Personality for Mil-Tec MTM-324 Wash errors

[newimagelighting]

I have a couple of MTM324 LED wash movers, I have found some errors with the personality file / lights.

For some stupid reason the dimmer on the light itself is reversed i.e. address 0 = Full on and 255 = Off. It then seems that in the personality file, the dimmer is set to LTP as the LED's will never go off and the same goes for the colours - Red, Green, Blue and White. So I inverted the dimmer channel. This seems to have worked, but then when I use white, the blue came in at about 50%, yet its wheel was at 0%???? Weird. So I inverted all the colours to see what difference it makes, and it all works fine, except now obviously you have to wind the wheels from 100% (Off) to 0% (On) for the colours, a real headache when colour mixing - Things like Red at 0% and green at 78% to get amber.

If possible the MT_MTM324W4.R20 file could do with the dimmer reversing and the dimmer and colours all making HTP, this should solve a few probs.

Also something that needs checking is the manual states 12ch, yet the mapping table is 13ch, the unit I'm sure is 13ch, yet the display on the light states 14ch??? I don't think they can make their mind up!

Cheers

[niclights]

I can't find that file in the library at all and it shouldn't have the manufacturer shortcode 'MT" as that is for Martin fixtures. I think either you have an old file or a custom file.

Please download the latest library first. The current version can be found here which uses up to 13ch and has the correct channel mapping along with dimmer in HTP.

It is correct that RGBW are LTP. Normally the only reason to set RGBAW attributes to HTP is when fixtures do not have a master dimmer. I also cannot understand why you would invert RGBW?

However, I do notice that on the website they list ch14 as colour speed. It is likely this is either a version change or was wrong before. If you are able to confirm this is true for your fixture along with the need to invert dimmer then please submit a bug report with as many details as possible by clicking on the bug icon next to the appropriate file in the personality library. Again, please ensure your bug relates to the latest version in the library first.

[newimagelighting]

Dug out my USB-Floppy drive and copied over the R20 file and made the alterations in PB. I have tried the file in Pearl 4 Sim and the file seems to work as I need it to now, but i'll try it for real in the morning with the laptop not too far away just incase!

[newimagelighting]

Thanks for the reply, I've downloaded the latest file from the personality site, just opened it up in PB, all looks ok from what I can see except the Dimmer is starting at 0 to full at 255, this would give the dimmer at full at 0% and fading down to 0 at 255 (as for some reason the unit works opposite to logic!!), then if the colours (RGBW) are LTP that explains that when I bring the playback down to 0, the colours stay live, as the dimmer is then at 100%, not 0%.

I had a playback for red (Memory 1A) and one for green (1B). Bring up red and fade out red fine, fade up green (1B) and fade out it stayed live so when I bring in Red (1A) I get full Red and Green (a kind of crap Yellow). Yet I can't work out why the red fades in and out, yet the green comes up and stays up.

But for some obscure reason, when I invert the dimmer channel it seemed to start bringing 50% of blue in with white at 100%.

I have edited the R20 file so that dimmer is Off at 0% (255) and full at 100% (address value 0), I'll see how this works in the morning when I get back into work.

We have a mixture of 324 washes and MTM-90P movers and they all went back to MilTec about 3-weeks ago for upgrades and a few focus issues to be corrected, so 14ch control on the 324W will be correct, I had not been told that a new feature had been added.

So if I patch this personality in I'll have to increase the DMX address for subsequent units by 1 so Ch14 on the previous unit does not get operated by the Red function of the next unit, or if a new R20 file can be wrote to include this new feature, that will hopefully stop any programming errors.

Thanks

[newimagelighting]

Jeez, this is really doing my head in.... lol

Just checked their web listing, yes 14ch control, but now dimmer says from dark to bright!!! now my units that have 14ch control work opposite.

I'm gonna check this R20 file out first, then probably ring MilTec and find out the official mapping for them. I did mention to them a few months ago about the dimmer being the wrong way around, but we have only used them on other desks since then, which dont use personalities.

There used to be another issue with them that if you reversed Pan on one of the units, it would end up 90 deg out from the other unit and point somewhere random, so you have to individually set the Pan and Tilt on each unit to say point at stage, now I've to test that and see if that has been corrected!

Double Vodka coming up when this lot is finally sorted!!

[niclights]

Note that you can invert channels, including dimmer, in the console from the Patch menu.

The 50% blue/ 100% white just sound to me like those happen to be the values they are at. I can see no reason why this could possibly be related to inverting the dimmer.

Regarding the playbacks pay careful attention to what is being recorded. If you want live control over the RGBW channels on playbacks then ensure the programmer is cleared, select fixtures, set one of the components to full and record by channel. Repeat for the other components then use [Edit Times]/<playback>/toggle until [Mode = 2] <enter> on each of the playbacks. Finally manually set all the components to zero and clear.

Otherwise the more common way to operate would be dimmer (by channel) on the playbacks and colours from palettes.