I mostly do lighting along with sound. For the past couple years I've been using Onyx and m-touch, M-play controllers. Onyx can do a lot, but for many gigs, it added a layer of complexity and setup. I really wanted something that was standalone, and didn't involve having to setup a laptop each gig.
Completely by accident, I stumbled across the WolfMix WM1. In the US, it is distributed by ADJ. The more I looked at it, the more boxes it checked.
It's a small device, completely standalone. It's powered by USB, you can even use a battery brick to run it. It can be expanded out to four universes, and there's options to link to other DMX controllers, or even a second WM1. It has three FX engines, and three static buttons, dedicated to three specific functions: Color, Movement, and Beam (or Gobo). Dedicated buttons for specials like blinders, strobe, blackout, and smoke. I won't list out all the features. Now granted, there are some tradeoffs, as the workflow was designed around the above main functions.
I picked one up. It was very easy to program. I have some generic fixtures that I had to build from scratch, but they do have a pretty extensive fixture library. Once you get used to the flow, it is super easy to use, especially when juggling other jobs like doing sound, etc at the same time.
Since one of the more frequent questions here are around controllers, especially on the band or mid size provider level, I thought I'd throw this one out there as an option.
https://www.adj.com/wmx1
