The Avolites Discussion Forum

I am a happy owner of a pearl 2000 that i use for rock concert lighting but i have a small question that triggers my mind everytime i deal with shapes.

When running a chase i usually use the tap tempo to set the speed of the chase before launching it so i can adapt to the band and synchronize the chase with the music. (what i do which is not the simplest way to do it i think is : raise the fader a bit, tap tempo, stop the chase, raise fader full and then press go to synchronize with music).

Here comes my quesiton : how can i use the similar tap tempo feature when dealing with shapes. As an exmaple i have a tilt swing and i want the beams to be up on one beat and down on the next, but there is no tap tempo for shapes (or i don't know it). so how can i do this to adapt the speed of a shape when running a show ?

thanks for your help,

There are currently no functions that allow control of shape speed/size other than by fader (using timed+mode 2).
A useful improvement would be the option to 'connect' to shape faders and have wheel control. It may then be feasible to have a tap convert to a speed value.

Is there a wish list for new features to be added in the next release of the software ? so i can add this one to the list... I'm sure it's not that hard to develop

Well after reading the wishlist post, i throught a bit more about it and it might be more complex than expected in fact. here are a few problem i see :

Which shape to connect when there are multiple shapes in one memory ?

What to do when there is shapes AND chase on a submaster ?

Infact the good solution in my point of view would be to have a special value in the speed choice of the shape in the program mode entitled "TAP" meaning that the speed will be taken from the tap tempo when in run mode.

Actually I covered the chase+shape issue. This can be overcome simply by having another softbutton in the connect menu to select what the wheels are altering.
The issue with multiple shapes I did consider, but this is no different to assigning speed and or size to timed/mode 2 which globally affects all shapes in a PB.

I don't for one minute suggest this is easy to implement, but I don't see it being a problem operationally.

Your idea of tap may work, but currently tap requires you to be connected to a chase.... The above would be a more logical solution IMO, with the relatively easy addition of tap functionality, and also more useful to many people (I have had a lot of people ask for this feature) - I'm not sure so many people would want to use tap for shapes, but definitely worth having.

Maybe you should post as such in that thread? That's what it's for!