ETC Congo Family v6.4.0 - Manual (Page 987)

985
Congo - The Avab Heritage
Back in the seventies Avab was a leading Scandinavian lighting console manufacturer that
held one of the world's two existing 999 channel consoles, the Viking. The other one was
Strands Galaxy. Both were state of the art in their own way. Viking could talk (speech
module) and had very exclusive thumbwheels with tactile feedback.
Most of the functions for conventional lighting existed at this point in either or both of these
systems. If you want to sum up what has happened since the answer would be
• Moving Lights
• Media Servers
• Networking
• System prices have gone down 1000%
Congo - Creating the specification
During the years before Congo the development team made an extensive survey to lighting
control operators and lighting designers in all paths and backgrounds of the industry. Over
200 people were interviewed.
• What is your favourite hardware?
• What are your favourite functions?
• What is vital to you with a lighting control hardware?
• Which is your favourite console?
• Why is it your favourite console?
• Etc...
There were over 100 questions. And the most important feedback for the Congo Team was
this
"We want to be able to operate the console, with our concentration
focused on the performance"
This may seem simple, but it implicated a lot of things we had to take in consideration.
• Vital functions should have direct keys
• Navigation should be possible without looking at the screens
• The user interface should be tactile (physical keys)