SoundLAB Gyroscan & ENTTEC DMXIS

A while back I acquired a dirt-cheap secondhand pair of SoundLAB Gyroscan units (G017X) for use on-stage as spotlights in combination with my ENTTEC DMX-IS computer-controlled DMX interface. The idea being that I can set them up for each song, mark a cross on the stage and that’s where the singers stand – cheap computer-controlled spotlights, yay.

There’s a couple of gotchas with this:

First, the Gyroscan DMX interface is inverted – that is to say, hot/cold are the wrong way round on the DMX pinout. While professional establishments tend to have DMX inverters to sort this stuff out I didn’t have any and it seemed to be a simple matter of popping the back off the unit and swapping the cables around. Ten minutes with a soldering iron and we’re in business.

Second, there’s no DMXIS fixture file which will deal with them properly. The Prosound Smart Scan II file comes close but wastes a few (possibly precious) channels which makes it unsuitable if you want everything on one screen. Thus I’ve put a DMXIS fixture ‘macro’ together which if you’re using Windows you can save in C:Program FilesENTTECDMXISDmxLibrarySoundlab and it’ll automatically find it:

Pan
V,0,255,
Tilt
V,0,255,
Gobo
S,0,24,Black
S,25,49,White
S,50,74,Pink
S,75,99,Cyan
S,100,124,Yellow
S,125,149,Green
S,150,174,Orange
S,175,197,WhDots
S,198,226,Rotating
S,227,255,Strobe
Rotation
V,0,255,

This seems to work fine for me and also makes the positioning trackpad work in the bottom left corner of the DMXIS control panel.

The only real comment I have on the Gyroscan units (bear in mind here I’m still an amateur at this) is that they’re a bit slow to cue up a gobo. Other than that they seem fine!