Anyone have any experience with using a CME Pro WIDI-8X (wireless MIDI adapter) setup for control of lighting cues from a SCS cue?
I have a production coming up (Annie Get Your Gun) in which the director would like Annie to shoot out a number of candles (electric/incandescent) as one of her trick (over the shoulder, using a mirror, riding a bicycle) shots. Rather than relying on the light board operator to correctly time/anticipate blacking out the candles in sequence with each gun shot (from SCS) I've suggested the possibility of snuffing each candle with a sub-cue using MIDI control from SCS. The laptop will be located on the main floor back of house while the light board is located in the control booth at the back of the 1st balcony. Running MIDI cable between the two is impractical (not impossible-just undesirable) and the CME Pro WIDI-8X would seem to be a great solution at a decent cost. The light board is an ETC Express.
MIDI Lighting Control w/CME Pro WIDI-8X
Re: MIDI Lighting Control w/CME Pro WIDI-8X
Ah well it looks like I'll be treading on new ground. I'll be ordering the WIDI units on Wednesday, July 23 but as I'll be on vacation (2 weeks) at the end of July I won't get a chance to work with them until early August when I return. Once I do (probably several weeks of intermittent interaction due to my 'normal' work schedule) I'll post what my experience, good or bad, with them has been for your enlightenment.
Re: MIDI Lighting Control w/CME Pro WIDI-8X
So I'm back from vacation and have begun to work with the WIDI units.
My initial efforts in Day 1 were met with limited success; I managed to enable MIDI Show Control on the ETC Express 48/96, the laptop computer recognized and automatically installed the needed driver for the unit and the unit showed up in SCS as a choice for MIDI Device (USB Audio Device). On the other hand I couldn't get the Control Send Cue to do anything constructive (I received an error message indicating that SCS couldn't identify a MIDI port). It had been a long work day and it was time to leave the theater and head home for a rest.
Now in Day 2 after having had the good rest and discovering my error (I discovered that I had neglected to select a MIDI Out device in the 'General Options' 'Permanent Options' 'MIDI Devices & Control' tab.) I retried my tests, at home, sans the benefit of ETC Express 48/96 to interact with. Lacking the use of the theater light board I set up the laptop, now installed with SCS 10.1.2, to do the normal show audio efxs control and set up my desktop with SCS running as a receiving unit. While I didn't use the laptop to actually control anything within the desktop SCS I was able to determine that the MIDI string from the laptop was successfully being transmitted and received using SCS's 'Test MIDI output' option on the laptop (as well as an actual show condition run of the cues) and SCS's 'Test MIDI input' option (Which I'm very grateful for!) on the desktop.
Because of this now being a holiday weekend (Labor Day) here in the States I won't have access to the theater until Tuesday (9/2) and will have to wait until then to interact with the ETC board - but I'm now much more hopeful.
In the mean time I plan to run a test of usable distance for transmissions since I expect to run sound efxs from the main floor back of house position (the usual location next to the sound engineer/mixer) and the light board is located at the back of the 1st balcony in a control booth with wood and concrete between us.
One week until Tech - keeping my fingers crossed! Stay tuned.
My initial efforts in Day 1 were met with limited success; I managed to enable MIDI Show Control on the ETC Express 48/96, the laptop computer recognized and automatically installed the needed driver for the unit and the unit showed up in SCS as a choice for MIDI Device (USB Audio Device). On the other hand I couldn't get the Control Send Cue to do anything constructive (I received an error message indicating that SCS couldn't identify a MIDI port). It had been a long work day and it was time to leave the theater and head home for a rest.
Now in Day 2 after having had the good rest and discovering my error (I discovered that I had neglected to select a MIDI Out device in the 'General Options' 'Permanent Options' 'MIDI Devices & Control' tab.) I retried my tests, at home, sans the benefit of ETC Express 48/96 to interact with. Lacking the use of the theater light board I set up the laptop, now installed with SCS 10.1.2, to do the normal show audio efxs control and set up my desktop with SCS running as a receiving unit. While I didn't use the laptop to actually control anything within the desktop SCS I was able to determine that the MIDI string from the laptop was successfully being transmitted and received using SCS's 'Test MIDI output' option on the laptop (as well as an actual show condition run of the cues) and SCS's 'Test MIDI input' option (Which I'm very grateful for!) on the desktop.
Because of this now being a holiday weekend (Labor Day) here in the States I won't have access to the theater until Tuesday (9/2) and will have to wait until then to interact with the ETC board - but I'm now much more hopeful.
In the mean time I plan to run a test of usable distance for transmissions since I expect to run sound efxs from the main floor back of house position (the usual location next to the sound engineer/mixer) and the light board is located at the back of the 1st balcony in a control booth with wood and concrete between us.
One week until Tech - keeping my fingers crossed! Stay tuned.