Tuesday, March 24, 2009
ETC iRFR iPhone App - Update & Review
iSquint: "We wrote yesterday about ETC demonstrating one of their latest products on the show floor of the USITT Stge Expo, the iPhone iRFR app."
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5 comments:
Maybe I'm old now, but I'm not a fan of the various iPhone applications I've sen for LD's lately. There's been trouble in the past when apple makes unannounced changes to color processing. These are not reliable, accurate devices. The DMX calculators and the like are nice and useful, but I'm often astounded to meet lighting designers who can't set a dip switch because their phone battery is dead. This problem isn't *because* of the technology, but I think these phone apps are contributing. It's cool when the gear can help, but I think some of these things are the result of a fake market.
I think this is awesome. The gear looks kind of useful; but, I also don't get why you can't use the unit in the theatre. Still, it's cool that it's available on hand.
However, I do agree with Ethan. This little apps are causing problems as they solve others. I too have met the electricians who need to have a dozen "gadgets" just to calculate voltage counts or DMX addressing. Sure, they're useful, but I fear people are becoming too dependent on them too.
I am really excited about this app for the iphone. Typically RFU's are very expensive and I think this will 1) not only make it more affordable for theatres but 2)also allow more of them to interact on the network. This way you could theoretically give each electrician a RFU and they could be able to trouble shoot their own portions of the rig.
Additionally, having worked with the current RFU that ETC offers, I am looking for a better solution, and perhaps this is it.
I agree that people get too excited about cool new gadgets and become dependent on them. Lots of the things that apps figure out should be things that you can do on your own fairly easily.
What more than awesome can I say. I agree with others -- this reliance on all this outboard gear to think for us really is an industry wide problem. However, the ability to "call" up a fixture while walking around the stage, or while I'm trying to get some focusing done by myself, without needing to purchase a RFR, is really phenomenal. I'm assuming the system will allow for multiple users to be on the same network a the same time -- much like multiple RFRs can be online at once. Perhaps we'll be buying iPhone for our crews now instead of RFRs. If only it would respond while I've got my Hot Hands on.
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