Controlling dimmers or channels

We are now going to control the dimmers - called channels.

Turn on the channels

There are many ways to turn on channels on a grandMA2.

Begin with one of the simple ones. Press 1 At 1 0 0 Please - You have now turned on channel 1 at 100%.

This works because you have "Channel" as the default keyword in your command line input:

This is the keyword the console will put in front of your command, unless you specify a different keyword. This saves you from manually pressing the 'Channel' key before the command input.

If your default keyword is not "Channel", then press Channel Please.

 

Let us have a look at what else happened. The Channel ID "1" has changed to a yellow color and the background behind the value has changed to a red color. Also the value (in this case the intensity) is now in a red text color.

The yellow colored Channel ID means that the channel is selected and setting at new value will affect the selected channels. Now press At 5 0 Please. Since the channel is already selected you can just give it a new value and it is now at 50%.

Now press Clear once. Channel 1 is no longer selected and you cannot just change the intensity again.

The red background color indicates that the value will be saved if you press 'Store' (do not do it now). Instead press once more on Clear.

The only thing left is the value in the red text color. This means that it is still in the temporary memory (called the programmer) and will create output, but it will not be saved if you store.

Press Clear once more. Now channel 1 is turned off and it is not in the programmer anymore. Instead of pressing the 'Clear' button 3 times you can keep it pressed for about 1 second and you have cleared the programmer - same as the three presses on 'Clear'.

There are other ways to turn a channel at 100%. Here's another example: 1 At At. This is a shortcut to give the channel a value of 100% (unless someone have changed a setting in the setup).

Press . twice. This gives channel 1 a value of 0%. You can of course also use "At 0 Please". The value is in the programmer and will be stored (if you save a cue).

Press Clear until the programmer is cleared.

If you have several channels in the programmer and just what to "release" one, you can use the 'Off' key in combination with the 'Channel' key. Turn on channel 1 at 100%.

Now press Off Channel 1 Please. This will take out channel 1 from your programmer.

One other way to give a channel a value is the "Level" wheel. With this you can change the value of the selected channels fast and simple. Turn it away from you and the value of the selected channels goes up. Turn it towards yourself and it goes down. 

If you want to turn on several channels at the same time you need the '+' and/or 'Thru' keys. They are pretty self-explanatory.

Guess what you need to press to turn on channel 1 to 10 plus 20 at 20%. This is the fast way: 1 Thru 1 0 + 2 0 At 2 0 Please.

If you want to exclude channels you can use '-' (minus). So if you want to give channel 1 to 10 plus 20 but minus 5 a value of 0%, this is the fastest way: 1 Thru 1 0 + 2 0 - 5 . . .

 

You can also use '+' and '-' to change the value. 5 At + 3 0 Please. This brings channel five up to 50% - It was at 20% and got 30% more. 

5 At - 5 0 Please. Brings the channel down to 0% - notice that is got a red background, so it got a value of 0% in the programmer.

 

Now you know how to assign values to channels. End this section by clearing your programmer.

 

 

On the next page we are going to look at Groups.