JSHAA News

Vectorworks Spotlight features bi-directional data exchange with Lightwright 5.

Vectorworks Spotlight and Lightwright 5 are natural partners, and now Nemetschek and City Theatrical are too. All U.S. City Theatrical dealers can supply Vectorworks Spotlight to their customers along with Lightwright.

• Vectorworks Spotlight: The CAD program of choice for professional lighting
• Lightwright 5: The lighting professional’s choice for paperwork software

Click here for more information on Vectorworks Spotlight
Click here for info on a free student version of Vectorworks
Click here for more information on Lightwright 5

Ultratec Special Effects has announced the release of their new Dry Icer Low Lying Fogger.

The Dry Icer is a New and Improved Professional, Cost Effective Solution for creating Spectacular Low-Lying Fog Effects. This sleek new design has a 20 pound Dry Ice capacity which is placed in a Stainless Steel Basket. Other new features are Low Water Shut Off Indicator, 4” Hose Adaptor and Heavy Duty Latches on the Lid. The Low-Lying Fog Output is controlled by lowering the Stainless Steel Basket with the 3 Step Pivoting Ratchet System. This will allow the basket to ease into the boiling water to create continuous Low-Lying Fog for approximately 5 minutes.

ETC Education has put together a series of training videos for their Ion console. When you purchase a new console you will receive the Fundementals 1 DVD, which can also be purchased through any of our offices, or watched online. Fundementals 2 will be available soon.

For ETC Element users, training videos are available to watch online or download.

All of their training videos are also available to watch on YouTube.

Don’t forget about Apollo’s summer gel rebate special! It ends Sept. 22!!

Lightwright 5 has officially been released!

New in Lightwright 5

Features Lightwright/Vectorworks Data Exchange, a new and easy way to share data
with Vectorworks Spotlight 2009!

• Worksheet reconciliation compares and synchronizes show files
• Share files and worknotes via network and built-in email
• Completely rethought and enhanced worknotes
• Global search across all worksheet columns
• Complete history of all changes, with flexible rollback options
• Wheel design window for moving lights
• Color scroll design window
• Template pictures
• New standard colors choose list and color swatches on the worksheet
• Live instrument and accessory counts
• Automatic dimmer load balancing
• More than one show file can be open at a time
• 18 flexible user-definable columns

Lightwright just keeps getting better and better!

Upgrade pricing is available for individual and institutional licenses.
Upgrades must be in the same name and serial number as the original buyer.
Student Licenses must be in the name of one individual student. Not upgradable to future versions of LW.
"Student license is for a period of three years." Requires valid student ID to be verified by dealer prior to purchase.

Contact your JSHAA sales person to place an order!

I’m getting very lax in the sharing of news! My apologies. Hopefully this will make up for it!

Two New LED Lighting Products from City Theatrical

City Theatrical has launched two innovative new LED lighting products utilizing Philips Color Kinetics LEDs: The MasterBlast™ is a battery powered lighting fixture with SHoW DMX™ wireless DMX built in to allow totally wireless event lighting for up to 10 hours without recharging; and the iW Blast TR Lighting Kit is a three-light white LED lighting kit for film/video and photography lighting featuring variable color temperature, variable intensity, and the ability to be battery operated.

New DMX Irises

Both Rosco and Apollo have released DMX Irises for ellipsoidal fixtures.

Another great app for the iPhone and iPod Touch from Zinman Software!

GelCalc quickly calculates number of gel sheets/rolls and the best cutting direction to yield the most frames per/sheet. It includes a list of some of the most popular fixtures and their frame sizes. Available in the iTunes App Store.

New Wybron Coloram IT/CXI IT Circuit Boards

Effective immediately, every new Coloram IT, Aquaram IT, CXI IT, and Mariner IT will no longer be built with an RFID circuit board.
Instead, the new units will contain a main circuit board that incorporates all the capabilities previously found in the RFID board, simplifying operations for the units.

Installing the new board is NOT mandatory for existing Coloram IT and CXI IT units. The new board is necessary only if the existing boards fail.

More info can be found on their website.

Behind The Scenes

If you haven’t heard about the Behind the Scenes Charitable Fund, it’s a fund organized by ESTA which helps provide financial support to entertainment technology industry professionals when they are ill or injured.

JR Clancy has come up with a great way to help with the effort by offering this great t-shirt, with proceeds going to Behind The Scenes:

The T-shirt lists these top 10 uses for a counterweight: 10. Doorstop 9. Meat Tenderizer 8. Flyswatter 7. Boat Anchor 6. Bottle Opener 5. Computer Repair Tool 4. Scuba Ballast 3. Hockey Puck 2. Instead of Your Spouse’s Meatloaf 1. Locked Down in an Arbor

Electronic Theatre Controls

ETC has announces the release of new software for the Eos/Ion and Congo Lighting Control Systems and an update for the Net3 Radio Focus Remote that enables its Ethernet port. Info can be found at their website.

After long rumor and speculation about whether entertainment-lighting leader ETC would enter the LED market, the company has announced their acquisition of the Selador™ product line. The Selador Series is built on the x7 Color System, which carefully proportions an unprecedented array of seven LED colors onto a single luminaire. It’s a patented technology based on a simple premise of additive color mixing: more color in means better light out.

Pricing and availability has yet to be announced, but I was able to take a look at the Vivid fixture last week, and was very impressed!

ETC will be showing the Selador Series at the upcoming USITT Conference in Cincinnati, March 18-21. ETC will also reveal the newest console in the award-winning Eos® family. Designed for modest rigs dominated by conventional lights and a need for more hands-on fader control, this new board contains a roster of lighting-control fundamentals. Channel faders, submasters, cue lists, effects, plus control of devices like motorized accessories for conventional lights, LEDs and small numbers of moving lights.

Contact your JSHAA sales person for more information and to place an order!

I’ve been so busy the last couple months that I haven’t spread any news!

Here’s what I’m covering, just skip to what looks interesting!

1. ETC Discontinues Emphasis Control System
2. ETC Retires Expression & Express line of consoles
3. ETC Now shipping Unison DRd with SmartLink
4. Lots of lighting applications for the iPhone
5. Wybron’s Infotrace
6. New products at LDI 2008
7. Holiday Gobos from Rosco and Apollo

ETC announces the discontinuance of the Emphasis® Control System. We will no longer accept new orders or provide quotations for future sales of Emphasis 2D and 3D.

ETC Controls Product Manager Sarah Clausen states, “Emphasis provided a great bridge from our older conventional control systems to our next generation of lighting control offered in the SmartFade®, Congo™ and Eos® control systems. With the launch of the Ion® and Congo jr consoles, we believe we are now offering our customers a choice of flexible lighting controls ready for 21st century lighting technology.”

As always, ETC will continue to provide technical support and repair services for Emphasis Control Systems in the field.

Effective on July 18, 2008, ETC stopped accepting orders for the Expression® and Express™ line of control consoles. This includes the Expression 3, Insight™ 3, Express 250, Express 125, Express 72/144, Express 48/96, Express 24/48 and all Expression, Insight and Express Lighting Playback Controllers. As with all ETC products, they have reserved parts to service the units in the field for years to come.

ETC Marketing Manager David Lincecum comments: “The Expression family of consoles has had an incredible 22-year run, and thousands of these desks are running shows around the world. It should go without saying that ETC will offer the same high level of support we have always provided for these products for many years to come. We look forward to the continued success and growth of our incredible array of new consoles in the SmartFade®, Congo™ and Eos®/Ion® lines and we are already seeing that they will enjoy the same kind of success.”

Following a successful launch at Lightfair in May, we are now accepting orders for the newest SmartLink® product: the Unison® DRd!

The all-new Unison DRd dimming enclosure offers a large number of new features, while maintaining the quality and value you’ve come to expect from the Unison DR. The new DRd uses the same Sensor®-style dimming and switching modules you are familiar with, combined with an all-new dimming processor, to offer your projects the best dimming performance ever in a Unison product.

And now, with the new SmartLink Architectural Control Processor (S-ACP) becoming a part of the Unison family in DRd, you have access to plug-and-play architectural lighting controls and superior dimming in one package. Simply add a SmartLink Station Power Module, and you can use the 5- and 10-button SmartLink stations on budget-oriented projects, getting cost-effective preset and sequence control with powerful dimming capabilities and increased capacity.

Also available, the new SmartLink Timeclock brings low-cost, easy-to-use time-of-day control to ETC Unison®, Sensor®, and SmartPack® dimming, as well as to SmartSwitch™ relay systems.

With the increasing popularity of Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, and the opening of their iTunes App Store, it was only a matter of time before apps were being written for our industry. Here’s a round-up of the ones that I’m familiar with along with a link to a recent article in Live Design.

Leading the way is Wybron with their LDI award winning Gel Swatch Library. I’ve got this one on my iPhone and use it frequently. It’s a great way to do a basic color comparison between manufacturer’s gels before pulling out the "analog" swatchbooks. Hopefully Wybron will add the Apollo gel catalog to the app soon….

Also from Wybron is the CXI Color Calculator and Infogate for the iPhone/iPod Touch. If you use the Wybron CXI unit, the CXI Color Calculator app is definitely a must-have, especially if you’re programming off-line. If you’re using Wybron’s Infotrace, then you’ll definitely want the Infogate for the iPhone app.

D!HV Productions has introduced two apps, the full-featured Light Calc and the free Light Calc Lite. With the free version, you enter some basic info about your fixture and calculate the beam spread. With the full-featured version, you can pick from a library of fixtures, beam spreads and lamps.

Still working with gear that uses dispswitches to calculate DMX addresses? Try the free app, appropriately named, Dipswitch. It does the math for you!

Gel Swatch Library		Light Calc Lite		Dipswitch

For more apps, check out the recent Live Design article.

Now that the ACN and RDM protocols are being implemented by equipment manufacturers, Wybron’s Infotrace looks like it should be implemented in any new facility design.

It’s a lot easier for you to read about it on Wybron’s site than for me to try to explain it. Take a look. It’s an amazing system.

Quick roundup of some of my favorite new products shown at LDI:

• Apollo’s MXR Color Mixing Scroller
• Apollo’s DMX Iris (coming soon!)
• Altman’s SPECTRA-CYC 100 LED cyc fixture
• Fun stuff from BlissLights
• City Theatrical’s new DMX Artificial snow hopper (coming soon)
• Rosco’s DMX Iris
• Rosco’s new double rotator, which uses EITHER DMX for control or dimmer power!! (to be released beginning 2009)
• Robe’s new DigitalSpot 3000 DT and DigitalSpot 7000 DT. Digital moving yoke projectors with RGBW LED lights!
• PixelRange’s PixelMax Wash
• Pathway’s Pathport Touring Edition
• ETC not only showed their award winning Unison Paradigm system, but also showed the beta release of SmartSoft v2.0. SmartSoft v2.0 now includes offline editing for the SmartFade line of consoles, not just the SmartFade ML! Download the beta release by joining the ETC user forums.