Okay, I just purchased an Elation Operator 192 along with 2 Revo 3s, and 2 led DMX starballs. I'm a total newb at DMX but i did some homework and still found the whole thing a bit unclear. All I really want is for my Revo 3s and starballs to do is change up when playing ballads. I really like the slave mode playing to the beat of the music, but would like to blackout the revos and just have the starballs go into a slow spin without any strobe...now my question is...can the Op 192 do this, or should I return it and get a couple of UC3 remotes?

What are you truly trying to accomplis is the first question I have.

Are you looking to try to totally automate things? If you're going with the UC3 remotes, then it's 1 per fixture and you're going to need to hit buttons. Not exactly automated, but gets the job done.

What you want to achieve is totally possible wiht the DMX Operator 192. You could have saved money and gone with the DMX Operator and accomplished the same thing, but this isn't about "what you should have gotten", because the DMX Operator 192 is also an excellent starter controller that easily expands as you do(to a degree).

This is my suggestion:
Start by reading your manuals for all your fixtures and your controller to get some basic familiarity.
Also, I'd go ahead and do a basic set-up of your fixtures so you can use those with your controller so you can learn how they work together.

So, once you've gotten them basically working, you can now go onto "advanced" things. Programming the DMX Operator 192.

Before you program, you should write down what you want to do. OK, so you want one scene of Reve III's, and another of Starball's. That's good. 2 scenes. Simply program those into your DMX Operator 192 and you're ready to go quickly with a button press for one scene and another press for the other. But, what if you want strobe? Program more scenes.

Programming scenes is why it is super important to read the manual for your DMX Operator and print out those pages. Also, print out the pages for your lights that show your DMX values so you can program them better. Think of it as a "cheat sheet".

Do be aware of the following as I am not downloading manuals for the Revo III and Starballs right now:
DO read your DMX values pages to see if there are features you like when the units work in stand-alone mode vs. DMX mode. The biggest question I've seen is "I want the light to be able to work as a sound active device when in DMX mode" and then we learn that the light in question does not have a sound active mode option available when in DMX mode. That may be the issue that you have to address that may determine if you go with 4 UC3 controllers(1 per fixture) or can go with DMX. For some people, they really really need that sound active mode to be available all the time, not necessarily using it all the time though. Sure, you can save money going with the UC3's, but you give up on what control you may have. Also, you can save on those even further by using master/slave mode(which you can't use in DMX) and use 2 UC3 controllers since the slave will follow the master. But, this requires 2 cable runs, 1 per light type. Since this is between fixtures, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Really think about what you need or want to do.

I think you'll end up liking your controller better. Another option might be to go MyDMX for computer based control. You can program indefinate amount of scenes and can trigger them via programmed keyboard presses(say, assing "A" as the Revo III's, and "B" as the slow spinning Starballs with no strobe).

Back to DMX-512: You can simply set your Revo III's to an identical set of addresses, and the Starballs to another set of identical addresses. Since you're using them in pairs, it makes it faster to program. Instead of doing the same thing twice per fixture type, you can do it once and it works. Trust me when I say there is no harm in sharing addresses with DMX.

Thanks for the reply Chris. Yes, there's certainly a learning curve to deal with going in, but I can see how it will serve me better in the future after watching video after video lol. Thanks for the tip on identical addresses. I like the slave mode, so this should suit me fine.