Help please - visualiser/simulator comms problem

[Smurf]

I'm very new to lighting design and not a computer whizz either.
I've downloaded the simulator and the visualiser to try and learn the pearl - but I cannot get them to talk to one-another.

The visualiser is telling me that I need to purchase a dinky dongle - is that right??

it also sometimes comes up with "Simulator: bad signature = <0><0><0><0><0><0><0><0>" at the bottom of the screen

Please help

[Ed]

Did you download the visualiser recently?

The latest version is now dongle free and can be downloaded here

[Smurf]

Yes I downloaded it yesterday - I have now noticed that sometimes it seems to be ok and other times it isn't - My computer is a bit tired - I think I'll try reinstalling it after I have got my new one in a couple of weeks - as it may be my puter rather than the programmes - thanx

[GLX]

When your getting your new puter get a second video card and monitor, if your using the sim. to run visualiser you can have the pearl on one monitor and the vis. on the other. Makes life easy.

[CSmithDesign]

I am having the same problem: When I click on the "Simulator" radio button in the visualiser, it tells me "Simulator: bad signature = <0><0><0><0><0><0><0><0>" at the bottom of the screen.

How can I fix this? I got it to work once with the simulator, but I can't recreate that again.

thanks

[niclights]

Hi,

Can you explain what you are trying to do?

[CSmithDesign]

Hey Nic,

I actually believe that I "fixed" this. I'm trying to pre-program on my Titan Mobile that will be going into a Pearl Expert and I wanted to use the Visualiser and Titan Mobile on the same computer.

I had done this once before very easily (I just opened the visualiser, patched and plotted the lights on the vis, then turned on the "simulator" radio button on the vis in run mode and everything worked as it should), but I've been having some problems this time. After patching and plotting the fixtures, I'd turn the DMX input onto "simulator" and it would give me that "bad signature" message at the bottom of the visualiser window.

I tried restarting everything to no avail, but I'm pretty sure that I found how to make it work: I go into USB Expert Console, start the ACW service, then start Titan Mobile, then the Visualiser. When I do this, everything works just fine (so far). so, hopefully this is the fix.

[icke_siegen]

Good catch, and thanks for sharing.

Btw., to make patching easier:
- patch the fixtures in titan mobile
- in Titan Mobile, open Visualiser (assuming Autoupdate was enabled). Your fixtures should be there at once. Toggle to design mode, and save the theatre.
- close the visualiser window.
- now start the visualiser 'externally' . Now it's easy to load the previously saved theatre - this saves you the time you'd need to select and patch the fixtures separately...

Just make sure vis runs only once on the machine.

[niclights]

Whenever I've done this it has always been after starting the mobile (or, rather, the simulator to be precise). This would always mean ACW is already running.

The latest versions of Vis deliberatly prevent more than one instance so this should not be an issue. If you try to open Vis as a workspace from Titan it will close the original window.