Exporting to Pyromate

Overview

All professional versions of Finale (PRO and Business and Pyromate) export scripts for Pyromate Nighthawk and SmartFire systems. The special Finale Pyromate Edition also offers direct download to digital and analog NightHawk systems, and to the P-45AF. Finale also exports voice cue soundtracks for manual fired shows with Pyromate hardware. If you are using timecode, please see Timecode for additional directions.

In order to make firing scripts for computer fired shows, you need to configure your launch positions with specifications of your firing system. For instructions, please see the Export Overview section. Once you've configured your launch positions and created your show, to export scripts for Pyromate simply select "File > Export script > Pyromate/SmartShow", the first item on the menu. Finale will export a file in the format that can be read in by both Pyromate's SmartShow software and NiteTime software (the format is the native SmartShow format, so if you are using NiteTime you would load the script as a SmartShow script). When exporting a script for Pyromate, Finale will also write a soundtrack file with your music in the WAV format that can be read by SmartShow -- even if the original music that you loaded into Finale was in a different format, such as MP3. Thus conveniently you can use Finale to convert MP3 files to the WAV files that SmartShow can read.

Addressing Pyromate Modules

Pyromate modules expect numerical addresses in the range 1-199. Pyromate users often follow a convention that the module address indicates a position in the field layout, but there is obviously no requirement that any particular address number corresponds to a launch position. To add and configure a Pyromate module to a launch position in Finale, simply click the edit button of the launch position, and in the "Edit Position Properties" dialog, click "Add firing system unit". A new row will appear in the main section of the window with the following fields: description, address, first pin, no. of pins, matches/pin.

The description field has no bearing on the exported script, so you can put whatever you want in that field, or nothing. The address field contains the module address, a number 1-199. The first pin is always 1 for Pyromate modules, and the number of pins is 32 or 45, depending on the model of your module. The matches/pin field indicates the maximum number of ematches Finale will assign to a single pin before considering the pin "full". By default this limit is 1, though it is common to use a different default, such as 6, for normal firing conditions. The actual safe limit for number of ematches fired reliably from a single pin depends on the setup of your show (e.g., the length of wire used, type of ematch and whether you are wiring the ematches in series or parallel), and is based on Ohm's law and the voltage that the module applies. Pyromate provides an excellent explanation on their website at, http://pyromate.com/Basics-of-Electrical-Firing.htm, which you can refer to if you want to maximize the number of devices that you can launch with a limited number of modules.

Adding Modules Automatically

Finale will add modules to launch positions and address them automatically to accommodate the number of shots at the launch positions, but it obviously needs to know what kind of modules to add, and what ematches/pin limit to use when assigning pins. To use this automatic feature with Pyromate modules, simply add a single module to each launch position, and configure it as described in the previous section. If Finale needs to add any additional modules to a launch position, it will add modules based on the configuration of the module that you added manually, using it as a template. The address of an added module will be the first available integer not already in use as a module address.

At any time you can see the full set of modules in the "Firing view", which you can turn on or off by selecting the menu item "File > Firing view on/off". Automatically added modules will show up in the Firing view and in the exported reports and scripts, but will not appear in the "Edit Position Properties" dialogs.