I bought the Stairville DMX master Controller in early summer and after playing around with it a few times i gave up on as it seemed a pain in the ass to programme/control
I've decided to give it a go again though but need a little advice as I'm not exactly an expert on DMX (understatement of the year!).
Most of the time I'm gonna be using a pair of EVL Spins, pair of Thomann LED par 64's and a pair of Acme dynamo party scans. I usually run the Spins off the EVL micro controller, the scans off the controller that comes with them and leave the LED par cans on sound to light, but it doesn't really make sense to be rigging up 2 different controllers, leaving the par cans on S2L and not using the Stairville when I've already paid for it.
I remember reading someone on here (I forget who) saying that the Acme scans were a bitch to programme. Has anyone else tried to programme them and is of the same opinion?
One of the things that seemed frustrating from when I tried programming the stairville previously was that it seemed difficult to control the speed of the lights I was using with it and the manual doesn't explain that well about how to set this.
Basically what I'm looking for is someone to explain how to programme the stairville in very basic terms for a dmx novice?
Additionally, how easy/difficult is it to make the controller run S2L?

Most of those generic desks will have separate speed and fade contols.

One controls the time between steps, the other controls the length of time to fade between those 2 points.

So you have your scans set to pan 180 degrees back and forth. If you set speed to 2 secs and fade to 0 they will jump side to side every 2 secs as quickly as they can.

If you set fade to 2 secs they will pan slowly from side to side every 2 secs. They'll reach the end and immediately start to move back the other way.

If you set fade to 1 sec they will pan twice as fast as above, pause for 1 sec then go back again.

If you set fade to 3 secs they will not reach the end of their travel before the next signal to move back the other way.

Hope that helps.

You can use the fade to give dynamics easily when running shows, just move the fade up for slow bits and back down for the normal music. You'll need to play a bit to get a feel for it.

I have the Stairville DMX controller, and the instructions included with it are pretty poor, I would suggest you download the manual for both the Chauvet DMX 50 and also the ACME DMX Master 1. Both explain things a lot better than the Stairville manual, and if you pick the bones out of the pair you will find you are pretty much covered.

If you can not find them on the net, PM me your address and I will send you both files on a CD

Have found the Acme manual.
Still looking for tips on setting up scenes, chases, generally programming the thing

Is the problem you are having related to the addressing of the lights?

This has been the only issue I have had using the unit. After messing about with the addresses of my Lights (Party Scans, Moving heads and various LED parcans) It has just been programming the scenes and chases. After addressing the lights you should have control over the lights combining chases and scenes 'live' to match the mood and music.

The lights may have different channel control IE colour changes can be on different channels. This can be sorted easily by selecting the light type individually and programing them seperately. IE select light 1 channel 2 and change to red. deselect, then select light 5 channel 4 and change to red then save scene. Both lights although having different channels will now change to red when the scene is selected. This also applies to movement.

It may take longer but when you have set the scene this way you select the various scenes and combine them into the chase that you need.

Hope this helps

Jimbo

In addition to the comment Norty made, I would add that if the dwell time slider is set too short, it will not wait for the fade time to elapse before executing the next scene. In other words, the dwell time overrides the fade time and they must be set to a mutually agreeable value. If you don't, the lights may just vibrate as though they're out of control, and won't complete a scene change properly.

So slower movements (end of night smoochies) benefit from not only long dwells but slow fades. Fast tracks will prefer short dwells in combination with slow fades. Otherwise those jerky movements will persist!

By 'fade' we mean the speed (ramp) at which the channel moves from its start position to its end position. Long fades give smooth mirror movements, short fades give jerky, snappy movements.

This is in contrast to most professional desks which will wait for a fade to complete before stepping onto the next scene.

You might like to set dwell time to shortest and fade time to fastest before programming scenes as they are active even in scene programming and can add confusion. When you complete a sequence, experiment with the faders until you're happy.