Generic LED light with MagicDMX and MagicQ

[gilzissu]

Hello,

I bought MagicDMX dongle and one Generic 4 Channel Par LED just for the beginning, because I want to learn how to work with Lightning for my band.

I'm trying to use MagicQ but I couldn't find how to make it work with my Par-LED. I followed some tutorials so I got to a point that I set MagicQ to work with the MagicDMX (there are 2 lights on the dongle, 1 consistent green light and the other is blinking orange). then I tried to use the Patch option and to 'add a head', there I tried to choose different kind of heads but it didn't work. Sorry if this is an amateurs question :) If someone can guide me a bit, it will help me a lot!

I'm attaching pictures of the document that I got with the the LED, maybe it can help.

Thank you a lot!

 

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/150x100q90/538/qsl466.jpg

 

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/150x100q90/904/jGn3ax.jpg

 

Gil

www.syndrome.nu

[paulears]

The first thing to do is set the unit to DMX channel 1, then setup in magicQ a 1 to 1 patch - patch a dimmer channel to the first dozen channels, then you can go to the simple screen, where you have a fader per DMX channel, and you can experiment, sending values to the head, as per the book. If nothing happens, then the most likely reason is that your unit is expecting a reversed DMX signal - in which case, swapping pins 2 and 3 at one end of the DMX cable will work. I have a few lights here that are wired back to front, and a converter on the feed to them cures the problem. More unlikely with new kit, but older kit may be non-standard.

[bruce]

Do as paul says. Looks like that lantern expects 4 channel DMX - you need to force the first channel to 255, then use 2,3,4 for the RGB components.

 

So set switches 1 and 10 on, the rest off. (10 enables DMX mode, 1 sets the base address to channel 1.

 

Push fader 1 to max, and you should be able to control RGB via faders 2,3,4

[vinntec]

Do as paul says. Looks like that lantern expects 4 channel DMX - you need to force the first channel to 255, then use 2,3,4 for the RGB components.

Plus you can also add a virtual dimmer (we do this for some parcans which use 0-187 for dimming then strobes so first channel is forced to 187). The virtual dimmer allows us to preset colours and pretend there is an intensity channel without having to worry about the strobing on channel 1.

[Wol]

If you submit the images you have to our bugtracker (https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/bugtracker/personality_request), then we can make an official personality file for this fixture and add it to our library then you'll be able to use it by name directly.

[paulears]

See- the awfully nice people at Chamsys even do the hard work for you! They're always really handy if you have problems. Things are pretty complicated nowadays, so unlike the old days, the lighting control people can never just make a product and sit back, like the old days.

[Wol]

Unfortunately the thousands (well, maybe not thousands, but hundreds) of random LED fixtures which have strange orders of channels rather than just sticking to a single standard, mean that our generic fixtures only go so far! It's more the fact that the fixture above has a channel which is half dimmer half strobe, and those ranges are usually just numbers picked out of a hat!

 

If you post a request for a head in a morning, we usually can have it in the updated heads.all file by the end of the day. 9 times out of 10 it's a one day turnaround, so make sure if you're planning on using a new head and don't have it already in our personality library (https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/bugtracker/personality_list.php), that you let us know a day or so in advance at least!

 

If you're pushed for time and need a fixture instantly, you can also use the inbuilt editor which lets you generate head files. This is exactly the same as what we use internally to generate them, so you can produce the same fixture files. You can find more info on this here: https://secure.chamsys.co.uk/help/documentation/magicq.html#_head_editor

 

Usually for LED fixtures you can take one of our generic fixtures and modify it, rather than having to generate it from scratch using the "Save Head As" button in the head editor.