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Topic: DMX?? - Page: 3

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OMG...

This is great news - why wasn't this mentioned in the 6.0.3 release post...

I've had a sweetlght USB lead in my laptop bag for nearly a year as I couldn't get my head around the software.

Gonna get one of my lights out later and will have a play...

Roy
 
I use the Velleman 116 with a seperate laptop, other than my VDJ laptop, and it works great.

Now that I see there are some DMX controls in VDJ perhaps I can elminate the extra laptop. I guess I can map some knobs on my VCI 100.

I'll be checking it out. Thanks.

Right now I use a USB trackball on the DMX laptop. It allows me to swing the light beams around with movement of the roller ball...

It's really cool, and similar to joystick control of the lights.


Regards,

JimL
 

This DMX function on VirtualDJ is to control few dmx lights, but great tool for a DJ who only work with a few on it's set up. It is not a way to replace lighting software, but give a chance to add it to those that have DMX lighting and don't have a software to work with.

This option is there since long ago, but with no to much demand, so many of us were focus on other parts of the software and leave this great feature behind. Now With version 6 we can do more custom midi mapping easily and could do more things with these DMX functions available.

Goos Luck!
 
acw_dj wrote :

This DMX function on VirtualDJ is to control few dmx lights, but great tool for a DJ who only work with a few on it's set up. It is not a way to replace lighting software, but give a chance to add it to those that have DMX lighting and don't have a software to work with.

This option is there since long ago, but with no to much demand, so many of us were focus on other parts of the software and leave this great feature behind. Now With version 6 we can do more custom midi mapping easily and could do more things with these DMX functions available.

Goos Luck!


Agree on not replacing full DMX software, so maybe the way forward is to build mapping interfaces, via script, in to such software.

I read on the new features wishes forum that DMX scene cues in songs, this would be a nice add and maybe possible now...?

Also the idea of a MIDI clock to push the beat to the DMX software.

While I'm gonna try the DMX interface (I have 5 DMX lights - 2 pairs and a laser), I wouold prefer to see a full API from VDJ that DMX software authors could take advantage of. Either locally or on a seperate PC/laptop.

Cheers,

Roy
 
GadgetMan wrote :
OMG...

This is great news - why wasn't this mentioned in the 6.0.3 release post...


no kidding!!!!

The only reason I bumped this thread is I was thinking of buying USB dongle, and trying it out
 
acw_dj wrote :

This DMX function on VirtualDJ is to control few dmx lights, but great tool for a DJ who only work with a few on it's set up. It is not a way to replace lighting software, but give a chance to add it to those that have DMX lighting and don't have a software to work with.


I'm still using a DMX44 hardware controller for 8 DMX lights..

talk about painfull programming...
set scene.. hit record... set next scene. hit record...

and I'm limited too under 300 scenes with 8 chases..

VDJ might not be dedicated lighting software... but if I have access to unlimited chases... I might be ok with that :-)
 
acw_dj wrote :
Now with VirtualDJ 6.0.3 is easiest than ever... You just need any USB DMX controller and if it has drivers for Windows, install them and that's VirtualDJ need to use it.


Have you actually done this?
used a USB DMX controller with VDJ 6.0 and created a chase?
 

No, I haven't do it but VirtualDJ 6.0.3 midi mapping is easy now, and allow anyone to custom as liked. I am buying a DMX controller to check on this, but haven't do it so far. Hope to have it done in a few weeks. Am I wrong and isn't easy, hippydog?
 
acw_dj wrote :
No, I haven't do it but VirtualDJ 6.0.3 midi mapping is easy now, and allow anyone to custom as liked. I am buying a DMX controller to check on this, but haven't do it so far. Hope to have it done in a few weeks. Am I wrong and isn't easy, hippydog?


I had another play last night and was suitably confused...

Using 6.0.2 on my desktop:

First assigned dmx to ALT-F1. DMX control window appeared, but pressing ALT-F1 again had no effect and the control window would not go away. Even clicking the close button ad no effect. Window is always on top and best I could do was minimise it to an annoying tab which floated sat on top of ALL windows.

The control window has buttons for black, strobe, flash and then a Color 1-4 and a Move 1-4. The first three are pretty obvious the Color and Move not so...

Then there's the dmx_setvalue verb which recieves parameters of channel & value. However surely this is incomplete:

How does the VDJ DMX engine know which fixture address the setting is for and what it does?

For example, my KAM Starcluster 3D laser would strobe with channel 4 and value 255. However my magic gobo strobes with channel 1 & and a value of 255.

No apply the same to black and flash - Laser 1/0 and 4/nnn and Gobo is 2/0 & 1/136-240.

There is no correlation of settings across fixtures, so unless VDJ knows what fixture address to apply the settings to, how can this work?

Finally, can VDJ retain these settings? Or do you have to assign all the settings to a single keystroke macro and remember to initiate it every time you start VDJ?

Cheers,

Roy
 
OK I havent actually played with this yet as it doesnt seem worth it unless there is a way to have it change steps of the sequence in beat with the music. Hopefully that might be in a future update? If anyone else has found a way to send a midi clock from vdj please post here, or if there is some way to write the script so it recognises bpm and changes steps in the sequence maybe? The lack of any output timecode is the only thing that has me considering other dj software.

In answer to your question of how does it know what fixture. Your fixtures have dipswitches or some other way of setting the dmx start address for that fixture. So using your example you could set your KAM, if it has four channels, to number 1 start address, then your gobo strobe would be start address number 5.

To make it strobe both you would need to program address 4 to 255 and address 5 to 255. This is how it works with all controllers.

With lighting desks is a little different because they might have ten sliders so its sometimes easier to set the starting address in blocks of 10 so the start is on fader 1, ie fixture 1 is dmx address 1, fixture 2 would be dmx address 10, fixture 3 would be 20, etc. But thats getting a bit OT.
 
musicalcheers wrote :
OK I havent actually played with this yet as it doesnt seem worth it unless there is a way to have it change steps of the sequence in beat with the music. Hopefully that might be in a future update? If anyone else has found a way to send a midi clock from vdj please post here, or if there is some way to write the script so it recognises bpm and changes steps in the sequence maybe? The lack of any output timecode is the only thing that has me considering other dj software.


Try mapping dmx to a key and the control window. There are two optins on there. One for beat and one for smooth. So by this I am assuming it will perform S2L.

musicalcheers wrote :
In answer to your question of how does it know what fixture. Your fixtures have dipswitches or some other way of setting the dmx start address for that fixture. So using your example you could set your KAM, if it has four channels, to number 1 start address, then your gobo strobe would be start address number 5.


You missed my point. yes I know how to set the dip switches, but I have no way of passing the fixture address to VDJ. So I may be able to apply the following macro:

dmx_setvalue 1 0 (channel 1 value 0)

but VDJ does not know which fixture this relates to. Surely we need an extra parameter which is the fixture number:

dmx_setvalue <fixtureAddress> <channel> <value>

Cheers,

Roy
 
VDJ doesnt need to know what the fixture is, it only needs to know to set a particular channel to a value.

So for strobing with fixtures set as suggested above, it would be something like...

dmx_setvalue 4 255 and dmx_setvalue 5 255

The fixture addresses are set by what you have the start channel set to on your individual fixtures.

Not sure of the syntax but you get the idea?

hey thanks for the heads up on the beat - I will play with this tomorrow and post a vid if I get it working.
 
musicalcheers wrote :
VDJ doesnt need to know what the fixture is, it only needs to know to set a particular channel to a value.

So for strobing with fixtures set as suggested above, it would be something like...

dmx_setvalue 4 255 and dmx_setvalue 5 255

The fixture addresses are set by what you have the start channel set to on your individual fixtures.

Not sure of the syntax but you get the idea?

hey thanks for the heads up on the beat - I will play with this tomorrow and post a vid if I get it working.


Also true, but where in your dmx_setvalue does it tell VDJ that you've just set a strobe command?

Please do post a vid. Would be very interested to see it working.

Cheers,

Roy
 
 
GadgetMan wrote :

dmx_setvalue 1 0 (channel 1 value 0)

but VDJ does not know which fixture this relates to. Surely we need an extra parameter which is the fixture number:

dmx_setvalue <fixtureAddress> <channel> <value>

Cheers,

Roy


In this case, right now I am assuming the programmers (are whoever wrote the descriptions)
used the term <channel> when they should have used the more modern term of <address>
IE: it should read.
"dmx_setvalue : Sets an individual dmx value. first parameter is address (0 to 511), second is value (0 to 255)"
 
hippydog wrote :
In this case, right now I am assuming the programmers (are whoever wrote the descriptions)
used the term <channel> when they should have used the more modern term of <address>
IE: it should read.

"dmx_setvalue : Sets an individual dmx value. first parameter is address (0 to 511), second is value (0 to 255)"


Still don't think so... As pointed out above my strobe affect is on different channels on different fixtures. Therefore <address> and <value> are still not enough. You need all three:

<value> is specific to <channel>
<channel> is specific to <fixture>

I'm no DMX expert, but from playign with sweetlight and the likes I know you need to program all three...

I'm gonna jump over to your other thread now to pick this up.

Cheers,

Roy
 
GadgetMan wrote :

Still don't think so... As pointed out above my strobe affect is on different channels on different fixtures. Therefore <address> and <value> are still not enough. You need all three:

<value> is specific to <channel>
<channel> is specific to <fixture>

I'm no DMX expert, but from playign with sweetlight and the likes I know you need to program all three...

I'm gonna jump over to your other thread now to pick this up.

Cheers,

Roy



if you had 2 fixtures and strobe was channel 3 of your first fixture which had 4 channels in total but channel 7 of your second fixture

You would have to enter something along the lines of:
dmx_setvalue 3 200 & dmx_setvalue 11 200

(if strobe channel had to be set to 200 to strobe)

I think
does this make sense?
 
GadgetMan wrote :
<value> is specific to <channel>
<channel> is specific to <fixture>

I'm no DMX expert, but from playign with sweetlight and the likes I know you need to program all three...


I've just had my eureka moment over on HippyDogs other thread. For more follow over there as we delve deeper in to this topic...

Roy
 


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