Scaling of dimmer shapes and swop button to fixture ?

[jgavo]

I'm using some Robe Clubscan250's in an upcoming show (errm Friday !) which have a combined shutter/dimmer channel and I have hit a couple of problems.

- If I have a dimmer shape running at 100% it takes the dimmer/shutter channel to dmx 255 which is actually Random audio trigger rather than dmx 85 which is dimmer fully open. I'd expect the shape to scale to the max dimmer value. This makes it tricky to use shapes across multiple fixtures at the same time.

- If I have a playback which takes the shutter/dimmer fully open on those fixtures, the flash button and fader works fine (takes output to fully open, dmx 85) but the swop button does nothing. The key profile is standard "global" so I don't think there's an issue there.

Selecting the fixture and changing values on the wheel everything is listed fine - goes from closed/dimmer/open/strobe/reset/prog time etc fine and works fine. Just a problem with shapes and swop.

Is this a problem with my programming, the fixture personality....or something else !

Thanks for any help, if there's any other info needed then just let me know.

John.

[jojodadj]

Hi John,

Regarding the Shape, try changing the shape size to a lower value until the fixtures shutter is just open.

With the swop button issue at the bottom of the screen where it shows what playbacks are assigned to which fader it should have a grey line and a blue line representing the flash and swop buttons
the grey one should have flash written inside it meaning the grey button flashes, what does the blue one have written inside?

Joe

[jgavo]

Hi Joe, thanks for the response.

The problem with just scaling the intensity shape is then I can't easily use the same shape as a palette across multiple different fixture types, or presumably use palettes with just size in them with multiple different fixtures/shapes selected. So I understand how to scale the shape and then just apply it to those fixtures but was looking for a way to avoid having to do that and being able to re-use e.g. a 100% dimmer saw shape across multiple fixture types.

The blue swop button on screen just below the playback has "Swop" written on it. I've made no changes to the default key profiles for the playback. That's what's confusing me about the behaviour. I've tested a bit further and Swop actually pulls the fixture Shutter channel down to 3 if the channel is at max or any value in between. So it's actually a bit worse than I said in my original post, Swop does do something - it turns the fixture intensity off ! Flash works fine, as does using the fader - both scale up to DMX 85 the max for fully open on the fixture. Seems to me this has to be a fixture personality issue, or am I jumping to conclusions ?

Thanks,

John.

[niclights]

This is not a personality issue, although there are a number of ways this sort of thing can be interpreted.

Shapes do operate within functions. So, if you wheel to the dimmer range and apply a dimmer shape at 100% size it will operate from DMX 6-85 and not go beyond those boundaries. If you selected the Strobe Hz function the same shape would operate between 96 and 127.

So I suspect the problem is that you are not in the dimmer range when applying the shape. For a typical 'spread' shape the ideal origin is dimmer 50%. If you record this in the playback (or palette) along with the shape it should work. Similarly, I imagine the problem with swop is that the playback does not contain the dimmer value itself. Therefore when you swop the shape playback it does not have any intensity value and therefore jumps to closed. If you record the dimmer value along with the shape then it will swop as expected.

[niclights]

Apologies. It has just been pointed out to me that there remains an issue with swop. The solution is to change the dimmer attribute function order so that the dimmer function is first in the list. An updated version of the personality will be available shortly.

[jgavo]

Hi Nic,

You were right - I hadn't got the dimmer highlighted and in the programmer when I started to apply the shape - as soon as it's in the dimmer range the shape applies correctly across the dimmer scale. Without the dimmer/shutter channel being highlighted/active then the shape takes the intensity channel 0-255.

I'll look out for the new personality fixing the swop button issue.

Thanks for your help resolving this.

Regards,

John.

[jgavo]

Apologies. It has just been pointed out to me that there remains an issue with swop. The solution is to change the dimmer attribute function order so that the dimmer function is first in the list. An updated version of the personality will be available shortly.

I have another set of gigs coming up using these Robe Clubscan 250CTs and have hit the problem of swop not working correctly with a playback that sets the fixture to strobe.

The confusing part is that I'm pretty sure I tested the fixture personality that was uploaded Oct 2014 and it worked - the only thing I can think of is that that was with a previous version of the desk (prob v7.0 - now am running on v9) or I have somehow not picked up the latest personality version.

Here are the steps I took:
1. Find updated personality in fixture library. Clicked to download it and the entire latest fixture personalities.
2. Installed new personalities. Restarted PC/desk
3. Created new show.
4. Patched robe clubscan250CT - PC took few mins to re-index personality library so reasonably sure it picked up latest personality file.
5. Select fixture and set to strobe and recorded playback.
6. Playback takes fixture to strobe, flash takes fixture to strobe, swop does nothing - dmx output unchanged. Checked using visualiser and looking at DMX output of desk.

Really appreciate any help !

Thanks,

JG

[niclights]

Looks like a bug to me. The problem from the original post has been resolved but this is a different issue (and not specific to v9.0). I will enter into the system.

A possible workaround might be to set the playback to mode 3 and use flash.

[jgavo]

Thanks for looking at this Nic.

Is this just an issue with fixtures that have combined shutter/dimmer channels like the clubscans or from your tests is it more general ? I'm looking at hiring in various fixtures for an upcoming event and would like to spec fixtures that I can use the swop for strobes on if possible.

[niclights]

It is specific to combined dimmer/shutter channels.

Where dimmer and shutter are on separate channels there should not be a problem. However, since shutter (and all attributes other than dimmer) are LTP you will need to set the playback to release intensity if you want it to return to an open function after the solo. For 'solo strobe' playback I use dimmer @ full + shutter speed and release intensity.

[jgavo]

Thanks Nic. Is it likely that a fix for the combined shutter/dimmer issue is going to be rolled in to the bug fix list for the next release, or is it likely to be too low a priority ?

[niclights]

I cannot say, sorry.