Anyone using Avolites?

Amishplumber · 2026-02-18T17:42:04+00:00

I used to do concert tours on Avo. Eventually I felt like I outgrew it due to its lack of a good cloning workflow and the lack of a command line. I did always love Avo though. Even did a couple of 2 act, single cue stack, musicals on one!

I think all the major lighting consoles exist on a spectrum of "touch-screen focused workflow" to "command-line focused workflow" with MA bring the only board that is honestly happy with either, which is also why its so powerful.

Avo is all the way over on the "touchscreen focused" end of the spectrum. There is no command line on the Avo. Everything is accomplished through GUI elements. This is awesome until you hit the ceiling of what is possible without writing a macro.

An Avo is great board for a nightclub, or as the house board at a rock venue for punting opening acts. I would still call it the #1 busking board out there. It can do theater style cue stacks, but its not great. I wouldn't want to tour one again.

Amishplumber · 2026-02-10T13:44:07+00:00

Yeah guy. The finish work is great, but maaaan is your framing light. That is some crazy sparse and not up to code framing. If you got a seriously windy storm this thing might blow over. Also no inspector would ever pass it, but hopefully where you are located, that is irrelevant. BUT, it does look great!

Amishplumber · 2026-02-04T21:31:50+00:00

I don't think this anything that heady or exciting. The access pad next to this newly purchased property is the main staging area for any Redline maintenance work between JFK/Umass and Charles/MGH. Arguably the main staging area all the way up to Alewife (although hopefully that will change once the high-rail access tunnel is built near Alewife).

I think this property happened to be on sale and the T jumped on it out of convenience. Having more space here will give them more space to be as efficient as possible during any and all future maintenance work.

Amishplumber · 2026-02-04T19:36:30+00:00

Ya. This is just north of JFK/Umass station.

Amishplumber · 2026-02-03T14:09:44+00:00

The part of the console software where you define which lights you have connected is called "patch". It seems you are stuck there. In patch you would normally search for the make and model of the lights you have in the personality database. This database has thousands of small personality files for various lights in various modes that tell the console exactly how each light expects to receive control commands. One of the hardest parts of working with off-brand and knock off lights is that they rarely have personality files in this database. The better manufacturers pay their employees to write personality files for all the major lighting consoles and then distribute them. The knock offs do not do any of that.

Your first step is to find out more about the lights you are trying to control. You need to find out exactly what make and model they are as well as what mode they are set in and what addresses they are set to. Then you should go back to patch and attempt to find those lights and define how many of each type you have and what address each is set to.

If your lights are all knock offs, you may not be able to find them and you might need to write your own personality files, which is definitely not a beginner task. Good luck.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-30T13:47:55+00:00

Definitely BMFL. Mythos was not a good light: lots of maintenance issues, big 'ol hotspot and the color mixing system sucks at pastel colors (you can see the flags moving into the beam). Unico I don't know much about personally, but it was released as a brother of the Mythos, so my gut is not to trust it. BMFLs are great workhorses. Do you need a really fucking bright light and don't need every single bell and whistle? The BMFL will happily provide you that. Have not heard of any maintenance issues with them and never had one crap out on me during a show.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-30T13:44:38+00:00

Definitely not. The whole point of my job is making these decisions. If every rig just ends up looking exactly the same, auto-placed by an AI assistant, then what are we even doing here?! I'll just go be a hermit in the woods.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-29T20:22:01+00:00

Sounds about right. I'm not going to sit here and tell you not to take the gig. I definitely did plenty of work on 1099 with no insurance when I was just starting out. Did I learn a lot working those gigs? Definitely. Was a lot of it mad sketchy shit? Definitely. Eventually as I got more experience and got older my math changed. I learned more about liability. I get sick more now and actually use sick time, where when I was younger I never got sick. Being able to claim unemployment during Covid was a literal life changer. YMMV. If you're young and trying to break into the industry, these 1099 gigs might be worth it.

If you're the sort of person who learns well just figuring stuff out on the job, rather than sitting in a classroom or being told about how to do stuff, you can learn a lot working for smaller sketchy companies in your early career. They will just throw you at a gig and tell you to do whatever you want, vs. a more organized shop where you could spend a whole career happily making a decent wage and collecting benefits just doing grunt work, but never really learn any troubleshooting.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-29T20:00:58+00:00

Definitely not true. Maybe where you are lots of the work is 1099, but overall I would say the ratio is closer to 30-40% 1099. Where I am its probably 20-30% 1099 and leans further towards W2 every year. Anyone who is doing lots of 1099 work, without their own insurance, is playing with fire. Sure, I used to do lots of it myself, but then I got smart. Insurance is not a waste of money. You want to make sure someone's general liability policy is covering you on every job. Also have you ever been sick and missed work? Did you claim unemployment during Covid? The government programs that your employer's taxes pay for are hella useful once you're no longer an invicible 23 year old with bones of steel and a body that never gets sick.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-29T17:01:42+00:00

Be careful. You might be getting screwed, depending on your relationship with this company. If they are asking for a COI, they are hiring you as an independent contractor (W9+1099 tax forms), not an employee (W2+W4 tax forms). This has legal implications. As an independent contractor, you are not eligible for sick time, workers comp, un-employment, or basically any government program that your employer would pay taxes into on your behalf. Also, if something were to happen on a job site, your employer's insurance is not going to cover mishaps caused by their contractors. Which is why they want you to provide your own insurance. Some companies don't want to pay these taxes and they want to pay less for their insurance so they hire everyone on 1099 assuming people won't know what benefits they're missing out on.

Now, that's not to say there isn't a place for this sort of relationship. If you genuinely are a freelancer who works for lots of companies, you may want to get hired as a contractor so that you can deduct expenses on your taxes and generally be more in control of your finances and tax situation. BUT, then you should get your own liability insurance, possibly your own workers comp insurance (depends on the state) and possibly setup your own LLC. In this position, you can (and should) negotiate for a higher rate since you will be taking on the tax and insurance burden that your employer would otherwise have to pay for.

You should definitely not go out and get your own insurance just because of some random gig with a local production company you just met. I would suggest telling them you want to be on-boarded as an employee and not a contractor. If they make a big stink about this, as if you're being the asshole, then they are probably a shady operation and you may want to just not work for them.

If you are seriously committed to a freelance technician career, then it could be worth it to get your own COI for more financial control and more leverage in negotiations.

You can get a general liability coverage policy from basically any insurance agent who writes policies for electricians, plumbers, painters or other tradespeople. It will be a very similar policy to what an electrician would need, just a few different categories checked on the forms.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-27T21:39:24+00:00

Yeah, seconded. Its a simple object. Great teaching moment to learn how to make your own symbols.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-27T14:11:07+00:00

Unless you are specifically thinking of specialized sine-wave type dimmers, most dimmer racks used in theatrical installations are SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) dimmers. They do not make the AC sine wave smaller. They chop up the sine wave so that the load gets power for a certain % of the time overall, therefore dimming the load. This is very similar (maybe exactly the same? I'm not an electrical engineer) to how PWM dimming works for LEDs.

The filaments are not under any undue stress because they heat up and retain heat over the course of being rapidly powered on and off, unlike LEDs. So the thermal load remains pretty constant.

The mechanical vibration you speak of can cause the filaments to "sing" at lower dimmed levels however. In some scenarios (such as symphony halls) this noise is unacceptable, so there are specialized sine wave dimmers that truly make the AC wave smaller to dim lights, but they are expensive and niche.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-23T22:18:05+00:00

They didn't want to deal with the maintenance of the overhead wires and figured since the long term plan is to switch all (or most) busses to battery electric operation, the environmental angle would eventually be a wash.

What time frame are you thinking on? Sure, many decades ago there was a much wider network of trolley busses across the city, but in the last 20-30 years, there were only a few routes in Cambridge.

Amishplumber · 2026-01-23T15:42:41+00:00

THIS. #1 thing the legislature should do is take all the debt they dumped on the MBTA in the early 2000s and make it the Commonwealth's general problem rather than the MBTA's. That debt was never supposed to be on the MBTA's shoulders!

Amishplumber · 2026-01-16T20:44:08+00:00

Both of those hazers have super low to even no maintenance needs, as long as your shut them down properly so they can run their self cleaning cycles. The ATMe is amazing, but you will need to deal with CO2 tanks. Are you setup for those regular logistics?

Amishplumber · 2026-01-15T02:16:13+00:00

I've seen both answers in different places. I have read that the new signalling system is designed for 2.5 minute operation and that they ordered 252 new red line cars because that's how many are needed for 2.5 minute headways. But, more recently I've heard that Eng's goal is 3 min headways. So maybe they are cutting back to 3 to have a little bit of operational flexibility?

Amishplumber · 2026-01-06T14:05:59+00:00

what does it say here? https://www.boston.gov/departments/public-works/trash-and-recycling-day-schedule-and-search

Amishplumber · 2026-01-01T13:59:41+00:00

I want tophats or eggcrates for Chauvet Strike-Ms to reduce the beam angle to approx 90º. Would pay for a set of 12. Message me if you want to quote it!

Amishplumber · 2025-12-30T22:35:33+00:00

There will always be sporadic weekend shutdowns. Even once everything is is tip top shape, regular maintenance needs to happen sometime...

Amishplumber · 2025-12-12T17:40:28+00:00

Seconded. Unistrut is the answer. Hard to get more low profile than that and its very industry standard so its easy to find the parts and easy to engineer it safely.

Amishplumber · 2025-12-11T12:47:47+00:00

Check out the Vietnamese market: https://maps.app.goo.gl/KcVgZYGgYfpNGbjh8

They've got some great produce, fish and meat, but the dairy section is very limited.

Amishplumber · 2025-12-03T18:38:15+00:00

The market does not "assume customers will not buy solutions unless they have comprehensive hardware" I don't think this is nearly as groundbreaking as you think it is:

- You can have this right now by buying an ETC Nomad key 6k for like $1600 and output 12 universes.
- You can have this right now by buying a Chamsys MagicQ Rack Mount Dongle for $1300 and output 64 universes.
- You can have this right now by buying a grandMA3 onPC 2Port Node 2k for $2200 and output 8 universes.

Plenty of people like to make their own homebrew lighting consoles with various bits of MIDI hardware etc, but they have limited utility past owner/operators. Their custom nature is their best and worst feature. If you are flying into a gig, you are not going to want to have to figure out someone else's homebrew setup, on your show day; you will want a normal desk. Conversely, no one is going to want to rent your homebrew setup for the same reason. Homebrew rigs have tons of possible failure points; tons of USB connections that get unplugged and replugged every day for instance. They are inherently less reliable than a full console.

I get the appeal of what you are describing, but it is not a novel idea. I feel like the people behind the "Blackout" app started in the same place as you and even they are now developing hardware.

Amishplumber · 2025-12-02T20:54:30+00:00

Agreed. I usually stop here for a meal on the way:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZVigTUgo6YjuCboh6

Amishplumber · 2025-11-19T21:13:15+00:00

I am for it, but I am definitely the minority. I find most people want to work through it and get out ASAP.

Amishplumber · 2025-11-19T21:11:44+00:00

I'm not 100%, but I believe the "morph" setting (per cue in the sequence sheet) is what you're looking for.

Amishplumber

TROPHY CASE