Worth getting an NX Touch even though it's discontinued?

Hi all, I . I recently got 4 moving heads for our auditorium. I bought an EN4 and i am using an extron controller to recall cues. working great. ANyway, I digress.
I need to be able to set up new lighting cues. The lighting company that installed the lights used a desk they brought in to set up some cues, but i want to do some more.
ALso, I hadn’t realised the EN4 cues could only be static (sorry, probably something i should have known, but I’m not a live lighting person), so i can’t get any moving scenes without plugging in a laptop. I don’t really need a full desk, it’s overkill for pre-setting lights, but it would be good to have more control of the software. I really like the look of the NX touch, however it is in the discontinued section of the website? Is it a waste getting it, as I assume it won’t be supported for much longer? I still see it on sale at a lot of places!

Hi @Daveyp

Welcome to the forum.

Great to hear you have purchased an EN4. Although the cues that are stored on the EN4 contain static values, it is worth mentioning that cues can automatically link to other cues. You can therefore create cuelists/chases that can fade automatically once triggered, allowing you to essentially create some basic effects.

For more complex control, you could just use our free ONYX PC software, without any hardware. If ONYX is connected to the same network as the EN4, the EN4 will automatically unlock 4-universes of DMX output from ONYX. You can therefore use ONYX to program more complex scenes, which are then output via sACN / Art-Net to the EN4.

If you would like some physical hardware connected to the ONYX PC, then a used NX Touch will be the cheapest way to achieve this.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Edward

Thanks for all the info Edward, yes I have been going through the YouTube videos on how to work the software, they have been really useful. It’s just getting the time without people harassing me to do other things :laughing:.
Connecting to the lights via the EN4 and sacn with the software has been super easy. The en4 has been solid and works great with the extron driver. I can just fire cues from the desk controller or extron iPad app.
I had wanted to get the heads moving around and record that as a cue, but I think I need more of a dmx scene recorder. Do obsidian/netron do a box like this? I’m not around much so I need events staff to be able to do pre-programmed recalls. Looking forward to playing a bit more when I get a chance. I ordered an NX touch.

No problem at all - glad the videos are helpful.

To achieve this, the best option would be to use a PC running ONYX, with various effects programmed in. These effects could then be triggered with Telnet or OSC triggers from Extron. We don’t have dedicated rack-mount ONYX hardware for this, as any licenced and suitably powerful PC can achieve this.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Edward