One for the archives, thus the length/detail. [Combined info from a couple of msgs about Arisia planning, Jan 2002 and Jan 2003] Selwyn and I went over that nasty li'l Crestron controller this afternoon, and I think I have a handle on it now. There's a bunch of mislabeling and misconfiguration that's not going to be fixed pre-con since he's got to schedule time for the Crestron people to come out with the right PC and think about some major redesign in general. There are three main menus: Imperial, Plaza, and Imperial+Plaza. Obviously we want only the first one, and leave the dealers' room alone. It couldn't hurt to learn and/or fix some of the Plaza presets just in case the dealers suddenly go dark or something, but I didn't mess with that today since it's only like six channels and pretty simple. But in the Imperial, there are a bunch of channel up/down sliders shown on the touch screen, which go up and down annoyingly slowly. Their labels are generally wacked and my notes aren't 100% on the actual names, but: CH 2,3 CD two downstage-direction [M,BOH] chandelier candles CH 2,3 FL two downstage-direction chandelier internal floods DN BTW -dead-, was top-hat downlights between chandeliers BAL COL Stage right balcony-post sconces in balcony level only MN FL COL Stage left balcony-post sconces on *all* levels, i.e. floor-level pillar sconces too, PLUS stage left under-balcony mini- fixtures, PLUS stage RIGHT under-balcony mini-fixtures. Got all that? It's fukt. It's supposed to refer to "mezzanine", but it's mostly the street-side stuff. STG -dead-, was some stage stuff HD TB -dead-. "Head tables" used to be the top-hats in that vent ring around the ceiling, but the construction of late 2001 sealed all that up. ST RED all the pre-hung striplights over the stage. ST BLUE The fixtures are *ancient*. They work, ST WHITE but are all currently lamped white. POD Stage right floor-level pillar sconces only. Way-deprecated reference to "podium". CH 1 CD Upstage-direction [FOH] single chandelier candles CH 1 FL Upstage-direction [FOH] single chand. internal floods There are a number of "event type" menus, each with five preset buttons and an ON and OFF button. It appears that ON and OFF are simply two extra presets that can also be programmed, and in the menu I was playing with some clown had apparently wired ON to go dark and OFF for everything full. There's a SAVE button that simply overwrites the current preset with whatever's up at the moment, and a "fade time" that offers intervals like .5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12 etc seconds which also gets saved with a preset. Touching a preset twice overrides the fade time, boom. Easy to do by mistake, too, since the touchpanel's sensitivity totally sucks. Selwyn says we can noodle and then save as many presets as we want, i.e. go wild within the user-interface that this thing presents. He'll also try to find us a longer cord for the remote terminal so we can not have to perch it on the way right-hand end of the lighting table. [[Later update: I can borrow a pair of 50-ft extenders for the funny lopsided 4-pin XLR connection between the portable Crestron panel and the wall, so there's much more freedom about where lighting FOH control can live this time.]] I would tend to preset some simple all-house to various levels with l o n g fade times, so that when things go up and down it isn't jarring. Like 1: black, 2: very dim, 3: half, 4: floor-full, 5: everything, and be done with it. We could put these, say, in the "wedding" group. I'll take over the "business meeting" group for special stuff like Deryni and the gothling dance, heh... Oh, and the password is, and always has been, 1234. _H*