Fellow DasLighters
I realize I'm probably a bit behind the technological powercurve, but I'm still using DMX scrollers in front of my PAR 64s. 56s and 360Q lekos vice LED colorchangers or CMYK devices (mostly due to affordability). That said, using scrollers with PAR cans with DasLight can be a bit of a challenge. The difficuly lies in the fact that you can't "group" non-contiguous DMX addresses together under one name in the program. For example, if your PARs are on a dimmer pack with addresses 1 thru 8 (mine are on NSI packs with DMX translation provided by a "DMX-later"), you can't dynamically re-assign addresses to "make room" for the scrollers. To clarify, if I could do what I wanted, PAR dimmer on channe1 1 would stay on channel 1, then the can on channel 2 would get re-assigned to channel 3 to make room for the scroller on channel 2. When finished, the PARS would be translated as 1>1; 2>3;3>5; 4>7, etc such that the single channel Wybron scrollers would be on channels 2,4,6,8, etc AND would be groupable under one heading name such that they could be controlled as if they were 2-channel contiguous devices. Nich thought, but that appears impossible to do with the current software.
SO - my current solution is to create 2 channel dimmer/color personas for the PAR/Scroller combinations for use in the 3D software that only actually address the scrollers, leaving the "real" DMX PAR dimmer channels on separate channels, not visible in the 3D software. In my setup, this works out as channels 1-8 are under the grour "PAR 64", and the scrollers are on eight 2-channel pairs from channel 145 thru 160, with each odd number addressing a real scroller, and the even number being a "fake" placeholder for the real PAR dimmer, so:
1 = real PAR dimmer 1
145- PAR scroller 1
146 - fake PAR dimmer 1
2 = real PAR dimmer 2
147- PAR scroller 2
148 - fake PAR dimmer 2
3 = real PAR dimmer 3
149- PAR scroller 3
150 - fake PAR dimmer 3
...and so on
The idea is then to replicate whatever I program and visualize for the "fake" PAR dimmer channels in the "real" PAR dimmer channels. This technique works, but it is cumbersome. Has anyone come up with a better way to handle groupings of non-contiguous DMX channels in the DVC2/3D visualizer software?
Use of scrollers with PAR/LEKO lamps
I do not know a way of doing this within DVC2.
I know that LightFactory assignes devices to "channels" not the same as DMX channels, so you can get your patching how you want. It took me a bit of time to get used to that idea. So in effect you see the patch as you want it regardless of the underlying DMX channels. I think I am right in saying that as I know people are having problems with the Capture Visualiser expecting the "channels" to be the same as "DMX channels".
I think it works similar to tradditional patching of fixtures (i.e. all over the place ... lol). Was not logical to me, being an ex-programmer everything should be logical and I just could not see it, but now I do because I look at it from a different perspective.
I know that LightFactory assignes devices to "channels" not the same as DMX channels, so you can get your patching how you want. It took me a bit of time to get used to that idea. So in effect you see the patch as you want it regardless of the underlying DMX channels. I think I am right in saying that as I know people are having problems with the Capture Visualiser expecting the "channels" to be the same as "DMX channels".
I think it works similar to tradditional patching of fixtures (i.e. all over the place ... lol). Was not logical to me, being an ex-programmer everything should be logical and I just could not see it, but now I do because I look at it from a different perspective.
Andre
Not sure if you can do this or not as I have not tried. Not sure if you can have mutiple "Dimmer" channels in a fixture file.
What about creating one large fixture that has all the dimmer channels and scroller channels.
I know you could create a 16 channel fixture, have the first channel as a "Dimmer" and then the next 7 as "Other", obviously you would have to control these by the slider values and not as clickable icons, unless you set certain values to icons, like every 10% then another icon. Then you could set-up 8 scroller channels, they can be defined as you like.
Not quite the same as having individual fixtures with dimmer, scroller, dimmer, scroller etc. but it is something.
I hope you understabd what I mean.
What about creating one large fixture that has all the dimmer channels and scroller channels.
I know you could create a 16 channel fixture, have the first channel as a "Dimmer" and then the next 7 as "Other", obviously you would have to control these by the slider values and not as clickable icons, unless you set certain values to icons, like every 10% then another icon. Then you could set-up 8 scroller channels, they can be defined as you like.
Not quite the same as having individual fixtures with dimmer, scroller, dimmer, scroller etc. but it is something.
I hope you understabd what I mean.
Andre