Newbie needing basic help

[dlashof]

First off, please forgive my ignorance. I have read a bit and I am more confused. As stated I am a newbie to DMX. I have worked with lighting for many years, but primarily with fixed position fixtures. I am a volunteer at a retirement community "theater" that has two moving lights - Vector Led 160. They are currently connected to Show Cad which is just too confusing and may also not be functioning properly as it freezes up and is intermittent in properly saving fixture placement.

I want to simplify things for us old folks. One confusion is on the Home page of Freestyler it say that all I need is a dongle where other places it implies I need a controller like the ShowCad one. I also don't find my fixture (it's documentation says 12 channels and lists those channel locations) in the list and am confused as how to manually set that up. I have looked at the Wiki categories and have read some on the topic, but don't really understand it. Our usage of the software will be for very simple cues like lights up here, then lights up there, maybe an occasional special Gobo/color effect. Kind of like with stationary fixtures, but with the ability to pre-aim like a spotlight as we have limited fixed lighting fixtures (14 pars) that are difficult to re-aim for us old folks. We don't want a noisy traditional follow spot for a number of reasons so this was the potential solution.

I have spend some time with the software and basically understand most of the controls, other than writing cues, but until I can actually configure it for my lights, it is a little difficult to understand.

I appreciate any and all help, thanks again from this mostly an audio guy trying to help get these lights working again.

[sheesh07]

My moving head doesnt have flashy effects that adjust the intensity of dimmer automatically to match a beat of a song unless i manually drag its faders up and down. How can I do that same effect? Any idea? Newbie in freestyler

[djSupport]

Please ask in a new separate topic