DMX under OSX

[wodp]

I'm taking delivery of an iBook this week and am just beginning to wonder what's out there that'll let me take control of DMX units? Something that'll do overlay presets (eg change colour on a group of mac300s) as well as straight movement and colour presets with crossfade times etc. Ideally aimed at OSX but I suppose something that uses unix could be botched now panther (OSX 10.3) shares more unixy stuff with macOS bits than 10.2 did. Also guessing USB interface box is in order.

 

Dave

[junkhead]

Try this; www.lanbox.com

The only software I know who is smart enough to work on a mac. ;)

 

Moderation: Link made clickable

[wodp]

Anyone good with the lanbox software? I can't figure out how to store a batch of settings into a step of a cue! I really hate it but am stuck with it now the only portable computer I have is an iBook :blink: My java isn't good enough to write something generic of my own.

 

Dave

[Ben Lawrance]

Don't knock the Lanbox, it is an amazing bit of kit.

 

OK, I agree, it takes a bit of getting anoyed with to actually understand the software. But keep playing with it.

 

I bought one a while ago, and after playing with the software for 10 mins, I was ready to sell it as I couldn't work out has to use the damn thing.

 

I stuck with it, read the manual over and over again, and eventually, I learn't all the little tricks of this amazing bit of kit, without meaning to.

 

Just keep clicking all the buttons, just to see what they do.

 

Have fun, and don't put it in the bin (well at least let me have it)

 

Cheers

Ben

[vinny baby]

I like the dancing baby!!

 

well dudey

 

:blink:

[Neil Vann]

Hi Dave,

 

You could have a look at the jands vista. There will be 2 console sizes, and also both a pc and native mac version.

 

It will not be available until spring this year, but I think you will find it is well worth the wait.

 

Have a look at www.jandsvista.com for more info.

 

Neil

 

Neil Vann

Technical sales and support

AC Lighting

 

neil.vann@aclighting.com

[wodp]

I saw the vista demod at plasa - looks drop dead gorgeous but budget will prolly get in the way. I'm not gonna be able to afford a lanbox for a while, but here are some main questions re: programming in it based on my experiments so far

 

1) How to create a static preset (e.g. set a group of m250s to green)

2) Layers - if I have 5 layers in its layer window can I have 5 cues running simultaneously (assuming all editing done before showtime) with these presets adding to the cues?

3) How to toggle if a fixture is in a scene or not? I'm aware the yellow dot indicates if a fixture/paramater is included in it but its instructions to toggle the status of said dot arent working

4) How to take take settings for a currently setup step and dump the DMX values to a sequence step?

5) Are you limited to the 15-odd sequences the drop-down box offers when looking at the details for a sequence (the row view with one row per step)?

6) Can all these sequences, statics and any chases I program (which I guess would be a sequence) be mapped to a keyboard or midi controller?

 

Ideally, if someone who lives in/near leicester would be prepared to come and show me how to do use it to do what I want to do, then am sure we can come to some arrangement. Fancy training courses not an option as I dont have hundreds to spare being a student and all. Seeing as my ibook will be arriving tuesday I can get the OSX version of lanbox onto there pronto, and if I like it enough I'd contemplate buying one of their interfaces.

 

 

Dave

[xmath]

Since you mention you don't have a lanbox yet, I guess you're testing via the demo.lanbox.com public lanbox.. keep in mind that other people might be connected to and can be messing things up for you :-)

 

(we regularly try to bring it in a clean state again, but random users always manage to find innovative ways to make a mess of it)

 

See also the new tutorial for lots of information:

 

http://www.lanbox.com/support/LCeditPlus_t...l/chapter1.html

 

 

 

1. It's not entirely clear to me what you mean... If you just want to set a few fixtures to green, then select them and set the color channel to the appropriate value. Be sure though to do it in a layer which:

a. isn't running a cue, otherwise your manual control will be overwritten again when it goes to the next step.

b. is sufficiently high in the layer stack that no layer above it is overriding your color setting.

 

LCedit+ also supports per-fixture presets to (manually) set one or more channels of one or more fixtures at once. You can create these by setting the channels to the desired values, disable the channels (backspace, enter) you do not want to include in the preset, then option-click on one of the preset popups (ps, pb, pc, po - which stand for preset shutter, beam, color, other) above the fixture controls, and choose "Make preset".

 

Later when you have one or more fixtures selected, presets that are defined for all selected fixtures will appear in the popup. You can also add presets to fixture definitions, in which case they'll be available to all fixtures of that type; the fixture library included with LCedit+ includes a few of these by default already.

 

Then again, for something as simple as "green" you probably won't need to use a preset at all... unless you want to convenience of being able to select several totally different fixtures and set them all to "green", with each fixture having a different definition of it.

 

 

2. Each layer has its own independent sequencer and faders. It's again not entirely clear to me what you mean with "with these presets adding to the cues", but if you mean you want to override them with the color green, just use a separate layer for manual control, on top of the running sequence-layers.

 

 

3. This is called whether a channel is "enabled" or not. You enable a channel by setting it to a value, and disable it by clearing the field (backspace) and pressing enter. You can also disable an entire fixture with option-backspace.

 

Note that the new cuelist editor shows much more clearly what is stored in a scene and what is not. See also the tutorial, chapter 4.

 

BTW.. yellow dot? what yellow dot? (update: ohh, you're probably referring to the channel icon.. heh, that's just a rendering of the intensity of the fixture as a variable-size yellow circle; for other channel types it contains a different kind of icon)

 

 

4. Well, to be honest.. you don't. :-)

 

There is a trick though: you might notice that if a channel is disabled (grayed-out) the current values of lower layers 'show through'. So you could make a new layer on top of what you already have, set it to edit mode, and then just enable (press enter) the channels you want to include in your scene. That way you won't have to type over the values.

 

In the future, go to edit mode in advance, not in retrospect.

 

 

5. I have no idea what you're saying here. The LanBox supports up to 999 cuelists, and a cuelist can have up to 99 steps, and if you're desperate you could link cuelists together with explicit "go" commands. So unless you have really sparse scenes, you'll run out of actual flash memory long before you run out of cue numbers :-)

 

 

6. The LanBox can be controlled in full detail via MIDI. Consult the reference manuals included with LCedit+.

 

 

Hope this helps,

 

Matthijs van Duin - www.lanbox.com