Feature Request - Twinkle Speed

[scodavis]

Hello!

 

Absolutely love the "Twinkle" (as well as "Shimmer") functions in LOR, but I think it would be neat to be able to speed up or slow down the Twinkle function depending on what is going on.  Perhaps the ability to customize the Twinkle setting with 1/4x, 1/2x, 1x, 2x, and 4x speeds would be a way to further customize the display based on the speed of the music being played.  It could also be useful for people who have static displays between songs - the slowest Twinkle setting could be a way to add some interest with a minimum of programming required.

 

-Scott

[k6ccc]

Twinkle and shimmer are functions in the controllers. The LOR software only sends a command to twinkle or shimmer at a certain intensity for a certain amount of time. To allow changing that would require at least a controller firmware upgrade.

Especially for the slower speeds you're looking for, you can sequence a twinkle yourself. I ended up doing that for a 94 pixel ribbon this year. The ribbon is only seen indirectly, so if every Pixel were to twinkle, is only sort looks like white. I wanted to group 12 pixels together (a little under four feet) and have the groups twinkle. Just manually sequenced some semi-random colors and used paste multiple to make 12 rows, then same idea for the other 7 groups. Can make it any speed desired.

I can send that sequence segment if desired so you can see what I did.

[scubado]

Sooooo, why not a firmware upgrade?  This has been on the wishlist for years.  My programming computer is currently dead and sequencing on my show computer is no fun. 

[scodavis]

Twinkle and shimmer are functions in the controllers. The LOR software only sends a command to twinkle or shimmer at a certain intensity for a certain amount of time. To allow changing that would require at least a controller firmware upgrade. Especially for the slower speeds you're looking for, you can sequence a twinkle yourself. I ended up doing that for a 94 pixel ribbon this year. The ribbon is only seen indirectly, so if every Pixel were to twinkle, is only sort looks like white. I wanted to group 12 pixels together (a little under four feet) and have the groups twinkle. Just manually sequenced some semi-random colors and used paste multiple to make 12 rows, then same idea for the other 7 groups. Can make it any speed desired. I can send that sequence segment if desired so you can see what I did.

 

Are you sure about that, Jim?  After all, when you run a sequence in the sequence editor (whether using controllers, the visualizer, or just the channel name highlights) the system correctly displays what is happening.  It seems to me that it's done by the Light-O-Rama software, not the hardware.

[k6ccc]

Very certain about that. The only time the LOR software creates the actual shimmer or twinkle effect is for DMX.

[PhilMassey]

Jim is correct. The LOR twinkle and shimmer is in hardwear.

[ericm]

I create my own twinkle effects by dividing the timings down and randomly putting on different channels all over can make them faster or slower then the default speed, I do this some times to make sure no 2 colors in he same spot is on at the same time. I guess you could do the same with shimmer if you wanted.

[scubado]

How come LOR doesn't jump in on this to explain why they haven't addressed this.  Seems like it would be easy to add a dialog box to select speed like you would select intensity with a firmware upgrade if needed.

[Grinch]

 Hardware or Software it would be a nice feature to have, and it would save time sequencing 

[LOR Staff]

How come LOR doesn't jump in on this to explain why they haven't addressed this.  Seems like it would be easy to add a dialog box to select speed like you would select intensity with a firmware upgrade if needed.

 

Because it was our busy time of year and we can't answer everything (or even catch them all)?    If you ever have a question that absolutely needs our response, please open a help desk ticket.  Sorry we missed this one.

 

Shimmers and Twinkles when run on LOR hardware are hardware based.  The microcode in the processor does the math/etc.  Because they are done in hardware, we can keep things in sync between multiple controllers.  Everyone has the same time reference (that being the 50/60hz 0-cross of AC power), so shimmers are synced (or is it twinkle?  I always confuse the two).

 

Assuming we have the room, we could add some code to the firmware to accept a parameter that would specify 'speed' (or whatever). However that means we would have to add a 17th channel (or 9th, or 5th for 8/4 ch controllers) that would allow for the param.  Then we would have to explain to people that the value there is not based on any particular time but on 'Number of 1/120'ths of a second between on and off' (for 60hz people 1/100 for 50hz), and that it is only for twinkles.  This would also lead to issues for iDMX1000 users.

 

Knowing that people already don't understand how to use Macros on Cosmic Color Devices (because they don't understand that a macro channel is a parameter not an intensity), and knowing that even things as simple as the CCF 50W strobe function are beyond them, I don't think we'll be adding it anytime soon.  I'm not the final word on that however, so I'll let Dan know and let him decide.  He's the boss

 

For DMX devices twinkle and shimmer are EMULATED by the listener.  That is, the twinkle command is sent to the listener, and the listener then computes correct intensities to  send to the devices.  Since DMX is a frame based comm, every DMX channel is refreshed every 24ms (approx) so we can keep things in sync on a universe.

 

For software, like the Visualizer and the buttons in the Sequence Editor, twinkle and shimmer are both simulated.  We know how the firmware works and so we get as close as we can.  It has only been since S4 that the Visualizer had a twinkle/shimmer that was even remotely close to hardware 

 

As others have suggested, the beauty of LOR software is that if we don't have something built in you should have the tools to do exactly what you want manually.

[jamills706]

Along these same lines....I wonder if the twinkle can be somehow set to a specific color?

Seems to me that only Red, Green, and Blue give only their own respective colors....like if I use a Yellow Tinkle I don't get Yellow I get half red and half green (yes, I understand that is what goes together to make the yellow).

But I'd like to twinkle instead of shimmer at times and only the shimmer actually uses the colors I specify.

[bob]

Along these same lines....I wonder if the twinkle can be somehow set to a specific color?

Seems to me that only Red, Green, and Blue give only their own respective colors....like if I use a Yellow Tinkle I don't get Yellow I get half red and half green (yes, I understand that is what goes together to make the yellow).

But I'd like to twinkle instead of shimmer at times and only the shimmer actually uses the colors I specify.

 

Unfortunately the software has no way to tell the hardware "these two channels should twinkle in sync with each other", even if "these two channels" are the R and the G of the same RGB pixel, so there's no way to do this directly with the twinkle tool.  However, you can still manually accomplish something like it.

 

First you make a simulated white RGB twinkle, like this:

www.lightorama.com/bobpublic/SimulatedTwinkleRGBWhite.swf

 

Then you use the Foreground Effects button in combination with the Color Fade tool to make it be a color (or a fade from one color to another), like this:

 

www.lightorama.com/bobpublic/SimulatedTwinkleRGBColors.swf

[bob]

Oh, and with more recent versions of the software, you could also use the "Change Intensities" tool to go from the simulated white RGB twinkle to a simulated color RGB twinkle:

 

www.lightorama.com/help/index.html?change_intensities.htm

[scodavis]

@DevMike I'd like to bring this up one more time, but suggest an alternate idea.  This would be a good compromise between having no control over twinkle speed and having absolute hardware control, which requires a firmware.  Since the twinkle is a function built into the controllers, it must be based on a mathematical algorithm.

Here is my idea - build the same algorithm into the LOR Sequence Editor, and create a "Twinkle Generator" function.  A person selects a group of squares, chooses that function, and the twinkle is created, depending on the size of the squares.  Want a faster twinkle?  Make the squares smaller.  A slower twinkle?  Make the squares larger.  I believe this would achieve the desired effect, be very easy to use, and require no firmware upgrade whatsoever.  And YES - one could just as easily do this manually, but having the function would make it much easier, and it would more closely mirror the actual twinkle function built into the hardware.

What do you think?