Conventional fixture with intelligent addons

    Heres the situation:



    Example:
    An ETC Source 4 fixture with a Rosco iCue mirror and a color scroller
    This is three seperate dmx devices treated as one device


    The Lamp is on a big ETC dimmer pack at address 214, the iCue pan/tilt mirror is 16 bit so takes 4 dmx addresses from 120-123 and the scroller is on address 124


    This isnt an unusual situation in serious permanent theatre installations where dimmer packs handle multiplr KiloWatts of power and theres a few dozen or more of them in an electrical room so are addressed in a sequential group so they relate to circuits in the lighting grid.


    These are big boy toys and are normally controlled by a large ETC ION console costing many thousands of dollars.


    BUT! if the ION breaks down (and it has scared us on a few occasions). the show is over.


    I want to be able to at least get control of the lights and DMXControl would work great, but, without being able to specify different addresses for each part of devices like the S4 with mirror and scroller (and sometimes an iris as well) it becomes a nasty mess keeping track of what belongs to what fixture.


    Any ideas welcome. If I can make this work, it could well be one of the largest systems run by DMXControl with 96 2.4KW dimmers, well over 100 lights, plus over 12 "real" moving heads (Max 250 Entours and elations), a bunch of Elation RGB pars, and over 50 addons like scrollers, pan/tilt mirrors, irises. fog and snow machines, ArKaos Mediamaster pro and mediamaster vj, two video projectors (one on a pan tilt head) and all linked together using midi control with a 48ch digital sound board and SCS sound cue system so they can trigger events on each other.


    DMXC doing what an ETC ION does??? why not! Theres no technical reason it cant, its just a two universe DMX system with some midi event send and receive.


    If only I can deal with the device definitions so that one device in DMXC is made of mutiple sub-device definitions.


    The way ETC do it is to have seperate device definitions for a dimmer (the source 4), the scroller, the iCue pan/tilt and the iris.


    The the device (ETC call it a channel just to be confusing as its nothing to do with a DMX channel) is assembled by adding each part seperatly in the controller itself like "id=Ch 1, name=Down Stage Left iCue scroller iris, part1=dimmer, dmx address 214, part 2=icue dmx address 120-123, part3=scroller dmx address 124, part4=iris dmx address 461" all this is then shown as one device with intensity control, x/y control, a color picker and am iris control.


    If I can make this usable, the next step is to figure out how to export the shows (cue lists, timings, etc) from the ION and import into DMXC, but thats for another post probably in the development section of the forum. Right now, Id be happy just to be able to control things easily if (when) I have to.


    A side effect of making this work would be that the school and community theatre groups that use the facility coud now use DMXC for off line design and we could then use it to run their shows and just use the ETC ION for those pro lighting designers that are used to that type of gear.

    Hi again,
    it is possible to make one ddf for three single Devices.
    Just one question, are the devices in your venue fixed on the dmx-channels?


    If this is true, it will be no problem.
    You have to create for every multiple device, with diffrent dmx-adress ranges, an ddf.


    In the channel definition in the ddf-xml-file you can define the channels like this:


    Code
    <channels>
    <function channel="0" minvalue="0" maxvalue="255" name="Pan" fade="yes" type="pan" /> 
    <function channel="1" minvalue="0" maxvalue="255" name="Pan Fine" fade="yes" type="panfine" />
    <function channel="2" minvalue="0" maxvalue="255" name="Tilt" fade="yes" type="tilt" />
    <function channel="3" minvalue="0" maxvalue="255" name="Tilt Fine" fade="yes" type="tiltfine" />
    <function channel="4" minvalue="0" maxvalue="255" name="Dimmer" fade="yes" type="dimmer" />
    <function channel="341" minvalue="0" maxvalue="255" name="Iris" fade="yes"  />
  <channels>


    After the channel definiton you can add the controls in the form area and store the ddf under
    program-files\DMXControl\Devices.



    Now you can integrate the ddf in the stage view with start-address 120
    DMX 120 is the offset-address for the ddf.


    Any more questions, just ask.

    Hi,
    in addition to Uwe's post, I have two remarks:

    • If you use the "Channel view" (as a technician in a theater, you surely do ^^), the DDF isn't displayed correctly in this program module. The grey bar, showing which channel belongs to which device, didn't include the separated channes (in Uwes example channel "341"). On the other hand the grey bar is as long as the count of channes of this device. For example the grey bar of Uwe's channel definition is 6 channels long but channel 5 isn't mentioned in the device definition (channel definitions in DDFs starting with channel 0).
    • There is a tool called "DDFCreator" to easily create device definitions (downloadable on the homepage). Some new features were added in DDFs since version 2.9 of DMXControl but unfortunately the DDFCreator haven't been updated since then. So you can use the DDFCreator for all grafical stuff but it's much better to use a normal text editor to change the internal definitions.

    regards
    JP
    P.S.: Sorry for my bad english. I hope you will understand everything :)

    Mal eine idee,


    wie wäre es in dmxcontrol einen Scheinwerfer Typ einzuführen den man erweitern kann.
    Nehmen wir mal einen Normalen dimmer kanal der hat dann eine Art unter menü wo man eine gewisse anzahl an geräten anhängen kann z.b einen Farbwechsler ein Goborad und und...


    So muss man für jedes gerät nur ein ddf erstellen und kann dieses dann direkt in dmxcontroll kombinieren. wenn mich nicht alles tüscht mmüsste das ja in dmxcontrol 3 dann relativ einfach zu implementieren sein da es ja dort nur noch das xml file gibt ohne das layout was ja beim jetzigen ddf noch so ist.


    Ich hoffe ich bin nicht auf dem holzweg...

    Hi,
    Lost asked, if there could be something like a DDF-"container" being implemented in DMXControl which could contain several "basic" DDFs and link them to a single DDF. But I think, there are some problems with this type of DDF. First, all "basic" DDFs have to be on every system two, so if one is missing, you could kill a great bunch of DDFs. On the other side, this type of DDF would be confusing for beginners. There were an internal discussion about multi-usable DDFs and the result was, that there should be no such DDFs in DMXControl. Each DDF is only for one device. This idea would break this convention.


    As Lost said, it will be much easyer in DMXControl 3 to build a DDF, because you only have to define the used channels. So you wouldn't save any time by combining some existing DDFs ;).


    Lost: It would be good, if you answer in english so everybody in this international section will understand you ;)
    regards
    JP

    Quote from ChristopherD

    If I can make this usable, the next step is to figure out how to export the shows (cue lists, timings, etc) from the ION and import into DMXC, but thats for another post probably in the development section of the forum.

    DMXControl 2 does not support import of USITT ASCII, etc. and i don't think it ever will. However you will be able to import effects and probably cues? in CSV format


    Quote from ChristopherD

    Right now, Id be happy just to be able to control things easily if (when) I have to.

    I don't think that you will find it easy to control you fixtures with DMXControl if you are used to work on an ION ... at least this applies for me.


    Also at some point (this depends on how complex your shows are) you will not be able to get a show look the same in DMXControl as it does on the ION.


    DMXControl does not support something like Automark (back to the (sometimes better) old times and the extensive need for move cues ;()
    You don't have Presets and Palettes.
    Submaster don't have options like Inhibitive, Exclusive, Shielded, etc.
    Tracking and GoTo do not work (as you know it from the ION)
    There is no Parameter and no Channel timing
    You don't have Follow, Assert, (Link/Loop), Multipart Cues, Curves
    If you used Absolute/Relative Effects, especially with use of Entry/Exit behaviour, have fun creating these with DMXControl.
    And this was just what spontaneously came to my mind.


    I don't want to say thats impossible, all i want to express is that it could get a real pain and time consuming ... I've done it twice. Today i would use a backup console or if programming is finished, play the show back and record it with DMXControl. So that there is at least some (static) light on stage if the console fails.



    At some point in the future (I don't know when this will be. But we are talking in years not in weeks or months) DMXControl 3 (of which a public beta will be available within this year) will support this type of part fixtures (Part 1 Dimmer, Part 2 Scroller, Part 3 Iris)
    However this is pretty low prio, because only a few users use scrollers, motorized iris and gobo rotators.


    So besides all the negative I've said, Uwe and JPK gave some hints. You can give it a try.



    Dennis

    I'm making progress, the new beta was a huge help.


    Yes, I agree that moving from the ION to DMXC isn't anywhere close to a 1 to 1. Fortunately, most of what we do is very simple community theatre and small, relatively static events. Most of them cant even begin to appreciate what the ION can do and would probably be better off with DMXC :)


    Now, I need to do battle with the SLMEV visualizer which also cant handle anything but nice, neat consecutive channels for a fixture.


    A thought.....


    A potentially useful tool, would be a simple bit of software that acted like a patch bay for artnet/dmx. It would take dmx IN from a source (be it an artnet node ip or an entec) and put it OUT on another destination interface (again artnet node ip or an entec). The cool thing would be that a user could define a translation table for it that would, for example, define "anything for dmx address 12 coming from the source becomes dmx address 289 on destination. If this handled multiple universes, it could be a very useful utility.


    DMXC can already do this, using the softpatch feature, but it seems a waste to run the entire program, just to do address changing. There may be a market for a reliable, standalone, simple, "dmx patchbay" program that could generate some revenue to support the DMXC project. It could be quite useful for integrating house lighting with portable lighting for bars, dj's etc. and maybe even larger touring companies. It doesn't really need a fancy gui or anything. A simple "driver" or "service" that read a text file with the patches on start would be fine. Its not hard to create a file with two columns of numbers it cpuld easily support iuniverses and transation between them by using a notation like 1.307 to denote universe 1 address 307. Netbooks are cheap these days, second hand laptops are even cheaper, usually less than a single light, so using one as an appliance just to patch dmx isn't that dumb. Multiple IP's on a single network interface is easy so one Ethernet interface could, theoretically, do patching between two artnets.


    BTW, a brief, first, look and it MAY be possible to create a script using that word processor on steroids known as Linux that could, maybe move cues from ION to DMXC (at least simple ones, maybe...). I find string manipulation easier in Linux so that's where I'm starting. Its not going to be perfect, ever, even if it ever works.


    The good news, though is that it IS now possible to at least make some lighting happen with DMXC if the ION throws a temper tantrum. For some of what we do, some lighting, even if its manual, is still better than cancelling the show.


    Well done, Stefan and the team. and, again, thanks to all who commented and suggested things


    Christopher


    (oh. no problem for me on the German, I use Google Translate a lot for DMXC)

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