Developer News - 18_KW45 - Review on the DevCon 2018

This year a total of seven developers met in Dortmund, Germany at home of our club member Markus. But the first discussions already started on our way to Dortmund. One of the topics was, for example, how external inputs with return channels (e. g. motor faders) should be controlled in the future in order to avoid problems such as feedback loops, etc.

After arriving in Dortmund in the early afternoon and a short sightseeing tour through the rooms, the laptops were unpacked directly. This time the main focus was on DMXControl 3.2, because the beta test for DMXControl 3.1.3 is currently running and no serious problems have occurred yet. Thus the developers spent their time for the Input Assignment, which is completely renewed with DMXControl 3.2. This is mainly due to the fact that changes in the Input Assignments become very slow, especially with large configurations, because sometimes several minutes pass before the Input Assignment window opens. Furthermore, currently only 1:1 relations are allowed and inputs cannot be scaled manually or mixed with other inputs to rout them to one output. The new Input Assignment is designed to solve all these problems. After the developers had already worked on parts of the new Input Assignment in advance, the task now was to assemble these parts and complete them. There are still some steps to go for a fully functional input assignment, but initial tests already look good.

In addition to the Input Assignment we also worked on other topics for DMXControl 3.2. The MIDI plug-in is now directly integrated into the source code of DMXControl 3.2 as a plug-in and has already been partially adapted to the new structure. This should make it easier to maintain the plug-in and allow early detection of problems when changes are made in DMXControl 3. Many detail improvements were also worked on, which cannot be listed here in detail.

Further work took place on the DDF Library, which was updated to the latest software versions and extended by some new features. Also around the DMXControl Wiki there were numerous activities to bring it up to date. In the latter case, the developers were supported by a guest from the marketing team who visited us on two evenings.

As always the time passed much too fast and the Sunday as departure day came much too soon. Therefore some club members used the trip home to make some last changes to the code. Many thanks at this point to Markus for hosting us for the long weekend and making sure that the coffee flow and the "Milchschnitte" supply was secured.

Your DMXControl-Team