Automated lighting control

[Richard CSL]

So can anybody point me in the direction of a laptop based program that can monitor the environment for the following.

programming would still be done by expertise based personel, but monitoring eliminates wrong lighting at the wrong time, which we all see in our day to day lives.

 

 

 

Time of day. Dark = lights on, Light = lights off.

 

Volume levels below 80db no lighting / background cue. above 80db. start lightshow. other db levels for mic only ie talking. or music.

 

Music sense, BPM monitor. 0-60 slow lighting cue stack. 60- 100. medium cue stack. 100 - 120 and above fast including strobing.

 

These seem easy parameters to monitor with a laptop, but nobody seems to have created this system.

This would be really useful in churches, music bars, ship pool decks , or anywhere where staff should not be relied on to control lighting.

 

 

[timmeh2]

Hi

 

Whilst many lighting desks feature time-based programming (e.g. Agenda on MA, environment scenes on Avo) and sound to light, I can't think of a single desk that gives you volume-based programming.

 

What you'd need is a bespoke solution (i.e. custom software) that could control a console by MIDI or similar.

 

All the best

Timmeh

[Richard CSL]

The whole point is that a solution for venues without technical supervision, we as programmers often put our best into "thinking for the customer",

but sometimes the customer doesn't know when to turn on or turn off features of our programming, this idea is to eliminate that problem, there must be someone out there who can create this user interface for a laptop with light sensor of the camera, sound bpm from the mic / sound card. Then universally send either midi ,citp, or any other command protocol to any lighting control program as you have listed.

[ImagineerTom]

Such a solution would be expensive and complicated to develop to any meaningful level - venues that would want to buy this system will be doing so because they want to spend as little as possible; that is the fundamental hurdle you have to overcome.

 

"light sensor" isn't easy - as soon as your lightshow comes on the room isn't dark any more so the sensor needs to know the difference between ambient levels and the lightshow; it would also have to know the difference between reflected light and overall levels so that when a beam reflects off the shiny table towards the camera it doesn't shut everything down. The sound sensor would have the same problem with audio levels - a noisy afternoon when a sports match is showing on TV would produce high enough levels with tempo to trigger the full light show so again the sound monitoring has got to be able to make complicated assessments about the type of sound it is hearing. Just like the phrase "lets just project the scenery" what you are looking for is very easy to describe but actually involves high level coding and algorithm implementation.

 

You'd be much better off using an existing lighting package, embedding music files in to it so that you can associate them with predefined lighting cues/chases and then using a simple touchscreen front end to allow the user to control the complicated system with just a couple of simple presses

[mac.calder]

I don't know of a laptop solution - however I do know of a lighting desk solution....

 

GrandMA (along with some other consoles) have General Purpose Input sockets. These allow external devices to trigger presets through the use of a contact closure or similar. dB meters with threshold triggers are not uncommon, neither are daylight sensors - and if you really wanted, astronomical clocks are fairly ubiquitous too, instead of using time of day.

 

The problem you have with dB sensing - you need to be averaging across time as well. 80dB will trigger when someone shouts across the room if you do not average over a sample time.

 

It's all doable, with some engineering.

 

Other options exist using things like coolux widget designer (has a GPIO module)... An all in one solution though.... Unless someone has had the exact same need as you and made one, good luck.

[gyro_gearloose]

I think you’re missing something fairly obvious. If someone is starting the music, then surely that person can also start the light show? It’s got to be simpler than trying to create some software system which can detect sound levels, light levels, BPM, etc.

 

If you really want a laptop based solution, have a look at the e:cue software. It has a reasonably sophisticated sound level/BPM detection system, and can be set up to trigger the lights automatically at set times of the day, or whenever local sunrise/sunset happens to be.

[Richard CSL]

I think you're missing something fairly obvious. If someone is starting the music, then surely that person can also start the light show? It's got to be simpler than trying to create some software system which can detect sound levels, light levels, BPM, etc.

 

If you really want a laptop based solution, have a look at the e:cue software. It has a reasonably sophisticated sound level/BPM detection system, and can be set up to trigger the lights automatically at set times of the day, or whenever local sunrise/sunset happens to be.

 

I have seen it many times on cruise ships, band comes along sets up their gear start playing, oh and try asking a musician to change the tempo during a performance.

 

I think a better solution perhaps is a mobile phone app that triggers OSC, as a phone, knows the time of day, has a built in microphone, can access the lighting console via wifi.

and is cheap enough to leave in the area of the performance without fear of being removed, unlike a laptop perhaps.

[ImagineerTom]

I have seen it many times on cruise ships, band comes along sets up their gear start playing,

If you think cruise ships are using automated lighting control systems you are very mistaken. One thing all cruise ships have is plenty of staff and a corporate policy of ensuring that boring technical stuff is kept hidden from passengers wherever possible. the bands will also be playing a pre-approved set list & the on ship tech's will have seen these performances so many times that they have programmed surprisingly fancy lighting/fx and or will be able to busk the songs in their sleep.

Whether this magical program you talk about runs on a laptop, a mobile phone, a lighting console or a smart watch doesn't matter (coding is largely platform agnostic these days) - the problems and reason why this hasn't been done are the ones I highlighted above; it's very complicated and expensive to create and the very few people that would actually want to purchase it by definition don't want to pay the sort of money it would cost.

I admire your optimism about phones being too cheap to steal......

[dbuckley]

You could do most of this in PD or Max/MSP, except the actual light control bit, and send commands to influence the behaviour of the light control. I don't think it would take long to do, either. You'd need a lighting control system that can accept MIDI or OSC or ArtNET or TCP/UDP control, I'd suggest a Lanbox if there is going to be no-one competent about. Or software on the PC, but not blue-room favourite MagicQ, as it wont do MIDI inside the laptop, only with an external box.

 

But others have noted that there are some difficulties with the whole approach.

 

My prime concern would be reliability, or rather, the lack of it. When the laptop stops, for whatever reason, the brains have gone.