Sorry to post this here guys, but I tried googling and can't find what I'm looking for. I have never used a DMX controller (always used copilot by american dj, well Elation, nowadays) anyway, I'm looking to get into either ADJ myDMX or Chauvet's Show Xpress. I haven't decided which (your input appreciated, but that's not my question). My question: I understand that when you use DMX lights, you daisy chain the dmx connectors and you also daisy chain the power cords. I was under the impression that all dmx lights have a power in and out. Well, I have an American DJ Galaxian Laser light that does not have a power plug-in... just the "out". It has dmx in and out though. So, would I have to run that light to it's own outlet and not include it in the "chain"? Seems strange they left out a power "in" on that.
I'm guessing it only has power in, rather than just power out. Otherwise how would it work. None of my lights have the daisy chain power connectors. I use multi-socket extension cables.
Quote from: Mike Sinclair on August 10, 2012, 07:45:46 PM
Sorry to post this here guys, but I tried googling and can't find what I'm looking for. I have never used a DMX controller (always used copilot by american dj, well Elation, nowadays) anyway, I'm looking to get into either ADJ myDMX or Chauvet's Show Xpress. I haven't decided which (your input appreciated, but that's not my question). My question: I understand that when you use DMX lights, you daisy chain the dmx connectors and you also daisy chain the power cords. I was under the impression that all dmx lights have a power in and out. Well, I have an American DJ Galaxian Laser light that does not have a power plug-in... just the "out". It has dmx in and out though. So, would I have to run that light to it's own outlet and not include it in the "chain"? Seems strange they left out a power "in" on that.
I've never seen primary power in and out on DMX lighting, most of my fixtures are Chauvet, there is a heavy learning curve for showexpress but I manage.
Darryl, I guess I got it backwards. It has a place to plug the power cord into the light fixture, but not an "outlet" to put another light into it. All of my other lights have both. Multiple outlet extension cords defeats the purpose for me. I used to plug all my lights into cords way back when. That's why I bought the Co-Pilot... to clean up a lot of clutter... hmmmmm... I'll have to look into this more.
Hi Mike
It doesn't matter from where the fixtures get the power supplied. Rarely you find fixtures with both, power in and out to daisy chain, but this is just for the ease of usage, no technical requirement. You can use a power rail on top of your stand (or truss) to feed the mounted fixtures.
In the DMX area, you noticed right, fixtures are always daisy chained. And do not forget to terminate them at the end of the line. Termination can be done in two ways. Very common is to have an XLR connecter with the built in 120ohm resistor and then you connect that 'empty' connector at the last output. Some fixtures offer a dip switch to terminate, there you don't need the connector mentioned before.
Some people are using DMX Splitter to reduce to the need to cable multiple stands daisy chained. As the word says, the splitter split the signal to 1-n independent DMX lines. Logically they are all the same universe (same DMX address range), but you can cable each stand with a direct cable and need to terminate each such line.
You get quite cheap DMX controller for traditional lights (dimmer light, par cans). For intelligent lights, a good desk is pretty expensive. Software solutions are quite common these days. Personally I do use Nicolaudie Sunlite Suite 2 with a USB DMX dongle. They do OEM versions. One is known as DASLIGHT. Then I saw freestyler mentioned elswhere, but I do not have experience on that.
Hope I removed your clear vision about DMX... :laugh:
Martin
Mike, forgot to mention that some of the available dmx software do support MIDI consoles like the Behringer BCF2000 or Novation Launchpad or Akai APC20 and other good products. They do help to trigger new scenes or cues, fading colors, dimming lights.
I use ADJ MYDMX and only certain fixtures can daisy chain power such as mega par profiles uplighters. I have 2 x moves, revo 4 and several mega par profiles all on dmx with mydmx and works great.
a lot of the LED fixtures have daisy chain power but can only do a few fixtures. my led cans can handle about 8 fixtures daisy chained power wise. I've been looking at some led bars that can do 20 or so. I haven't seen too many other fixtures that have that feature on them.
You have to remember that the plug/socket you are starting the chain from and the cable to the first fixture had to carry the combined current of all of the fixtures before it. If you are plugged into a fused outlet (uk plugs incorporate a fuse I don't know about other countries) you could blow a fusr with too many chained. Worst case is you could start a fire from a wire getting hot.
(clarification: you need quite a log of lights to get into this situation. Check the specs for your fixtures. It will tell you either in amps or kilowatts how much power it consumes. You can pretty much just add them up to get an idea of the total. In reality it fluctuates depending on what the fixture is doing, but thd manyfacturer will err on the side of caution and list thd maximum it will draw.)
Full support on Darryl posts.
In the Par64 world the calculation was pretty easy. 1kW each lamp straight. Here in Europe 1kW divided by 240V equals 4.17 Ampere. So in a 10A fused socket, max 2 Pars would fit or it will blow the fuse after some time (depending about type of fuse).
With the LED it is a little different. E.g our Eurolite SLS 7x3W RGBs (TCL LED). 7x3W equals to 21W, but the manual says 50W, more than double. Do your calculations with the values specified in the manual, then you are on the safe side.
Thanks for the input guys. I will do some more research. I just stumbled across Luminair for iPad or iPhone. Has anyone here tried it? Looks interesting...
Quote from: Darryl on August 11, 2012, 04:41:10 PM
(clarification: you need quite a log of lights to get into this situation. Check the specs for your fixtures. It will tell you either in amps or kilowatts how much power it consumes. You can pretty much just add them up to get an idea of the total. In reality it fluctuates depending on what the fixture is doing, but thd manyfacturer will err on the side of caution and list thd maximum it will draw.)
Although agreed you do have to have plenty of lights to cause a cable to overheat, however there are other reasons;
Using an extension reel that is not fully unwound.
Using a cable within the chain with a hot or open neutral, this is almost certain with nastiest of fires.
Using a cable of differing specification, i.e. mixing 0.5mm 1mm, 1.5mm within the chain. The lowest spec cable won't be able to take the load of appliances following it.
A hot neutral can cause a fire even with one appliance, with many the speed of the overheating will only speed up.
Hence the need for PAT testing.
So a few pointers;
Fully unwind all extension reels.
Check any cables which can be opened up and all terminals are tight especially the neutral terminals. I tend to use thread lock on the terminal screws so they don't work loose in transit.
As a minimum only use 1.5mm 3 core flex which in the UK will take a load of 16amps, this way the fuse will blow in an overload situation.
Inspect flex of each appliance or cable once per month for twisting, damaged outer sheath or plug/socket. Repair plug/socket where possible, discard twisted or damaged cables.
Down rate fuses to correct spec where possible to prevent overloading.
PAT test all equipment and cables once yearly.
Beware as this is your reputation and safety of your clients here, I know of one DJ in the Midlands who managed to almost burn a social club down because of his poor maintenance of his equipment.
Fully support Nicolee's recommendations on cable handling. That do apply in general to all your household, your office/workplace or any other place where electricity is used. I'd like to add few points to that.
Using thread lock is one thing. Never ever put a blank flex cable in the terminals and screw them down. A flex cable consists of tiny thin copper wires and the screw might cut them apart... result is a reduced diameter, so it's getting hot in there until the fire start. Always use wire sleeves (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trailerable_wire_sleeves.JPG?uselang=en), they are criped to the blank cable and prevent from cutting the wires appart. They are available in a wide size starting around 0.25mm2 - 16mm2 or above. There are with plastic cover or without.
Respecting this fact, stay away on using preconfected cables from the supermarket next to you. You never know how good the connection between the cable an terminal is since it is surrounded with the pressed plastic you cannot open. Here it's pretty common to sell them with 0.75mm2 or 1mm2 cable. That might be fine to connect your bedside lamp, but not for heavy load. I recommend to always go with 1.5mm2 cable for 10A (in some countries 16A are allowed), connect the sockets on your own using wire sleeves. Choose connectors that can be opened again, might be easier and cheaper to control the cables regularly.
Be also cautious when using power rails. the cable aspects are like above, the terminals in the power rail cannot be checked since you can't open them anymore. Some glued or they used these one-way screws. I opened some of them and I'm sometimes scared what I do see.
If one is not into the electricity business, then better go to the electrician of trust and get support from him. You might pay a little more, but that's nothing compared to having a fire. I do know that, my entire stock burned down in 2011 because of an fire starting in another companies shop next to mine. Unfortunatly the fire got into the whole building. Have you ever seen melted truss segements?
Take care and be safe
Martin
Is anyone using ADJ myDMX on same laptop as ots? If so, is it a pain to switch back & forth?
I was thinking of going to that as well, but I keep holding off, since they said the ots "MAY" offer a little program within OTS. That's why I wish they would tell us what is coming up...I don't want to spend the money on that only to have it come out in the program. Any 'insiders' heard anything about the lighting control? I won't tell anyone else....I promise.
That's exactly my train of thought. I'm considering going with myDMX, but if Ots is going to have light control built into it, I don't wanna drop the $ to have that become obsolete.
I have had the same thought for many years as well, but if you need DMX the $$ for the controller end, either hardware or software are very low.
I guess technically speaking, you would have to purchase a dongle in either case. And, if I read it correctly, when you buy myDMX the main cost is the dongle and not the software....
I found only that Ots Studio includes the info about light control. I'd be extremely happy if they offered a simple Midi out signal to trigger the beat in any DMX or other MIDI controllable software. Actually, maybe 2 midi signals... One to indicate beat one, and another to indicate 2-4, to allow software to somehow stay in sync. Don't get me wrong, doing 4 would be even better, allowing a note for each beat 1-4.
This Midi output may very well require an additional MIDI out port. Of course it would be great if you could choose 2-3 input MIDI ports as well in Ots.
Lighting control itself, IMO, should be left to the existing DMX software. The coding of that software in itself would be another extreme feat that goes well beyond the scope of what Ots has suggested as a 2.0 feature, so a trigger mechanism would keep it simple and make us happy. Freestyler is free, and uses an open DMX interface to communicate with your DMX devices, and from what I can tell, is MIDI controllable.
An Open DMX interface can be had for $63US...
http://www.enttec.com/index.php?main_menu=Products&pn=70303&show=description&name=opendmxusb
This device is supported by the freestyler software.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCnlSm_yyR8
I have freestyler on my system, and when I find my DMX module, I'll attempt to get it working with my M_Audio Trigger finger MIDI controller to verify this.
Got to agree with you Jeff. Not that I know much about DMX I can't see OTS going down the road of designing a programme for DMX but to send out a midi signal makes more sense.
I use chauvet showxpress and know a good deal about this program if you need help. As for the power situation, your lights don't care where the power comes from as long as they have power they will be fine. DMX must be run daisy chain fashion from light to light but power does not matter.
I would never run ots and DMX on the same computer, too much room for error in way too many ways.
I very, very, very seriously doubt that OTS will ever put out a lighting controller with the power and flexibility of ShowXpress.
Jabo, I agree they would never put out anything comparable to any type of dmx controller software currently available.
I used to run LightJockey on my setup along side Ots without any issues at all, and now run Freestyler without issue. I'm curious how you feel error would be an issue.
Human error more than computer error. Computers are too cheap not to separate the workload and make things much easier for the user.
You've confussed me.
You say more human error, and then say computers can't handle it.
I believe computers can handle it. Todays systems are very powerful and we are letting them idle along without much work IMO. They are designed to hadle it. The biggest issue is getting your display interface configured to make it less of a human problem. When I use lighting control, I put Ots on the left of my display, and light control panel on right. It's impossible to run both interfaces at the same moment. A mouse or keyboard can't do 2 things at once. IMO, seperating the 2 to 2 different PCs, wouldn't take away the human factor. Human error would still exist, so why blame the computer(s).
I never said the computers can't handle it, can you show me what you mean?
The human factor would be lessened if using two monitors, but then if one program locks up for some reason you just made it dark and quiet, if one video card goes out. Now if you don't have two monitors the error of having to switch between screens comes back into play.
I never said you had to have two computers, I said that it is better to have two computers. I run my lighting on my back up computer for OTS, we are all carrying a back up computer in case of emergency right?
Quote from: jabo on August 16, 2012, 12:22:07 PM
I never said the computers can't handle it, can you show me what you mean?
The human factor would be lessened if using two monitors, but then if one program locks up for some reason you just made it dark and quiet, if one video card goes out. Now if you don't have two monitors the error of having to switch between screens comes back into play.
I never said you had to have two computers, I said that it is better to have two computers. I run my lighting on my back up computer for OTS, we are all carrying a back up computer in case of emergency right?
I agree, I run showexpress on a spare laptop.
One future possibilty is that we will import eg. a Freestyler sequence into an OTS file as a DMX chunk (already reserved).
Play the OTS file and a "Freestyler player" plays the DMX sequence/chunk.
That way OTS itself would not need DMX device drivers, visualisers, lighting hardware setup etc, all that would live in Freestyler.
Personally I would never run OTS and DMX software on the same computer on a gig, even they are sure able to handle this without a problem. Reason is that usually lights will be controlled by a LJ and the music by the DJ. If I do work alone or in a situation, where more background music is desired and the lights are reduced to more static color fades, then run the DMX either from a spare (backup) OTS laptop or by an older netbook.
The DMX software we're using is using the USB-DMX interface as the software dongle. So that is very good to take whatever computer is available as long as there's a free USB connector.
It's little more hardware to carry with, but as mentioned before, you have a backup if either one of them has a problem.
JAylmer, you mean that within the OTS chunk a DMX stream from freestyler will be recorded and then played back. That would require a DMX in and out capable interface.
I cannot imagine that OTS is going to build in it's own DMX control at all. Might be nice to have, but the effort to keep up to date with the fixture library is tremendous. But I could imagine to store some MIDI controls in he OTS chunk to trigger actions in any light software or light consoles. There they have to be mapped then to scene or switch or cue of your choice.
If it is required to have some songs programmed with its unique light show, then I would turn the wheels around. DMX software products these days are able to play music and videos and steer the lights how you programmed them for that song, down to each second.
I agree with DJMartin on the DMX chunk. I really don't think Ots will do one. However, I don't agree that Lighting control and Ots shouldn't be on the same system. Again, I ran Light jockey and Ots side by side oon the same machine for 4-5 years. Never an issue. The secret is to know your machine, and it's interface. If it can't handle it, it's one thing, but if it's got excess grunt, there is absolutely no reason why the machnie can't. If you can't handle it, then that's not the machines fault. These machines are built for multitasking. Use some of that spare processing power for something!
DJMartin: If the DMX chunk was imported into an OTS file from Freestyler then OTS does not require any DMX i/o
OTS would not have to do anything DMX or have any knowledge of DMX. The OTS file merely passes the chunk to a Freestyler player as a Freestyler sequence file.
So Freestyler would need to be installed and the hardware dongle and lights setup and mapped but it handles everything to do with DMX, not OTS.
The process might be:
Install Freestyler on the same machine as OTS.
Setup and map all the lighting hardware in Freestyler.
Create a Freestyler sequence file with timings to match the tune.
In OTS Studio, create an OTS file with audio, video etc and then import the Freestyler sequence file as a DMX chunk.
When OTS AVDJ plays the OTS file it passes the DMX chunk to Freestyler as a Freestyler sequence file (via some magic).
OTS need to release the death grip on the reins just a little. This would add value to the OTS product equating to more sales without costing a lot of money.
Perhaps Freestyler is not the most suitable DMX solution (I don't know the market) but I use it as an example as I believe it is open source.
If a suitable DMX product was available it would not be difficult for OTS to "integrate" into it.
Esperance has greatly improved many things for the DJ experience, but has not at all changed the user experience.
I want changes that improve the user experience.
Another example is a home grown auxiliary DMX program where I use OTS AVDJ playlist items to control DMX.
With my system a playlist item is used to send DMX commands. See attachment for list of commands.
Disadvantages of this simple approach:
1/ I have to almost "hard code" the light hardware information to suit what I own, no flexibility.
2/ I can only make changes between songs, and have to have beat mixing disabled.
I have written an axillary DMX program that analysis http info from OTS AVDJ RAC server.
When it sees a DMX playlist item it adjusts the "DMX Array" and sends it to the DMX dongle.
The steps are:
Create an OTS file a couple of seconds long with a 20KHz tone. Add title information "DMX R255"
Drag that item into the playlist
When OTS AVDJ plays that file the auxiliary DMX program sees it as the currently playing item and makes all the lights Red.
Can also switch lights on/off that are set to be sound triggered etc.
Don't try this at home it won't work without the auxiliary program.
The point of this is that OTS AVDJ playlist items control lighting via DMX, but OTS knows nothing about DMX, what DMX lighting you have, what DMX dongle you have.
It just gives commands to a DMX program.
What OTS should NOT do:
1/ Try to do DMX all themselves and keep it current
What OTS should do:
1/ Use someone elses DMX program and tap into it. Win for OTS, win for DMX program supplier, win for us.
Jeff, I did say that computers are able to handle it without any problem, I just wouldn't do it. You can call it personal taste, separation of duties or a little of both :icon_lol: In our case, we always have a second notebook with OTS(backup) on the scene, the OTS files, media library and playlists are on a Network Attached Storage NAS with 4 disk running Raid5 and all hooked up to GB Ethernet. So both units can access the same data base. In addition, the OTS backup has the entire OTS files on an USB disk. This setup allow to use the spare OTS machine as the light control unit. My main income comes from my technical work in the mid- to large scale computing area and there it's common to separate duties :icon_lol:
JAylmer, freestyler is free, but a quick lookup on their website do not show any license information. OpenSource software usually run unter GPL and source code must be available. here you can download only the setup.exe file (I just spend 20 seconds on their website, maybe there is more information than I gathered in that time). So if OTS would implement freestyler chunks into Studio, that would address some people, but keep away the folks using other programs or real hardware consoles. If they want to trigger DMX without going into the DMX internals, then the best solution would be to implement MIDI control, as mentioned by Jeff on August 15th. in this thread. This would require a MIDI out adapter (either a soundcard can do it or a USB interface) and then it will fire off Midi notes and values and the lighting control soft/hardware will then trigger some action based on that.
In any cases, lighting these days need programming. If you have your DJ booth setup incl. lightnings hooked up exactly the same way for any gig, then programming will be less. In our case this might vary a lot. If there is no space for a truss, then the movings stay on tipped flightcases and need reprogramming....
Jeff, not sure why you are hung up on this one so hard. My business has three divisions, lighting, DJ, and Photobooth. There is no question that running lighting on two separate computers is a better idea if for no other reason than you have redundancy. You can run them on one computer, but two is better. Perhaps it is the type of lighting that we do when compared to one another that makes us see this answer differently, I do some pretty big lighting jobs and I need two screens just to run my lighting program which sometimes runs into a multiple universe situation, but even on smaller jobs, two screens for the lighting computer is very helpful. Here is a pic of my second screen for ShowXpress.
https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/s720x720/386509_2624986626719_1182409871_n.jpg
Jamie, My main rig is a rackmount quad core system very capable of the task at hand. It runs video, lighting, audio, the entire show. My backup is an old 2.4ghz laptop with a slow front side bus that can only really handle the audio portion of the show.
If my primary machine goes down, I might lose some lighting capabilities and the video, but I still have music. If you have 2 systems capable of handling both then great. but if one system goes down, you'll likely do everything on the other system at that point anyhow, and thus we're right back to why not do it from the beginning?
Because where I wind up in a pinch is not where I want to start from in an ideal situation. Other reasons as listed above.
Well in the end, it's what works best for you. No wrong way really.
Hi DJMartin, Thanks for you response it has been informative. I guess I was using Freestyler as an example. What I was thinking was a business partner alliance between OTS and organisation x who produces DMX software.
Yes you are right it does lock OTS users into a specific DMX solution as it would if OTS did their own DMX thing.
I think Jeff's suggestion was just to send a midi note in time with the beat to get stable beat information to the lights which would be more manageable than mics built into light fixtures, and I am not dismissing that suggestion. You may be taking the concept a bit further by hinting at possible mapping between the midi notes and DMX functionality which is also valid.
I take your point that if you are standalone then it is a very different solution than if you are integrating into a venue's lighting booth.
As far as the programming requirement for DMX then the DMX chunk embedded in an OTS file would do this. After all it is just importing a DMX sequence file that suits a particular DMX providers program. If OTS spoke with several major DMX program providers perhaps the end result could be that we have a choice of DMX packages that we could use.
A point that you make that I had not considered is that different venues -may- need different DMX sequences. If the DMX sequences are embed into OTS files then it would be a big deal creating new sequences for each tune and then importing them into each of the OTS files, and then how do you handle requests? But by using a lighting console perhaps the settings aren't specific to each tune, so the effort to reprogram to get a result is less, right? I have little experience with lighting consoles. If midi information was being sent to the venues controller it to would also need to be adjusted by venue.
The problem OTS must have with DMX is where to start with this. There is no magic bulllet but DMX chunk that can import sequence files from a number of providers would be a good start, making many DJ's happy and not such a bit effort required by OTS. I can also see that Jeff's suggestion solves a lot of problems but has limitations. What thoughts?
Hi JAylmer, in my point of view implementing midi controls would be a fast win for OTS. First of all, MIDI is vendor independent and standardized and second it would offer a great flexibility. Even top league controllers like GrandMA, Avolites do support MIDI control.
So what could be done in OTS Studio is implement a chunk to set some light trigger points on a songs timeline, then you can assing MIDI notes to these triggers. In the light controlling device you map the MIDI notes to actions. That can be simple color change, gobo change, strobe, your fantasy is open. So if your venue differs, then you have to adjust that in the light controller (e.g. start and end point of a moving head pan/tilt move).
To achieve sound to light actions, I would either stick with a good mic on your light controller (DMX desk) or a direct audio link from your mixer to the light desk. Consoles these days are pretty good in analyzing the sound stream and find the correct beat for triggering a chase. While sound to light is pretty common in traditional lights in chases or the old 'light organ effect, it is used only partwise on intelligent lights. There it is more about to trigger 'moves' of these lights with individiual gobo, color, prism.
Generally you can have two kind of light shows. One where almost all lights blink somehow to the music, the other is a well thought show - a designed show which needs very individual programming to the venue, stage, dancefloor. See an example at http://www.nicolaudie.com/nicolaudietv/, select channel 3 - 3D Simulations, Creed Higher.
Well, I took the plunge. I decided to give ADJ MyDMX a whirl. It's "en route" as we speak. Jeff, I plan to run it on the same machine as Ots. When you did this with Light Jockey, did you just "alt-tab" a lot to toggle between programs?
No, I used a mouse to transfer music to the playlist in the old Ots so it was quite natural to control the Light jockey panel I had created with it as well. I forget the app name I used for the panel, but it was a Light jockey add-on for doing such. It was just a buutton interface panel I configured to use some space on the right hand side of my display to run cues with.
Hmmm... I'm using a 13" laptop, so not a lot of real estate. I guess I'll try the alt-tab method and see how it goes...
perhaps you can control in via an external device, like an xkeys USB keypad, and assign each button a lighting cue....
I have always thought a 12" or so external touchscreen monitor would be my future in DMX lighting. I found myself enjoying playing with the manual controller quite a bit last weekend. manually tweeking the scenes speed and effects was fun. Then again the wife was running the music so it gave me something to do :p
Has anyone tried using XKeys keypad with myDMX? That might be a good way to go
I know nothing about myDMX. If it allows keyboard shortcuts, then it should work, but then you have to deal with making sure myDMX is active when you send them to prevent OtsAv from accidently recieving them. That could be done with ahk scripts, but then you must be sure to use one of the newer USB xKeys where you can execute files on each button.
I will look into Xkeys. I just got myDMX and started messing with it last night. Wow! I can already tell that once I go dmx, I will never look back.
Hi Mike, yes, DMX and today intelligent lights do offers much more flexibility than the old world of Dimmer City, multicores and huge power leads. :icon_lol:
Can you check if myDMX do support MIDI control devices? If yes, then it should be possible to hook up e.g. a Behringer BCF2000 and patch some faders and buttons to steer whatever is programmed in the DMX software. I haven't tested it yet, but from a logical point of view it should allow you to control DMX from the hardware fader panel while OTS is in foreground. There shouldn't be even a mismatch with a possible MIDI controller for OTS, since in evey programm you have to specify to which device the software should react.
Behringer BCF2000 is just on of several hardware consoles. Myself I'm in the middle to test the Dn-HC4500 with OTS and on the DMX side I'm playing around with the Behringer BCF/BCR2000, Novation Launchpad and Evolution U-33... so a good test environment to have everything together on the same notebook. Time is very limited in the next weeks, but I keep posting if there is anything interesting.
DJMartin, it does look like it supports MIDI. I ran it "live" for the first time last night and all I can say is WOW. Ots and MyDMX played flawlessly together on the same laptop. It was so much more fun using DMX. I thought it would be much harder to figure out than what it was. Good stuff! :)
Played with Ots and MyDMX again last night. It can be a pain hitting the Alt-Tab between programs at times. I would do the XKeys thing, but not sure what Jeff was saying about AHK scripts? I wouldn't want to use XKeys if I had to be on the MyDMX window when using xkeys (defeats the purpose). I COULD run two laptops, I suppose but not sure if I want to go that route either... decisions, decisions... Oh, and I just found THIS: http://piengineering.com/accessories/xkrack.php pretty interesting :)
So how hard would it be to make an Xkeys product (like the one I just posted link to) work with mydmx ONLY and not interfere with Ots?
The Xkeys device would not require it's own display interface as well. You could dedicate the entire display to Ots, and use the XKey device to control yor lighting.
With the xkey software, you can assign each key to a script. (I don't recall if I had it set up for an uncompiled script or not, but I think you can.) Each script will obviously not need to be very large, so you'll have lots of small scripts. Each script will perform it's own special task. One button could execute a blue cue to set all the lights to output blue in myDMX. Another Red, and yet another random.
My recommendation would be to set up one row of buttons to do color changes like this, another row for movement, a third for shutter control, etc.
I actually used my xkeys to control Ots in the past, and have my ots control scripts on the web here... http://users.indytel.com/~jsmain/downloads/Scripts/Dead link.JJ
With the current Ots, I will likely use it directly, and set up MIDI control of my lights using my M-Audio Trigger finger for control as I can't get the xkeys user interface to see my xkey device. The SDK software sees it just fine, so I may opt to create a new software package that executes my ahk scripts or run them directly with c# as well.
I think I will just stick with alt-tab but I'm going to go back to the X500 and HC4500. Since the 4500 has the digital readout and I can have it count down time remaining on a song, I can have MyDMX up on the laptop and still be able to see where my song is with the controller. I was an advocate for the MC6000, but I think for everything I do, the 4500 might just be the best for my system.
As I'm learning MIDI currently, I may incorporate this in my next DMX control as I mentioned with the triger finger.
I ended up using MyDMX with Easy Remote to control lights via an iPad. I am switching over to Luminair since it is a standalone app and doesn't require the program running on a computer. Has anyone used Luminair? I bought the software today and ordered an Enttec ODE, but that won't be here for a few days. I can't wait to give this a try.
I saw this topic active in the who's online area, and thought I'd mention I purchased a Raspberry Pi recently with the A7 processor and 1G memory, for $35 and shipping. It is my intent to purchase an add on 7" touch screen, and use my Open DMX dongle to connect with the raspberry Pi, and make it a dedicated DMX controller.
Anyone else doing this?
Been using Daslight software and dongle almost as long as I've been using Ots (forever).
Easy to programme light scenes, move seamlessly from scene to scene. Works with X Keys (already in use for Ots) so keeps the setup as minimal and efficient as possible.
Keys on Xkeys allocated to preset scenes and able to recall without any more real estate on the laptop and sits besides Ots on the big touchscreen.
Not going to alter things unless Ots or Das don't work.
Andy