So, the lights that you have chosen to use don’t have RDM (Remote Device Management). What do you do? Have no fear, the answer is here!

What Lights Need Patching?

Before you begin to patch ANYTHING what you need to do is find out the lights that you are patching. What I tend to do is grab a photo of the lights that I need to patch into the console. Typically these are ones that don’t have RDM (as mentioned above).

Yeah that’s all great, but how do I patch them?

Okay okay, so you have the lights, great! First things first is to make sure that the power and DMX are both plugged in and on. This is crucial to getting the lights to the console, otherwise nothing will happen when you press those sliders and trust me you don’t need that happening within a show…

Once you’ve plugged everything in, head back to the console. You can do one of two things:

1. Move the sliders to see if there is RDM on the lights. If the lights move with the respective DMX channel that it’s on, huzzah you can ignore the rest of this guide. If not, follow from point 2.
2. Press the Setup key on the console followed by → Add Fixtures.

Adding the Fixtures

So once you’re in the add fixtures page, what you need to do is look up the fixture manufacturer. This is where our note of what fixture comes in handy to look up which manufacturer made it. Found it? Great! Now we need to select the model that we need and dimmer modes.

Image of the add fixture menu, taken from the FLX S Series manual.

As the image above shows, this is what the fixture menu may look for you all. Once the main information has been filled out, select Next.

Image of the fixture number and quantity selection menu from the FLX S Series manual.

Above is an image of the next step where you would enter the amount of fixtures you need to patch in (this would be the Quantity) and the Fixture Number that these would be. By default, the fixture number would be one (if this was a blank fixture), but this will be prepopulated with the next available fixture number. On the FLX S24 we are limited to 48 fixtures.

Image of the DMX address from the FLX S Series manual.

Once the quantity and fixture numbers have been inputted, you can input the DMX Address of the fixture. Remember that this MUST MATCH the DMX address set on the first fixture. But, don’t worry this will prepopulate to the next available DMX address.

Once you’re happy with this, click Finish and the fixtures will be populated. If you want to test, look at the channels that they are set to and slide the phaders up to see them in use.