Shimmer with DMX....not so much

[coasterbp]

Just hooked up my DMX open dongle with my S3 software and did some tests. Everything looks good except for shimmer. It's really lagging, like it's missing every 3-4 commands.

Shimmer on a normal controller has a very consistent cycle to it, while on my DMX channels, its almost more like twinkle, but a little faster and random.

I've tried it with 2 different DMX devices and I've had the same result with both. Anyone else?

-=CoasterBP

[Alan C]

My understanding is that with the LOR protocol, the controller is given a single command to "shimmer" a channel. Using DMX protocol, the individual "on" and "off" commands that create the shimmer must be sent continuously to the DMX device. This obviously uses much more processor time on the show computer.

Regards,

Alan.

[coasterbp]

Thanks, Alan. After doing some more research on my on, I saw that the shimmer function is actually created "on board" and not through individual commands. My bad.... guess I'll have to try to create that effect manually...or at least fake it.

Thanks!

[Alan C]

I think you will find that it is the same with a lot of the LOR protocol - a lot of the processing is done by the boards themselves, which allows so many channels to be connected to a single network. When using the DMX protocol, because the processing is done either by the show computer (or in some cases by the DMX interface), there is a much lower limit of how many channels can be controlled on the netwoek.

Regards,,

Alan.

[dmoore]

Recommend reading for the differences between the LOR and DMX protocols in "laymans" terms:

http://www.holidaycoro.com/2010LSHWorkshop/DMX%20and%20LOR%20Protocols.pdf