Association News - 22_CW15: April Fool 2022: DMXControl Live Lights

Do you remember our last April Fool's joke? That was in 2018. At the time, our forum had to "believe in it" because we thought a scary beautiful template could lighten up the gray everyday life a bit. If you want to read the news again: Association News - 18_KW14 - Holidays + April Fool.

After a three year break it was time again. Our April Fool 2022 was the pre-announcement and evaluation of a possible new feature for DMXControl 3 called "DMXControl Live Lights". And because it should not be so obvious this time, we have moved the 1st of April also without further ado two days ahead as well as let the evaluation run until last Sunday. As you have surely noticed, the whole action should have a little "hand and foot" to get some reliable results - April Fool or not. Because, as it was often said in the announcement, even a crazy and unconventional idea can have a lasting effect. For this reason, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for taking part in the associated survey!

In order to make everything transparent for you afterwards, we will break down the April Fool's joke a bit. The statement about the gRPC rebuild is still valid. In the last few weeks, there has been repeated confirmation in various places that this has been completed accordingly and is in beta testing. Likewise, the flashback to our annual meeting 2018 is not fictitious - even the idea for this April Fool's joke originated there. The second livestream from the Stadl was scheduled quite precisely due to the fact that we could watch the Eurovision Song Contest together. So, our April Fool's joke starts with the technical description of the concept as well as with the poll. At this point we would like to state that the procedure described there is not fundamentally absurd. For a real implementation it is just really missing the output interface, a platform for the exchange of the show streams and the possibility to bring them back into the own project.

Excitingly, in the summary, the feedback in our survey about the envisioned feature "DMXControl Live Lights" was not fundamentally reserved or negative. In total, our survey system recorded 57 participations, of which 30 completed the survey in full. The with 53,3 % narrow majority of those who have completed the survey completely represent the opinion that (they) do not need the considered platform "DMXControl Live Lights" (for the time being). Another third of the participants stated that they would like to use the platform to control their devices. Another 13.3% would even provide corresponding show streams.

There is no clear favorite for which occasion the show data would then be used for one's own lighting setup, but club ambience is slightly ahead, followed by large events and TV shows. The setup to be controlled here includes an average of nine moving heads or scanners and 23 LED spotlights or LED bars. Other devices such as classic PARs on conventional dimmers, beamers, flower or derbies and also lasers play a rather minor role in relation to the answers given. By the way, these crooked numbers of devices are because each of you could enter the numbers freely and we now consider the average value of all answers in the evaluation.

There is no clear favorite for which occasion the show data is then used for one's own lighting setup, but the club ambience is slightly ahead, followed by large events and TV shows. The setup to be controlled here includes an average of nine moving heads or scanners and 23 LED spotlights or LED bars. Other devices such as classic PARs on conventional dimmers, beamers, flower or derbies and also lasers play a rather minor role in relation to the answers given. By the way, these crooked numbers of devices are since each of you could enter the numbers freely and we now consider the average value of all answers in the evaluation.

When providing the show streams, there would even be the willingness of you not to generate them as an "accessory" in a club or during a band concert. Those who would agree would even pick specific occasions according to the answers given. Regular show streams would therefore not be possible. The corresponding setups are not huge and would consist of eight LED-BARs, eleven moving-heads or scanners and 14 LED-PARs, averaged over all answers. Thanks to available internet connections, real live control would also be possible. And when it came to the question of musical genres, there was a colorful mix, so there would certainly have been something for everyone.

The majority felt that the features that had been considered, such as a time schedule, filtering by event type and gerne, playback of old show data, and uploading of show data generated offline, would be useful. In contrast, the responses regarding rating and comment functions were more reserved about a potential need. There was only disagreement about how the platform should be implemented. According to your answers, the variant with which the platform "DMXControl Live Lights" receives a web page with a simple overview and all further functions are integrated in DMXControl 3 itself was most likely to be considered. But also, the variants "extensive web offer, simple interface in DMXControl 3" or the complete opposite "use only within DMXControl 3" were not uninteresting for you. Thus, we ourselves, more exactly our developer team, would have had the agony of the choice.

How far now all this disappears in the drawer, cannot be said now of course. As I said at the beginning, this concept was very well received by the participants in the survey. But before we start to think about this feature, we will stick to our roadmap for the next version, but we will also take a look at the results of the "big" survey and distribute the priorities accordingly. From therefore we hope finally that you are not too disappointed to read that "DMXControl Live Lights" was an April Fool's joke for the moment. But surely it was exciting for you to read how the results turned out in the end.

Your DMXControl-Team