This past week, a colleague had a problem with fixture profiles.  Or rather, they had a problem with how the Fixtures team plugged them in that they had to solve in patch.  The fixtures were very simple- just a Warm White/Cool White Hybrid fixtures, but rather than wire them how they should- (Fixture 1 Warm White/Cool White), they wired them in a variety of ways: 

This is obviously not ideal, and by the time they realized what had happened (this chart was made afterwards), it was too late to rewire anything. An answer to the problem would be to make custom profiles to make sense of this.  

When I look at this chart, I see three profiles that need to be made (717 1+4, 3+5 and 718 1+3).  For purposes of this tutorial, let’s just do the first two, since we’ll learn everything we need to know doing them.

Go to Patch, and with no fixture selected, touch the empty field for {Type}. 

Now at the bottom of the screen, make sure you are selected on the Show tab and then touch {Edit}. 

This brings you to a list of all fixture profiles currently in your show file. 

At the bottom left of the screen, we want to touch {New} so we can create our first new profile. 

Next, we want to hit {Label} in the lower left hand corner so we can name the Fixture.  I’m naming this first one Hybrid 1&4.   

Notice the fixture is highlighted in red.  That’s because we haven’t saved anything yet.  Notice over in the fixture, there is already an assignment of Intensity to address 1. 

Even though the Intensity is incorrect, the first thing to do is click the {+} at the bottom center of the window to add our Warm White and Cool White parameters.  When you click the first time, type “Warm” into the popup box and it will bring you right to Warm White.  Select it with the arrows, touch screen, or your mouse and then hit {OK}. 

Now press {+} again and type Cool for Cool White.  Select it and press {OK}.  Your profile should look like this now. 

Now we can “repatch” the parameters so that Intensity is Virtual, Warm White is address 1 and Cool White is address 4.  Start by double clicking the DMX address for Intensity.  A pop up window appears.  Where it says “8 Bit”, click there and choose Virtual from the pulldown. 

This tells Eos there is no dedicated intensity parameter for this fixture and we would like Eos to make a virtual one for us.  Now we want to click under DMX for Warm White and change the address to 1, then click under DMX for Cool White and change the address to 4.  When done, your profile should look like this. 

Notice at the bottom that Eos added a Locked Value for address 2?  That’s not going to help us at all.  So select it, then in the lower left hand corner of the whole Patch window, touch {Delete}. 

Last thing to do for this profile is press {Save Fixture} at the upper right hand corner of the profile window. 

Now we’re going to move on to the next profile, which is the Hybrid 3+5.  It’s all the same thing, except one small thing.  I had hoped I could actually start the addressing at 3, and Eos doesn’t allow that.  So you need to build the profile to be Warm white on 1 and Cool white on 3.  It should look something like this when you’re done. Be sure to delete any added Locked Values Eos may add.

Once you have the profiles created, be aware you will need to address them one at a time.  The addressing is overlapping, and Eos won’t know what to do with a range. 

Hope this has been useful to you all.  I’ve never really had to come up with an answer like this before and I think it might be useful in the future.  Special thanks to Jeff Brink of Blackout who helped with the original problem since my colleague was running Blackout and I’m less familiar with that platform.

What out of the box solutions have you had to come up with when an install went weird?  Hit me in the comments.

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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film and television based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE and an ETC Eos trainer.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.