape and color.