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REVIEWED
Altrice
I have been a fan of simple DMX systems for quite a few years after purchasing a Greenwich Instruments GWDMX [reviewed in Pro Mobile Issue 52], which is a simple standalone hardware unit that has ten buttons and can store a number of chases on each button. You programme it on a Windows machine, press store, and that’s that! Just take it along to your event, plug it in, and you have full control at the touch of a button! No laptops, no messy cables to plug in, just a power cord and an XLR.
Despite the odd freezing and reboot issues, I kept using the GWDMX for about six years until I saw Mark Walsh’s review of the Visual Productions Cuety here in Pro Mobile [Issue 75]. As Mark is someone I greatly respect in the industry, I was sold on this new product and preceded to order one. Being solely iPad-based, it ticked every box for me; I didn’t want the hassle of a second laptop in the booth for controlling my lights, but it provided more on-the-fly control than my GWDMX as well as access to a whopping 64 trigger buttons.
Having successfully used the Cuety system for some time, I recently discovered a brand new iPad-based lighting control product called Altrice. I contacted the owner and, after he had finalised the product, he sent me a demo version to have a look at. I was immediately impressed when opening the neatly packed box. Everything was well presented and I could not believe how small the receiver and control box were. I downloaded the free app from the app store, turned it on and it all synced up in less than the time it took to make a cup of tea!
The Altrice system differs from other options, such as Cuety, as it combines an iPad- based DMX control interface with a wireless DMX setup. It comprises a simple Controller box, which connects via Bluetooth to your iPad, and a compact Receiver which has an XLR output socket and can be positioned close to your lighting. What’s more, multiple Receivers (up to seven) can be used with a single Controller so that wireless communication can be used to send DMX signals to separate sets of lights located in different parts of a room.
The use of Bluetooth 4 for connecting the iPad to the Controller is interesting, as it is arguably less secure than a decent dedicated Wi-Fi system and also limits the transmission distance. However, it means that a separate router isn’t required – as is the case with Cutey – so one less bit of kit in the chain to purchase and worry about. The Bluetooth connection is able to span a distance of about 20 metres, which should be more than sufficient for our needs as DJs. The control box then uses a standard 2.4GHz wireless signal to talk to the Receiver(s), which has a range of up to 200 metres with clear line of sight. The build quality is a little flimsy, as it’s made from quite thin plastic, so I would want to store the Controller safely in my deck or mixer case, as it could easily be broken if not protected.
Both the Controller and Receiver are fitted with 15-hour Lithium rechargeable batteries, which means they could easily run for an entire night without being plugged in. For charging, they use a micro USB cable and this can also be used to run the units from mains power if you’d prefer.
The software really stands out as it is so clean and simple, and has clearly been very well thought out. It took me the same amount of time to get the hang of this as it did syncing it all up. There is a menu on the left that you can toggle in and out to provide access to the various different sections of the app. In the initial version there are three of these: Live, Fixtures and Settings.
The Settings screen shows your Controller and connected Receivers alongside their current battery statuses. Both versions of the software I downloaded showed the Controller but failed to show the Receiver, which is not ideal, but the actual connection worked perfectly so I forgave Altrice as the app is still in development and I’m sure this bug will be fixed soon. The Settings section also provides access to pop-ups that allow the Strobe and Smoke short cuts to be setup as well as an Erase button which can be used to either erase all scenes or erase everything, resetting the whole system to its ‘factory settings’. When selecting either of these options you are prompted to confirm your selection, but it would be far too easy for my young son to accidentally delete hours of work if he got hold of my iPad, so a passcode or even cloud-based back-up system would be really beneficial.
The Fixtures section is where you can add your various lighting effects. To get started, I wired up a 4-channel par can to my Receiver. I was expecting to be baffled with DMX science but was astounded at how easy it was to setup. You select the start address, type of fixture, add the various channels, and that’s that! Unlike other similar products, it does not have more advanced editing functions at the moment, but I am sure we shall see these added in the future. Two things I would particularly like to see are a colour wheel/palette for selecting a specific colour on the fly (to match up-lighting to an event’s colour scheme, for example) and specific pre-set ‘personalities’ for all the main lighting brands as this is largely standard in most DMX software these days.
The final section is the Live screen, and I think it would be good if the app opened up on this page rather than the Fixtures screen, as this is where you will probably spend most of your time. It features a large ‘My Scenes’ panel where custom Scenes can be stored and then instantly recalled. Each Scene can either be a static look or animated chase sequence built up from multiple Steps. There is room on the screen for up to 24 Scenes, after which more can still be added but scrolling is then introduced to the panel so not all of them are displayed at once. I found building and editing Scenes to be dead simple and it took a matter of seconds to program a decent chase. The Scene buttons are also easy to customise with text labels and a choice of six different colours making it easy to find the want you want quickly during a gig.
A button at the bottom of the ‘My Scenes’ panel switches it to an alternative ‘My Faders’ view. This allows virtual faders linked to specific functions of your fixtures to be made easily available. For example, this could be Red, Blue and Green faders for up-lighting colour mixing.
In addition to the ‘My Scenes’ / ‘My Faders’ panel, there are five ‘Hot Cues’ which can each be assigned multiple Scenes to allow more complicated sequences to be created and easily triggered. A separate ‘Environment’ section also allows easy access to Strobe and Smoke effects as well as complete Blackout. The Live screen is then completed by a BPM speed control and ‘Hot Slider’. The latter can be customised to provide fader control over one specific feature of your lighting, while the main section of the screen is set to display Scenes. An obvious use for this would be to act as a Master Dimmer.
The BPM control, which is altered using on-screen ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons, is one of the system’s weakest features as it takes forever to change the speed of chase patterns. A tap button and/or automated sound-to-light feature using the iPad microphone would be far better.
While I found the software easy and intuitive to use, I’d have liked a few more Hot Cues. Also an added iPhone app with just the Hot Cues would be brilliant, as I have arrived at a wedding on several occasions and realised that I have left my iPad at home, so have used my iPhone instead [while using Cuety]. This is a benefit of systems such as Cuety which stores all the programming information in it’s hardware box, where Altrice relies on the iPad’s memory. If your iPad dies, Cuety will keep going, but Altrice will stay on one colour so the crowd will likely notice.
To conclude, Altrice is a simple but very sleek and sexy lighting control system. This product (despite its minor flaws) is stunning and the hardware never missed a beat during my extensive testing, so it appears to be reliable. The software is much easier to use and more pleasing to the eye than anything else I have seen on the market and hopefully the minor issues will be ironed out in the next software update. It’s ideal if you currently have a number of simple lighting fixtures that run a mess of automated chaos and want an easy solution that requires a minimal amount of fiddling about. I can also see this being popular with bar and club owners as they could have the iPad behind the bar on quiet nights and in the DJ booth at busier times. If, however, you are a seasoned DMX expert and have more complicated lighting fixtures (such as advanced moving heads and lasers), then I would suggest a different system to this, as you will outgrow it very quickly.
Despite the odd freezing and reboot issues, I kept using the GWDMX for about six years until I saw Mark Walsh’s review of the Visual Productions Cuety here in Pro Mobile [Issue 75]. As Mark is someone I greatly respect in the industry, I was sold on this new product and preceded to order one. Being solely iPad-based, it ticked every box for me; I didn’t want the hassle of a second laptop in the booth for controlling my lights, but it provided more on-the-fly control than my GWDMX as well as access to a whopping 64 trigger buttons.
Having successfully used the Cuety system for some time, I recently discovered a brand new iPad-based lighting control product called Altrice. I contacted the owner and, after he had finalised the product, he sent me a demo version to have a look at. I was immediately impressed when opening the neatly packed box. Everything was well presented and I could not believe how small the receiver and control box were. I downloaded the free app from the app store, turned it on and it all synced up in less than the time it took to make a cup of tea!
The Altrice system differs from other options, such as Cuety, as it combines an iPad- based DMX control interface with a wireless DMX setup. It comprises a simple Controller box, which connects via Bluetooth to your iPad, and a compact Receiver which has an XLR output socket and can be positioned close to your lighting. What’s more, multiple Receivers (up to seven) can be used with a single Controller so that wireless communication can be used to send DMX signals to separate sets of lights located in different parts of a room.
The use of Bluetooth 4 for connecting the iPad to the Controller is interesting, as it is arguably less secure than a decent dedicated Wi-Fi system and also limits the transmission distance. However, it means that a separate router isn’t required – as is the case with Cutey – so one less bit of kit in the chain to purchase and worry about. The Bluetooth connection is able to span a distance of about 20 metres, which should be more than sufficient for our needs as DJs. The control box then uses a standard 2.4GHz wireless signal to talk to the Receiver(s), which has a range of up to 200 metres with clear line of sight. The build quality is a little flimsy, as it’s made from quite thin plastic, so I would want to store the Controller safely in my deck or mixer case, as it could easily be broken if not protected.
Both the Controller and Receiver are fitted with 15-hour Lithium rechargeable batteries, which means they could easily run for an entire night without being plugged in. For charging, they use a micro USB cable and this can also be used to run the units from mains power if you’d prefer.
The software really stands out as it is so clean and simple, and has clearly been very well thought out. It took me the same amount of time to get the hang of this as it did syncing it all up. There is a menu on the left that you can toggle in and out to provide access to the various different sections of the app. In the initial version there are three of these: Live, Fixtures and Settings.
The Settings screen shows your Controller and connected Receivers alongside their current battery statuses. Both versions of the software I downloaded showed the Controller but failed to show the Receiver, which is not ideal, but the actual connection worked perfectly so I forgave Altrice as the app is still in development and I’m sure this bug will be fixed soon. The Settings section also provides access to pop-ups that allow the Strobe and Smoke short cuts to be setup as well as an Erase button which can be used to either erase all scenes or erase everything, resetting the whole system to its ‘factory settings’. When selecting either of these options you are prompted to confirm your selection, but it would be far too easy for my young son to accidentally delete hours of work if he got hold of my iPad, so a passcode or even cloud-based back-up system would be really beneficial.
The Fixtures section is where you can add your various lighting effects. To get started, I wired up a 4-channel par can to my Receiver. I was expecting to be baffled with DMX science but was astounded at how easy it was to setup. You select the start address, type of fixture, add the various channels, and that’s that! Unlike other similar products, it does not have more advanced editing functions at the moment, but I am sure we shall see these added in the future. Two things I would particularly like to see are a colour wheel/palette for selecting a specific colour on the fly (to match up-lighting to an event’s colour scheme, for example) and specific pre-set ‘personalities’ for all the main lighting brands as this is largely standard in most DMX software these days.
The final section is the Live screen, and I think it would be good if the app opened up on this page rather than the Fixtures screen, as this is where you will probably spend most of your time. It features a large ‘My Scenes’ panel where custom Scenes can be stored and then instantly recalled. Each Scene can either be a static look or animated chase sequence built up from multiple Steps. There is room on the screen for up to 24 Scenes, after which more can still be added but scrolling is then introduced to the panel so not all of them are displayed at once. I found building and editing Scenes to be dead simple and it took a matter of seconds to program a decent chase. The Scene buttons are also easy to customise with text labels and a choice of six different colours making it easy to find the want you want quickly during a gig.
A button at the bottom of the ‘My Scenes’ panel switches it to an alternative ‘My Faders’ view. This allows virtual faders linked to specific functions of your fixtures to be made easily available. For example, this could be Red, Blue and Green faders for up-lighting colour mixing.
In addition to the ‘My Scenes’ / ‘My Faders’ panel, there are five ‘Hot Cues’ which can each be assigned multiple Scenes to allow more complicated sequences to be created and easily triggered. A separate ‘Environment’ section also allows easy access to Strobe and Smoke effects as well as complete Blackout. The Live screen is then completed by a BPM speed control and ‘Hot Slider’. The latter can be customised to provide fader control over one specific feature of your lighting, while the main section of the screen is set to display Scenes. An obvious use for this would be to act as a Master Dimmer.
The BPM control, which is altered using on-screen ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons, is one of the system’s weakest features as it takes forever to change the speed of chase patterns. A tap button and/or automated sound-to-light feature using the iPad microphone would be far better.
While I found the software easy and intuitive to use, I’d have liked a few more Hot Cues. Also an added iPhone app with just the Hot Cues would be brilliant, as I have arrived at a wedding on several occasions and realised that I have left my iPad at home, so have used my iPhone instead [while using Cuety]. This is a benefit of systems such as Cuety which stores all the programming information in it’s hardware box, where Altrice relies on the iPad’s memory. If your iPad dies, Cuety will keep going, but Altrice will stay on one colour so the crowd will likely notice.
To conclude, Altrice is a simple but very sleek and sexy lighting control system. This product (despite its minor flaws) is stunning and the hardware never missed a beat during my extensive testing, so it appears to be reliable. The software is much easier to use and more pleasing to the eye than anything else I have seen on the market and hopefully the minor issues will be ironed out in the next software update. It’s ideal if you currently have a number of simple lighting fixtures that run a mess of automated chaos and want an easy solution that requires a minimal amount of fiddling about. I can also see this being popular with bar and club owners as they could have the iPad behind the bar on quiet nights and in the DJ booth at busier times. If, however, you are a seasoned DMX expert and have more complicated lighting fixtures (such as advanced moving heads and lasers), then I would suggest a different system to this, as you will outgrow it very quickly.
The full review can be found in Pro Mobile Issue 84, Pages 72-74.
