Best practices as house when hosting touring production's lighting network

[Malabaristo]

You have a lot of really good points here.

I'm going to address one aspect of it, with a potentially incendiary statement.

If you're a house tech in a venue relying heavily on networked distribution, and you're not able to troubleshoot/change/manage/understand the way the infrastructure works, you're not qualified for your job.

None of these things are novelties anymore. It would be like walking into a counterweight house with a flyman who only used hemp,.

I don't necessarily disagree with this, but there's a very big difference between "Can I troubleshoot this?" and "Do I have time to troubleshoot this?" There's also the closely-related question of "How much do I trust this person to do what I tell them (and tell me what they're doing accurately and completely)?" Those questions would be the big driver for me to try to lock down/limit/control whatever someone else's gear can do to my network. I don't currently work in the type of venues where that's an issue, so reading through this has mostly been an interesting thought experiment so far...

I guess my one counter-argument to your point is that with as complex as everything has gotten across sound, lighting, video, etc, it's pretty difficult for one person to know everything about everything anymore. If it's a venue that only has one full-time (if that) tech person, it's not unreasonable that they would fill in gaps in their systems knowledge with part time or contract people who aren't going to be on call 24/7.

 

[Bill Werst]

We have a full-size MA3 which we've been running in 3 mode for over a year. Still looking for a few features in 3, but usability improvements are great. No going back, people staying on 2 have a unique requirement, haven't had the training time, lazy, or chicken.

Anyway, a solution we've found for incoming tours is to use the second nic on the console. We set the second IP to match the tours addressing. In our console we can create a temporary universe mapping. The console will bridge protocols and only expose what we map. Additionally, our console and architectural system are online and we they aren't actually on our network. If your house has unique patches you can also use DMX inputs (including protocols) to map to our executors. For instance our executors might limit house lights to certain percentages.

 

[RikkiHands]

Great Thread!

I think Dan-T-Squared has the right angle.

Because believe me, the Road Guy's wish to protect *their* show and their rig is equal to if not greater than that of the House, at least as it relates to that one night. And the programmers on both sides are the ones who typically know not only what's actually going on with their respective rigs, but also the most stable approach to employ both systems, or not, or whatever. Amazingly, if the programmers respect each other's areas of expertise--and responsibilities--things have the best chance of going smoothly.

I haven't been everywhere and worked with everyone, but it seems to me that there are a lot of misconceptions about Show Networking and how data packets are streamed and distributed and how lighting devices interact with some or all of the above. There are ways to keep things as simple as possible, and programmers, for my money, are the ones who are (have to be) the most up-to-date folks in the Industry, as it relates to Lighting Networks.

To the OP --- one month later, how's it going?!

 

[AramGraz]

Great Thread!

I think Dan-T-Squared has the right angle.

Because believe me, the Road Guy's wish to protect *their* show and their rig is equal to if not greater than that of the House, at least as it relates to that one night. And the programmers on both sides are the ones who typically know not only what's actually going on with their respective rigs, but also the most stable approach to employ both systems, or not, or whatever. Amazingly, if the programmers respect each other's areas of expertise--and responsibilities--things have the best chance of going smoothly.

I haven't been everywhere and worked with everyone, but it seems to me that there are a lot of misconceptions about Show Networking and how data packets are streamed and distributed and how lighting devices interact with some or all of the above. There are ways to keep things as simple as possible, and programmers, for my money, are the ones who are (have to be) the most up-to-date folks in the Industry, as it relates to Lighting Networks.

To the OP --- one month later, how's it going?!

Since posting we haven't actually had any other shows come in with their own lighting packages. Our primary focus is supporting local events and providing quick turn around production for them (and things like comedians or dance shows that have a plot but fit it into our rig), which is why our networking and equipment is already so robust. Based on the other discussions I have brought up purchasing an e-link and that is being discussed while we do more research on what it can do and how we would use it. Luckily in this area most indoor venues give way to outdoor ones during the summer so we likely won't see another show with its own package until the fall.

Over the summer we'll have time to do maintenance and re-evaluate the layout of our network map. We currently have a universe per position, but positions can have as few as three intelligent lights so we're talking about merging some of the smaller ones to take up less of a network footprint in order to mitigating overlay with touring setups.

Appreciate you checking in!