Evolve with Eos Part 1: The First Family

As we approach 20 years of the Eos Family of consoles, it feels like the right time to look back at how the platform has evolved. The first desk in the Eos Family was itself an evolution of earlier ETC control ideas, primarily Obsession II.  

Eos is Imagined and Debuted 

In 2001, ETC kicked off a new console development project, which would eventually become known worldwide as Eos. The project began with three years of market research, during which the Eos team held countless conversations with lighting professionals to understand what they truly needed in a console. Out of that work came a single directive for R&D: “one console to fill the duties of two.” At the time, theatrical shows used multiple consoles for each show: typically, a moving-light desk, such as a Hog, and a conventional desk, such as the Obsession II or Strand 500.  The project hoped to replace the need for multiple systems on a single commercial show.  

(The first 3D render of an Eos Classic - Circa 2004)

After three years of research and end-user meetings and another two years of feature planning, coding, and design, a beta unit was ready for its first show. That milestone would go to a Chicago Shakespeare production of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2 with Ken Billington. In the lead-up to the show, R&D was rushing to make it happen, as shipping delays and production timelines had caused a crunch, but ultimately, the desk made it in time. Ken’s show went off without a hitch, and the feedback he and his team provided was invaluable for getting Eos ready for its first public appearance at LDI in 2006 where it would win the Product of the Year Award for the best debuting products.  

(Dan Duffy, Anne Valentino, Dennis Varian, and Fred Foster accept the 2006 Product of the Year Award from an LDI Representative)

The Eos Classic launch was highlighted by a focus on tactile response seen in the haptic encoders and the integrated touch screens with their configurable Direct Select Button Overlays. Alongside the new hardware, the release of the Eos Classic brought the first Eos software.

The Eos team spent over three years debating how Eos software would look and work before writing a single line of code. When building software from the ground up, you have limitless possibilities, but as you start coding, you make decisions, and some of those possibilities close. Ultimately, ETC’s Dan Duffy would take it upon himself to write the first line of Eos code. Eos v1.0 primarily focused on bringing features from earlier desks into Eos, but it also introduced a few new features that were a big deal at the time including the Eos Color Picker and the Fixture Editor. 

Ion Joins the Family

The success of what is now known as Eos Classic paved the way for a series of desks that would join the family, the first of which was the Ion. Its creation was driven by user demand for a more affordable option better suited for training the next generation of Eos users.  

R&D worked to position Ion as a true entry-level desk, but feature additions continued to bring it closer to its flagship counterpart. Ultimately, the Ion Classic grew to have nearly the same software and a similar feature set as Eos Classic. It quickly found its audience among designers who needed a smaller, more flexible footprint than the Eos Classic offered.

(Early marketing photo of the Ion Classic - Circa 2007)

In addition to its compact form factor, Ion Classic helped drive several new Eos features at launch and in the months that followed. Eos v1.3 added support for Ion while introducing features such as Partitioned Control, along with numerous smaller enhancements. Only 5 months later, Eos v1.4 was released, bringing another wave of features to the family, including fader wing support for the Eos Family.

Element Brings Eos to All 

Following the launch of the Ion Classic, R&D worked to create a hardware and feature compliment that would meet the needs of entry-level users. This effort would lead to the creation of the Element desk, which fit perfectly in the training role both teachers and the ETC team had been working towards. To accomplish this, the R&D team removed the encoders as they could be intimidating for new users and replaced them with ML controls.  More faders were also added, and were pre-assigned to channel intensities, allowing users to move them and see lights change instantly. 

(The original pre-production drawings of Ion and Element - Circa 2006 and 2008 respectively)

Eos v1.6 and Eos v1.7 were released the same month as Element, with v1.6 launching the same day and adding support for the new Element desk. Only a few weeks later, Eos v1.7 was released with a handful of new features.  Support for multiple external USB connections on fader wings was probably the most practical addition made in v1.7, but it also added Effects on Subs, additional field support tools, and color improvements including setting gel matches from the command line. The Eos Family software was quickly gaining features, alongside a growing compliment of consoles. 

With the release of Element in 2009, the first generation of Eos Family was complete: Eos, Ion, and Element - all known now as Classic. Despite the success of the consoles, ETC wasted no time dwelling on the milestone. Instead, in the three years following Element’s release, the Eos team launched the first second-generation desks while delivering fourteen software updates to users, vastly expanding the capabilities of Eos Family systems.

Stay tuned for Part Two, where we will explore the development of second-generation Eos desks and the software that continues to drive them.

 Eos Family Timeline Part 1