dmx feature request

[bhays]

1. Wizards for basic moving head/moving mirror fixtures. This would allow you to select the channels for pan and tilt, then select the time range and ask the wizard to generate a figure 8, circle, or other basic patterns.

Chime in if this would be of interest to you. Hopefully Dan will take notice.

[LightsByGreg]

YES! I think this would be very nice, as long as young could set the size of the design you want to make. So you could make it do a small figure 8 and then a big one, if that makes sense

thanks,
Greg

[Denny]

I'm all for anything that makes programming easier. I am just getting into DMX for the first time this year, though, so I don't know much about it -- YET.

Edit to Add: This may not be feasible, given the different manufacturers and variety of moving heads out there, but, would it be possible to develop a spreadsheet where you could enter distances, heights, and an angle and let the spreadsheet calculate the different intensities that needed to be entered into LOR to get the movement? Then again, LOR would also have to be modified to permit you to enter a numeric value for the intensity. Not as good as a wizard, but perhaps it would make programming the yolk easier.

[michael.farney]

Denny wrote:

I'm all for anything that makes programming easier. I am just getting into DMX for the first time this year, though, so I don't know much about it -- YET.

Edit to Add: This may not be feasible, given the different manufacturers and variety of moving heads out there, but, would it be possible to develop a spreadsheet where you could enter distances, heights, and an angle and let the spreadsheet calculate the different intensities that needed to be entered into LOR to get the movement? Then again, LOR would also have to be modified to permit you to enter a numeric value for the intensity. Not as good as a wizard, but perhaps it would make programming the yolk easier.

I will agree with this whole heartedly. Here's the main issue I'm seeing in my moving head programming this year.

You can go out and get the coordinate values for the boundaries of your house for projection, but these values do not necessarily let you accomplish what you want. For example, let's say I want the light to swish as fast as possible from the left to the right of the house. If you start the head at the leftmost coordinate and then change the value to the right hand coordinate, the result is not as expected. Assuming you turn on the light the instant the head starts moving, the light will start at the left side of the house stationary or barely moving, it will then speed up and slow down as it stops on the right most corner. The only place the head moves fast is in the center of the house. At the left and right it is moving very slow because it's either speeding up or slowing down.

Since the moving heads have this warm up or cool down time for motion, I've been doing my programming outside the boundaries of my house. Say the moving head is directly in front of my house, which is west. To accomplish this fast swish, I point the head directly south. The light is off, but it would light up the neighbor's yard it was on. Then, I tell it point directly north. It swings around, and I turn on the light at the instant it's pointing at the left of the house. As soon as it hits the right of the house I turn the light off. So the head rotates 180 degrees, but the light is on only for the 45 degrees while it hits the house. This gives the head enough time to speed up and slow down without "seeing" the change in speed. It's a little difficult to get right, but it does get the right effect.

It's a good work around. The only problem with a wizard doing this is the wizard can't know the speed of the fixture. All fixtures have different speeds.

However, I believe Denny's idea would work. As long as you're willing to put up with the speed up / slow down issue I described, LOR could work with coordinates and do very simple geometry to create shapes that will fit within your boundaries. The real issue is the responsiveness of the light. I have found that these lights work great going from point A to point B. However, when you constantly change the target (such a formula spitting out new DMX values every 1/10 of a second for a figure 8), the light doesn't always behave as expected. The light will always take the shortest path between it's current position and the DMX values it was just given. So if it gets behind, it just cuts out pieces of your figure 8 and tries to get to whatever the correct DMX value is next. I also found that the light moves slowly when two DMX values are next to each other. (All the values a wizard spits out will be right next to each other.) There are cases when moving the light 4 feet will take longer than moving the light 16 feet. Because you can't control how quickly the light moves for short distances, I think the figure 8 would fall behind. The light will move too slowly in the beginning because all the values are right next to each other. Then, once the light falls far enough behind, it will move faster, but in a straight line from point A to point B. This will cut off the curves. I think a wizard could work well for a shape with straight lines. However, the irony there is you will get curved corners on your shape unless you stop the light completely on each corner. I'm not sure DMX is responsive enough to be able to do curved shapes consistently with accuracy. The inputs are linerar. It's just a limitation.