altering personalities

[AtmosphErik]

I've been trying to make my own personalities/ edit existing ones, so the Pearl will be configured to my taste whenever I select "Automatically create preset focus" when patching. I've spent some time figuring out the exact percentages of all the parameters I want to make preset focusses of, then edited these percentages into the pers.file (using, for now, onlyTechnoBeams and StudioColors. When I patched the desk using these "new" personalities, some of my custom focusses worked fine (for instance, colors for the StudioColors that were made using either 00- or FF-values of the CMY-system), while others were somewhat wrong (for instance, one preset for a StudioColor colour was edited into the personality using the following percentages Cyan: 00, Magenta: 80, Yellow: 00, but when I had patched the desk, the magenta value of the preset turned out to be 50 % in stead of 80%). Other presets were even less what I thought I had programmed: I wrote colour presets for the technobeam personality, using both the color wheel and color spin functions, so that preset #1 should have these values : color spin 00, color wheel: 00, preset #2 should be: color spin 00, color wheel 11, preset #3 color spin 00, color wheel 14 etc, etc, The first preset turned out fine (that is, open white, as it was intended), but the next 4 presets remained open white as well, because none of their color wheel values were correct, they had all remained below 10 %. Same thing happened with the gobo´s, and shutter presets(I had made 4 shutter presets, two of which used either 00- of FF- percentages(you guessed it, these two were OPEN and CLOSED)These two worked fine!). And I had made one position preset (just 50-50), and that didn´t work correctly either. Surprisingly enough, the rotation focusses I had made turned out okay...
Now, I´m obviously doing something wrong here, but from the manual I can´t figure out what it is... I´m guessing it has something to do either with the first number of an attribute table in the personality(which would indicate on which tablet attribute button the table will be available on, but I´m in the dark on how this system works exactly), or with those weird values I find in the regular personalities (for instance, the ripwheel and gatlin gobo´s have values 9c and d8 respectively).
Can anyone help me out on this? It would save me so much programming time if I could just patch from a disk and not have to worry about making my preferred presets again every time I get to a new location...

[niclights]

That's an easy one!

Values are in Hex not Decimal ie 0-FF Hex = 0-255 Decimal.
You need to convert the actual DMX values (not percentages) to Hex.

First make sure the desk is displaying DMX values (LCD Page 2), then convert to Hex.

If you are using Windows you can use calculator - switch to scientific mode, input decimal value and press Hex radio button to convert.


Hope that solves the problem.

Nic.

[AtmosphErik]

Of course, it's going to be something simple like that... (and if I had bothered to look up the word "hexadecimal"no problem would have existed in the first place....)

Thanks for the reply,

(Philip too, did you guys have a race to get back to me or what?

[galaxyshow]

In the Azure there is a Hex To decimal converter, maybe on the pearl too...?

[niclights]

Yes, forgot about that!

Calculator is on ML Menu 2 though you need VDU to use.

I should also point out that LCD Page 2 is no longer DMX values in 2004 software. I don't think you can view this anymore but values being input are show in both percentage and (raw) above the wheel.

[AtmosphErik]

Okay, so I used the hex.dec. values, and now... yeah, the presets are exactly what they're supposed to be

... but now

... the shape generator doesn't work anymore, at least on fixtures patched using the custom personalities.

This sound familiar to anyone?

Erik

[niclights]

I can't say I've experienced this but I have noticed that if you load a new shape file the palettes don't work until you reset the board.

Perhaps there is a link here?

Anyway I would suggest loading a new SG.DAT from System menu and then resetting to see if that brings them back.


Nic.

[Phil]

Okay, so I used the hex.dec. values, and now... yeah, ... the shape generator doesn't work anymore, at least on fixtures patched using the custom personalities.

This sound familiar to anyone?

This could be an issue with the Attribute types set in the DMX section of your personalities. Each attribute type (the letters where A = Colour1, B = Cyan, ....) can only be assigned to 1 channel (or two if it's a 16 bit attribute). If you have two separate channels both set with the same letter then it can cause big problems with the shape generator.

If that doesn't seem to be the issue, then feel free to e-mail your custom personalities to me and I'll take a look at them for you for any problems.

Phil

[AtmosphErik]

Phil,

That doesn't seem to be the problem, I've altered no DMX assignments, but I'll send you my personalities for StudioColor and TechnoBeam (the only fixtures I've had the chance to test the new files on) anyway...
Just so happens I'll be working some MAC's tomorrow, and on a better preserved Pearl than the one I've been testing on, so I'll try to find of the problem exists there as well. Also, I'll follow Nic's suggestion...

Both of you, thanks for replying, I'll come back to this problem in the forum...

Erik