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I have 8 Chauvet SlimPAR 64's and 2 ADJ Mega24 Pro's all up and running and I've managed to create a couple sequences and run them from the queue. I'm looking for suggestions on building sequences, layering, etc to use in a live setting. I'm the lead singer and keyboardist for our band so I'm really busy with the crowd throughout the whole show, but now I'm also the one figuring out the lights. I can handle tap syncing as a song starts or in the middle of a song to resync and we're looking into some midi sync from our drum rig as well. I think I could use a keyboard shortcut to stop/start/blackout. But what I'm looking for help/suggestions with is building a set of chases/sequences/cues/etc to work through an actual song. Something like being able to fade in, run some different chases, add some effects, strobes,etc during an important moment, and then end on a full on or fade out.
I've done a little digging through the wiki and youtube and all I've found so far is very basic instructions.

We can give as much advice and information as you want, but really you're the best person to find out what works for you and your band. It's about working your way through FS and finding out which is better for your needs i.e submasters, overrides, cuelist, etc, as what we use could be something you don't like.

I think the best thing for you though would be cue lists and override buttons, putting a different number of things on each i.e strobe, blackout, fade sequence, snap sequence, etc. Then if you put a number of override buttons to keyboard shortcuts, you could "strobe" at that beat drop or when the crowd is really loving it at the moment by pressing one button then turning it off.

Just spend a night or so a week having a play around, maybe try and involve the rest of the band? They might come up with ideas you might have thought of, or might see a possible chance to adapt something you've come up with already. Good luck.

Maybe Go Monkey is for you. It allows you to create a stack of cues/sequences that you can trigger sequentially during each song with a single button push. Just search the FS forum for more details.

Nathanrs93 those were some good clues I'm' trying to find out more about using the cue lists and buttons now. I've about gotten the hang of creating a sequence, gotten fade ins and outs to look pretty good with my lights. It's interesting the ADJ Mega 24's have a much better fade reaction than the Chauvet SlimPAR's. I still seem to have issues with the master dimmer, sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. What I have to figure out now is how to create a cue list and edit buttons.

Kings I saw something in the forum about Go Monkey but didn't follow the thread very far I'll take another look thanks.

I guess what I'm shooting for right now is building some cues of sequences that I can start and let run through a song and fade out or black out at the end. Later on I'm hoping to get it to the point that I can cover a whole song with one selection.

I've made some progress. I switched my SlimPAR's to 3 channel mode which works better for fades and with the master dimmer. 7ch mode is really a waste because their macros/programs are crap and not even listed in the manual and I'll never use them in our stage shows anyway. I can create sequences fine. Haven't quite worked out the use of the cuelist buttons and override buttons. I have tinkered with keyboard shortcuts and that's awesome.

What is the best method to set up a static scene - like all fixtures on blue at 50% or something like that where you could just hit a button and everything will pop to that and just stay there? We do something like that during breaks so there's ambient light on the stage but not very bright.

UniCav wrote:I've made some progress. I switched my SlimPAR's to 3 channel mode which works better for fades and with the master dimmer. 7ch mode is really a waste because their macros/programs are crap and not even listed in the manual and I'll never use them in our stage shows anyway. I can create sequences fine. Haven't quite worked out the use of the cuelist buttons and override buttons. I have tinkered with keyboard shortcuts and that's awesome.

What is the best method to set up a static scene - like all fixtures on blue at 50% or something like that where you could just hit a button and everything will pop to that and just stay there? We do something like that during breaks so there's ambient light on the stage but not very bright.

Glad your making progress

Check these out as they may be useful: Link 1
Link 2

Also, if you wanted to do a blue static scene I would put in on a override button, making it easy. All you need, would be to click create sequence then put all your fixtures to 50% blue (via their lamp/dimmer channel), add a step then blackout by turning the dimmer for all your fixtures off, then save, add to override buttons and test. Hopefully if you've done it right, when you click it on it will light the fixtures up that you've programmed, blue, then click it again they will turn off Good luck, let us know how you get on.

Override buttons work for the static scenes except that they snap to. They don't honor the fades. Still very usable. I have set up key shortcuts to toggle the sequences in the cuelist but haven't figured out the purpose of the cue buttons. One of the challenges I have is how to put the 2 Mega24's into a program and then sync the speed to the PAR's. They just don't work quite that way and they get out of sync with each other. I'm probably going to have to simply program their steps manually instead of trying to use the built in programs.

Go Monkey is looking very interesting but I won't be trying to figure that out before our show this weekend. Right now I'm just trying to get some decent sequences on the PAR's on a cuelist so I can trigger them and use tap sync and blackout. I guess the next thing is either through cuelist and buttons or Go Monkey figuring out how to set up an entire song.

First show with the setup was quite good all things considered. I'm looking into getting an XPad keypad or something similar. I can't pay attention to the laptop during the whole show but if I had a keypad small enough to sit on my Yamaha keyboard's right speaker during the show I could toggle that way and the laptop could be on the back side of the stage out of the way as well.

Problems I have had -
Override buttons (13-17) I have set up for the Mega24's to change the static color on our banners. If I switch from one to another the 1st one turns off. That's fine. However Override buttons (1-5) that set all the fixtures static low light during breaks do not. i.e. if I tap button 1 then button 2, button 1 stays on and it reverts to that if I tap button 2 again. But hit button 13 then button 14, button 13 turns off and when I hit button 14 that goes off which is how it seems it should be to me.

Tap Sync - I have this mapped to the CTRL key but it's not accurate at all. Instead of hitting the key twice on a downbeat to sync I had to hit it once on a downbeat and again on a halfbeat to get it close. That was a PITA all night and it never was quite right. Could this be a glitch in the programming or is my CTRL key flaky or mapping it to a key causing a delay in response?

That said I was also trying to get the lights to respond to sound using my laptop's microphone but I couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried. Any better suggestions on getting the trigger to work that way or something better?

Cuelist - I have the cuelist set to always start with 1st step of sequence. It does not. I watched this very closely and the sequences always started at whatever point I switched off them. Also had them set to restore all values (blackout) when stopped but several times it didn't and I had to select the fixtures and clear them.

All in all it worked out really well. I hit an override button to set the color on the Mega24's uplighting the banners then toggled a cue sequence for the PAR's and set the speed. With a little more tweaking it's going to get even better. I still need to start working out how to program an entire song's sequences and I will probably use Go Monkey for that.

Thanks again everyone for your continued help in improving my rig!

Hi. I can't help with all your issues, but...
I believe the situation with some override buttons staying on when you push other ones and some not is to do with the sequences you have set them to and if they can run simultaneously or not.
If you have two buttons that control the same channels on the same fixtures, then they will be mutually exclusive - pressing one will disable the other.
But if you have two buttons that control different things, then they are not mutually exclusive and you can have both of these on at the same time.

I don't think the tap sync timing is a problem with your keyboard. There is some latency in the time the lights take to respond to DMX signals (and in the DMX signals themselves). There might be more to it than that as well...

I'm going to upgrade to 3.5.4 this week and do some more testing.
RE the buttons. The first row control all the lights while the last row controls only the Mega24's. But the problem is that the first row (all lights) every button stays on until I turn it off (push button 1, then button 2, button 1 stays on as well as button 2. then when I push button 2 again it reverts back to the settings of button 1 until I also turn off button 1),
while the last row, one button turns off the previous button (if I push button 13, then button 14 - button 13 turns off and after I push button 14 again to turn it off I don't also have to also turn button 13 off)

FS 3.5.4 seems to have fixed the problem with sequences not starting with 1st step.

The problem with Override Buttons still exists but it's more bizarre than I thought.
Button 1-3 are static colors I use during breaks - The PARs on the end of each tree are on and the Mega24's are on the same color and all are on a low level. Step 1 is the color, step 2 is off.
If I press one of the buttons they turn on (ok) then press again they turn off (ok)
but If I mess up and press another button and the 1st button is on they change but the 1st button stays active, which means I have to figure out which one I left on and turn it off too.
EXCEPT for button 2 - that one goes off if I press another button.

With buttons 13-16 I am only setting the Mega24's to a color. ALL of those buttons turn off when the next button is pressed. I'm totally bewildered by this. I've looked at the 2 steps and the options in each sequence and I just don't see any difference in how they are set up or why they act this way. Any ideas?

Perhaps you accidently have some random channels set to snap or fade, check your sequences make sure that all other lights are set to 'off' as lindsayward said if you have two buttons that operate the same channel either one will turn the other off that's why i have 20 gobo and colour overrides but it will always automatically turn off either a gobo or colour button if i override another color or gobo on the same channel...

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I think you're onto my problem because I remember having issues with the Mega24's programming sequences. I would program a step, go to the next step, etc. Then later when I would play it back the Mega24's wouldn't do all the steps. When I went back it seemed random steps would be on Fade or Off so I set all them to Snap. Yesterday I took a few minutes and opened one of those override button sequences and tried to set all the fixtures to OFF in step 2 but it wouldn't keep the setting on the Mega24's. It kept randomly setting them back to Fade or Snap. After about a dozen different tries and saves I quit on it. I'll just delete the scenes and start over.

OK Guys I'm at a loss. Seems no matter what I try I can't get Override Buttons to work properly.
Cleared all my Cue's and Override Buttons this morning.
I started with a new sequence. Set a couple PAR's to Red and both Mega24's to Red and saved the sequence.
Did the same steps for Green, Blue and Purple.
Added those sequences to Override Buttons and tried them. Cycling through them it turned each previous button off as it should until I got to the last one and then the next-last one stayed on. After that it was pandemonium again.
I started all over and created a Red sequence, then added a 2nd step and turned everything off.
Repeated procedure for Green, Blue, Purple. Added those to Override buttons.
Totally random. Some turn off others, some stay on no matter what.
Tried a 3rd time by creating a sequence, then starting a whole new sequence to ensure nothing is set from the previous one and so on for 4 different colors. Same exact problem.
And on top of that each time I press an Override Button then turn it off all the lights go full on blue.
I load the sequence in to see what might have been on blue and there's nothing.
I added a Release All keyboard shortcut so I could clear them and it's the same every time. Try an Override and they all go Blue when I turn it off.
Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Perhaps the fixture file is incorrect, do it all again but record what channels are changing... Via the sliders....

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Or zip your whole Fs directory and I'll give you details of a place to upload it if you haven't got a place already!

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I was watching the sliders on the Mega24's every step and they were all returning to 0 on the "off" step. The macros I use for those now do that. The only thing I didn't do was manually turn every single channel setting back to 'off' instead of leaving it on Snap which is what I believe every step did. Let me zip and upload the whole thing to dropbox and let you look at it. will give you a link ASAP. thanks.

You're not expecting override buttons to execute a sequence areyou? Because that isnt' going to happen.

Only way to do this is via the submaster.

I create sequences for each function; dimmer, color. So I grab the fixtures I want to work with, and only create sequences with that function (dimmer, or color) and save that sequence. Create another for colors.

I then dump those into their own cue group (by function) and then ad that as a submaster like Dimmers, or Colors. That way I can mix an match.

I create SINGLE SCENE sequences for overrides like a audience blinder, all stobe, spotlight possitions, or a single color blast.

My overrides are for 2 uses -
Before/After the show and during breaks I set some of the fixtures to static low light.
And during the show I set the Mega24's on a static color to uplight our logo banners.

My problem is getting one override to turn off the previous override, because when I'm fumbling around during the show trying to work the crowd, play keyboard, harmonica and sing AND tap the laptop at the start/finish of each song to work the lights I frequently hit a wrong override shortcut and instead of turning one off I hit another one. But if that would turn off the previous one for me that would be fine.

Well everyone just color me stupid and hang a WTF sign around my neck. I just went in there one more time, deleted all my static scenes and created a new set of scenes. Each scene I started from NEW, set the lights and saved the one step. Added all of them to Override Buttons and went through them. They all work. Each consecutive one on the same row turns off the last one. It doesn't work between rows of buttons but that's OK, I'm using each row for a function - 1st row is low lights, 2nd row is only the Mega24's and 3rd row is all on high. Whatever I did wrong the last several tries I must have finally done right. Next up is to work out some more chases and add an external keypad to make it easier to trigger.
Thanks again for all the help everyone. I'm gonna make this work yet