Spectacle of Lights - PLSN.com

PRODUCTSPOTLIGHT
Flying Cars
By RichardCadena
and Wybron’s InfoTrace
When I was a young kid, I told my
older brother that I wanted a
’69 Mustang fastback when I
was old enough to drive. “When you’re
old enough to drive,” he said, “we’ll
have flying cars!”
My sixteenth birthday came and
went, but not a single flying car did I
ever see. Still, that became
my benchmark for the future:
When cars could fly,
the future was here.
Now Wybron has introduced
a new product
called InfoTrace that promises
to usher in the future
of control systems for the
entertainment industry. It
is not so much of a “flying
car” as it is a mechanism to
allow the flight of cars, except
in this case, the “cars”
are packets of information
passed between controllers
and devices in a networked
system.
Before the approval of
Remote Device
Management, or
RDM, there was
no bi-directional
c o m m u n i c a -
tion standard for
control systems. Last
summer, the Controls
Protocol Working Group of ESTA finished
pushing RDM through the approval process,
paving the way for manufacturers
like Wybron to develop products that
take advantage of the bi-directional protocol
for the control and management
of DMX-controlled devices. But instead
of building the firmware into their own
products and stopping there, Wybron
smartly chose to offer it as an after-market
and/or OEM product that anyone
could adapt to their own equipment.
InfoTrace is a complete system that
includes InfoChip, InfoGate and InfoStore.
InfoChip is a small package with
two tiny printed circuit boards about the
size of your thumbnail. It has an eightpin
configuration, and it’s designed to
plug into a standard DMX transceiver
socket, so it’s easy for just about anyone
to install in any DMX device. It communicates
back to InfoGate, a package
of software running on a computer, to
facilitate several “flying car-type” functions.
It automatically participates in a
discovery process whereby the device
reports to InfoGate what device it is and
where it resides on the network. It also
collects and reports information about
the duty cycle of the device, and it allows
the operator to remotely change
the DMX address from the controller,
which is even a lot faster than a flying
car. But wait, there’s more.
InfoGate is the software running on
a computer, which is networked to a
Gateway IT box through an off-the-shelf
network router. It provides a graphical
user interface in the form of a spreadsheet
whereby you can view and change
a variety of information about the devices
and system, including variable parameters
such
as intensity, focus,
color, sensors,
labels and functions.
One of the views shows
a DMX map with a graphical
representation of each DMX device and
its footprint (how many channels it uses).
Dragging and dropping the device to a
new location on the screen can change
the DMX starting address, and if there are
overlapping DMX addresses, they show
up on the screen in red. Many more functions
are available in the application.
InfoStore is an Internet application
that allows you to check in with,
monitor and manage any number of
InfoTrace systems. As InfoGate gathers
information about the operation of the
system, including such data as voltage,
temperature (provided the device has
the appropriate sensors), fan speed, etc.,
it can send reports back to the webbased
InfoStore site. You can set alarms
to monitor certain parts of the system
that might be of concern, such as lamp
hours and gel string hours. Wybron’s
own Coloram, CXI, Eclipse and Eclipse
II have built-in sensors to monitor the
presence of light, the temperature, voltage,
fan speed and gel string frame color
information. They can send information
about the current status of these items
and warn of potential problems.
All of these components work together
to gather, transmit and store information
about each device on a system. It provides
an end-to-end solution
for legacy DMX devices
as well as for systems
that are yet to be built.
The number of useable
functions will continue
to grow as manufacturers
find new ways to use
the technology.
In the future, robots
will perform system
checks and maintenance.
Right now, we
humans have to do it.
What makes the Info-
Trace system appealing
is that it can help
make your life easier by
speeding the process of
setting up a lighting rig,
configuring or re-configuring
it, and maintaining
it. How many
t i m e s
have you
flown a
rig only
to disc
o v e r
that you
forgot to
set the
DMX address
on
one of the devices?
Be honest.
Or how many times
have you noticed a dim
lamp in an automated luminaire and wondered
if it’s aligned correctly or if it’s just an
old lamp? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to
consult your laptop and find out before you
decide your next course of action? Sure it
would. And it would also be great to take a
flying car to your next gig.
Ironically enough, just a couple of months
ago there was an article in Popular Science
magazine about an MIT aeronautical graduate
student who designed a flying car called
the Transition. He and a team of engineers
are building a prototype, and they hope to
be flying by 2010.
When asked about how his invention
compares to the flying cars in the Jetsons cartoon,
Carl Dietrich, the inventor, said, “We try
to steer away from The Jetsons. It’s a step in
that direction, but a baby step.”
InfoTrace is more than just a baby step.
It’s a full-sized step towards the future of automated
control. In just a few short years it
will be soaring.
Ad info:http:// www.plsn.com/instant-info
www.PLSN.com
PLSN DECEMBER 2006 49