Did you know? #34 - Many Things are relative ... even the programmer node

Today we will take a look at a small, but even in our team unknown feature in the Input Assignment: The relative and the absolute modes of the programmer node. However, before we go into the modes in more detail, let's first take a quick look at what the node is used for. This node represents a specific device or device group in the Programmer. So the programmer node must first be assigned to a device or group via the input port. Then various device properties can be controlled directly via the input ports of the node. These values then end up directly in the programmer and can be stored from there in cuelists, for example. The values stored in the Programmer are presented at the output port of a device property. At this point, however, the hint: for a permanent live control of functions there are the masters in DMXControl 3. These can be used for this purpose even more flexibly.

If you use the programmer node, you will notice that the outputs present the real values of the device property - for example, with a fully raised dimmer the value 100 or the value of the position. However, the inputs (with a few exceptions) only allow a value range from 0 to 1. At first sight this seems to be very inconsistent, because the same device property values are represented differently at the input and output port. So you have to apply a value of 1 at the dimmer input to set the dimmer to 100% and a 100 appears at the output.

However, this behavior is intended, because the inputs are normalized. The value range of the input is between 0 and 1, no matter what the value range of the controlled device is. For example, the value range of a connected fader can also be set to the range 0 and 1 and does not have to be set individually for each device. This is the relative input mode of the programmer, which is active by default. But what few people know (even within our team as we found out recently :D), that you can also set the programmer inputs to an absolute value range. Then the input range equals the range of the outputs. Then a value of 100 can actually be applied to the dimmer input, this will be taken over and output in exactly the same way. The same applies in this case to the position: here you can then also pass the actual pan angle on the pan axis or the tilt angle on the tilt axis to the programmer node.

Now some may ask: Why do you need the absolute mode? This mode helps, for example, if you want to assign a slider in the softdesk fix to a property of a device and thereby attach the slider for a feedback to both the input and the output port of the programmer. Then you usually don't have to convert the value and can set the value range of the slider to the one of the device property (for example 0 and 100 for the dimmer) and save a Rule of Three node. But the disadvantage can be, if you use the same scheme for the position, that this connection set has to be adjusted manually, if you use another device and this device has a different working range on the pan and tilt axis.

Your DMXControl-Team