Programming a colour flitter effect on LED fixtures

[Tom Baldwin]

I have an upcoming gig, where I'll have a Pearl, and plenty of Colour Blocks.

 

In my mind I can see an effect, but can't begin to imagine how I'd program it into the Pearl.

 

Imagine a number of Colour Blocks in a line, all illuminated in colour A.

I want to transition them all to colour B. I want to change one fixture at a time, and I want to change them out of order (e.g. 1,4,6,2,7,10,2,3,9,5,8)

 

I know how to do that.

 

But instead of just snapping (or fading) the colour, I'd like it to "flitter". The diagram below is meant to be a scale timeline of the colour of three fixtures as they transition:

 

Fixture 1: aaaaaBBaaaBBaaaBBaaaBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
Fixture 2: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBBaaaBBaaaBBaaaBBBBBBBBBB
Fixture 3: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBBaaaBBaaaBBaaaBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

 

i.e. a fixture vacillates between two colours before settling on the second one.

 

The challenge is that I'll be busking, so I want to define the transition purely in terms of the colour I'm going to - I don't want to know or care about the previous colour.

 

Any thoughts?

 

I can't see how I can make this happen, without programming transitions for each pair of colours A & B that I might want to use. But I'd be delighted to be wrong :)

 

Cheers,

 

Tom

 

P.S. I intend to run the Colour Blocks in HSI mode, if that affects the solution...

[niclights]

I can't see a good solution to this. Crucially wanting to finish with all on a chosen colour and not worrying about the start colour are essentially impossible as far as I can see.

 

You could write a 'bumpy' pattern in the shapefile and apply with coarse offset with fixtures selected in a specific order. This overcomes any potential issues if the channel was LTP, but a shape will always repeat and will have to rely on simply increasing or decreasing the channel value by a certain amount - ie. relative to the originating colour.

 

If the channel is defined as HTP then you can program a (long!) one-shot chase that will accomplish. Programming values at zero will allow the flitter interaction with a previous undefined colour value in HTP assuming you have this colour on a raised playback fader AND that the original colour is of lower value. This is obviously not ideal - too many HTP channels on the Pearl are not good and will slow down the maximum speed of the chase possibly ruining the intended effect and of course it uses up two playbacks which in a busking situation is rather wasteful.

 

Good luck!

[Tomo]

Ok, I'm not 'up' on the Pearl, but I can't see an easy way to do it.

 

Running in HSI mode means that the only channel with the 'flitter' is Hue, which would normally be an LTP channel.

 

The Hog II has a "Random" fade profile, which would probably accomplish this - does the Pearl do that as well?

 

I'd guess that pretty much the only way to do it is having a set of chases that transition between each of the colours you are using.

[empyfree]

This is where the features on the Diamond 4's come into play, you can apply fixture offset to any playback cue, and set the order of fixtures very easily. Unfortunately a few carefully programmed chases are your only option on a pearl.

 

Make sure you program in "channel" mode, and you should be able to create colour changing chases that dont affect position etc.

 

Good luck.

[danjshelton]

Hi Tom,

 

As others have said there is not an easy solution for what you wish to achieve.

 

The only way that I can think to come anywhere near achieving this is to make a chase, which unfortunatley will define which colour your going from and to, each step of the chase will be the build up to the transition (in order for ease of programming). For Example 5 Color Blocks all Blue to begin, step 2 is one Red and rest Blue, step 3 two Red and rest Blue until there all red. Then I would go into the chase parameters and set the run order (Softkey D off top of head but probably wrong!) to Random, and also to Stop on Final Step (Second chase menu somewhere). This way it will complete every step, in a random order and finish after all steps are complete, it may work or it may not, it might be a little too random but if it does will give you good busking control over speed and XFade of the random chase.

 

Other than this I can't think of another way to do it, as Empyfree said a D4 would be great with the offset function, it would be programmed in a second as you just record the final state (e.g. all Red) and then apply the fixture order that you require.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers

 

Dan