! Perhaps it’s just me… Earlier on in the year, as I have already written about in my QSC Touchmix review (issue 73), my daughter was in a school production of Joseph. I, in my position as Super Dad (and go-to school sound and lighting bod) was roped in asked to do the sound and lighting for this magnifi cent production. With the Touchmix taking good care of the sound, I needed to fi nd a high tech solution to control the lights and ideally meet the desire to have my whole life controllable by an app! turned to the library in the sky, Google, and it didn’t take long to whittle down the options.

The key thing for me was it had to be iPad controllable, as space was a real issue in the primary-school hall. I had no desk space, so had to mount it on an arm fl oating above the sound desk. It also had to control both moving heads and a variety of LED par cans. The stand-out option was Cuety by Visual Productions.

So what is Cuety? Rather than attempt to explain in my own words, it makes more sense to quote the Visual Productions sales blurb as they have described it so succinctly: ‘Cuety is a new generation lighting controller that turns your iPad into a powerful lighting console. Easy to use and budget friendly, Cuety enables you to take full advantage of the iPad’s mobility and multi-touch display. The controller has full support for moving heads, LEDs, conventional lighting and DMX controlled special eff ects’.

To set up a lighting system controlled by Cuety you need three things: the Cuety LPU-1 control box, a wireless router (not supplied) and an iPad (not supplied) running the Cuety App. The LPU-1 has its own power supply and then links in to your wireless router via a standard Ethernet cable. There are two versions of the app: Cuety, which allows you to setup, program and run your lightshow, and a simplifi ed version, Cuety Remote, which off ers a bank of cue buttons to fi re off your pre-programmed cues.

It’s worth noting that Cuety Remote is also available for iPhone, so you can use an iPad to program your show, but then run it discretely from anywhere in a room with your phone! Once you have the app downloaded and everything connected you need to get the iPad and the LPU-1 box to talk to each other. I found this to be a very painless, simple procedure. You simply connect the iPad to the router via wireless (like you would in any other situation), then when you open up the Cuety app you should see a little green light next to the Visual Productions logo, which shows that everything is singing from the same hymn sheet!

The next job is to connect the Cuety LPU-1 to your lights and let the app know what gear you’re using. The LPU-1 has a standard 3-pin DMX (XLR) output socket, which you use to connect to your fi rst fi xture, and you then simply daisy chain the rest of them as with any other DMX setup. Next, set your fi rst fi xture to a DMX address of 1, but leave the others for now. (One of the great things about Cuety is that it will tell you what addresses to set your fi xtures to – more on that later…) VISUAL PRODUCTIONS CUETY Cuety controls up to 64 fi xtures in light show.

This one universe (a universe is 512 chancilitated by the nels), which should be more than screen, which is ample for the majority of mobile DJ of 64 programable applications. For my daughter’s show back buttons. I used a combination of 32 x RGBA back can be par cans, 12 x warm white LED pars with one or more and two moving heads. (scenes), which assigned fade Telling Cuety what fi xtures you have times to build connected to it is a breeze. From the mated chases. default playback screen you simply select ‘patch’, which brings up a Creating a Cue bank of 64 possible fi xture slots.

You simple as choose the next available one and the Playback then select your light from Cuety’s to program library of over 3800 pre-defined choosing ‘Edit’. ‘profiles’, covering every major brings up a screen manufacturer and practically every allows you to fi xture imaginable. As many fi xtures or more fi xtures nowadays off er a choice of various a grid of 64 diff erent DMX channel modes, Cutey You can then then allows you to choose which of ‘Programmer’ the possible modes you want to use. which is made Now, this is where Cuety gets really virtual faders, clever.

Having selected your fi xture, ues for each of and mode, Cuety will tell you what features to create address to give it, based on the other fi xtures already patched. The Cuety intuitive and What’s even more impressive, is that is very simple. you can patch multiple fi xtures all at thanks to the once. Setting up my par cans and there are a was a simple matter of selecting 32 but easy to use, fi xture buttons and then choosing programming the correct profi le and channel mode. these is the FX Cuety then added all 32 fi xtures at par cans, this the same time and gave me the DMX of ‘rainbow’ address values that I needed to set including a ‘phase’ on each of my lights.

This really does tomatically chases make setting up a system with lots of the fi xtures in fi xtures a real doddle. was really useful Amazing Another couple of useful features that moving heads can be employed during patching are of totally pan/tilt invert and a clever tool called ments including ‘virtual dimmer’. This allows you to of eights and group the individual colour channels saving stuff !! on LED wash fi xtures so that the light can be dimmed without the need for “So what happens a dedicated dimmer channel off ered mid-show I hear by the fi xture itself – really useful. news is that the not the iPad.

All When you’ve got all of your fi xtures ing is the control set up, it's then time to program your fi nd yourself VISUAL PRODUCTIONS CUETY Visual Productions Cuety is fa- Playback made up play- Each playprogramed ‘Cues’ can be and delay up aniis as selecting you want and then This that select one from buttons. use the section, up of to alter the DMX valfi nd a lead to charge you iPad back the selected fi xtures’ up then fear not, the lightshow that your desired ‘look’. was last triggered will just keep playing until you can re-gain control.

You experience is really user can rest assured that you will never building your lightshow get an awkward black-out scenario. Mixing colours is easy colour-coded faders I am never a fan of a reviews that number of advanced, replicate instruction manuals, so features that make I am going to leave the technical easier. Chief amongst stuff there. Cuety has lots more Generator.

For LED advanced features, full details of allows the creation which can be found on the Visual colour-mixing chases, Productions website. setting which authe colour along In a nutshell, Cuety is cute! Really the DMX chain. This simple, user intuitive, however uses for ‘Joseph and his the workfl ow of stadium-sized light- Technicolor Par Cans’! For ing design.

Don’t be fooled, this is a there are a number very powerful tool and off ers more adjustable pre-set movecontrol than the majority of DJs will pans, circles, fi gure ever need. It is also perfect for small more… Major timestage productions too and combines the control of LED par cans and moving heads with ease, something if my iPad crashes that so many other control options you cry?” The good get wrong. Be it your fi rst ever DMX LPU-1 is the brain, controller or a shift from a physical your iPad is providdesk to computer control, you won’t interface.

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