To start our Congo console we're going to hit the Power switch located directly behind
the Congo logo.
Once your console is booted up you'll come into the Welcome screen.
This screen allows you to select exactly what you want your console to start as.
More often than not you'll select Start as a Server.
If you have multiple consoles online on a network you may have some different options
here.
If you've already selected a server on another console, then on your secondary console this
will say Start as Back-Up.
The second button up, which we can access using our Right Arrow key, allows us to start
the console as a client.
This is useful if you have multiple consoles online and want a second console to import
data, but not actually send anything out to the rig.
We always have the option to start offline.
This allows you to come in using all the features of the console, but no data will actually
leave the console.
Moving over one more, we have System Settings.
We can select any one of these by hitting the Modify key.
The System Settings is one of the few areas on the console that requires the use of a
mouse.
When you first come in you'll be in the General tab.
This allows you to set things like time and date and your regional settings, such as location,
time zone and language.
Some other important tabs up at the top include the Network tab, which allows you to set your
network information if you're using a network system; Monitor Configuration and the ability
to update our console.
Once you're done, come down to the bottom with your mouse and click Okay.
A good little thing to note is on the Welcome screen in the top right hand corner, you can
see some important information like the IP address of the console and which of the network
lighting protocols the console's outputting.
This is a really great feature to allow you to quickly see exactly what's going on in
the network of your console.
If we navigate all the way over to the right here, we could have our Power Off option,
which will let us shutdown our desk, but for right now, we're gonna actually start-up our
desk and take a look inside the server.
I'm gonna navigate over to Start Server and hit Modify to start my desk.
When we first boot into the server we're greeted by the System Start Options display.
This allows us to select how we wanna start our play.
We have the option to start using out last show file; we can open a new show file using
our default play.
This allows us to load in settings we've chosen to use as a template or we can start a new
show with either a one-to-one patch or with no patch.
If we arrow to the right, we get the Open Play option.
This allows us to open another show file besides the last one we were working on.
The first option is Source and we can either open from the Play Archive or the USB memory
stick by hitting the Modify key and arrowing up and down.
Hit Modify again to select.
The next option down is Folder.
If you are searching through a folder on either the Play Archive or the USB memory stick,
they'll display here.
Hit Modify to select and then we can actually select the file.
The checkbox allows us to select either by time or in alphabetical order.
All of our files load up there and we can very quickly select an option.
For our purposes today we're going to start a new show with a Clear Patch.
So I'll arrow back to start, arrow down to No Patch and hit the Modify key.
We now see the Let's Begin screen.
This allows us to setup some options that control how our data is going to be stored.
We'll get into some of this later, but for now, let's just hit Modify and let's begin.
A lot of the navigation controls on Congo are controlled using the Browser option.
To get into Browser we hit the Browser key on the face panel and then use our arrow keys
to navigate up and down.
Once we've selected an option we want, we use our arrow keys to navigate back and forward,
hit the arrow key to open one of our options.
We can use our Left Arrow key to close any of these options back down.
Within Files, we have option for New, Open, Save and Save Copy to USB and Save As.
If we go to New, we get that same screen we had when we started to give us the option
to start with a default or a patched one-to-one show or a no patch show.
When we go to Save our show, we can navigate down to Save, hit modify and this allows us
to very quickly select where we wanna save our show, either on the Play Archive or Hard
Drive or directly to a USB stick.
We can then select a folder we wanna save in and give it a file name.
When we're done, we navigate down and hit Okay.
I'm not gonna Save right now.
When we go into our Save As options, we have the ability to Save, but in a new location.
Going down to our Default Play Wizard allows us to access what options we wanna save from
this show file which will then come up when we create a Default show.
So I could navigate through all of my different options and select maybe just my Dimmer Patch,
my Device Patch and my Groups.
Now when I come down to Save Selected Data as the Default Play, when I start a new show
and select Default Play it will bring up all of the ones from the show I just saved.
If we go all the way down to the bottom with our arrow keys, we also can exit back to our
Welcome screen or simply Power Off the Console.
To select any of these settings, you're just gonna hit Modify.
It's always good practice to either Shut Down your Console using the Power Off feature of
the Browser or to Exit to the Welcome Screen and use the Shutdown command we talked about
earlier.
It's important to note that underneath the Open section inside of our Play Archive, which
is what we refer to the hard drive as, we have a series of demo plays.
These are pre-made show files that are already patched ready for you to work with and play
at home.
Along with the files inside of the Open, we also have a series of visualizers that are
contained under Media.
If you notice that these training projects actually match the names of the show files
we had previously looked at.
Down at the bottom we have our Help section.
This provides a full listing of the entire Help Manual right at your fingertips.
This can also be accessed using the Help button right on the front of the console.
If you found yourself with a lot of nodes open with the Browser, a quick shortcut would
be to hold the Clear button and hit the Browser button to quickly close all of them back.