kgallen

Hi Philip, To elaborate on what Chris is saying: Say you have an (old) fixture that only has Red, Green and Blue control channels in the DMX map (3 DMX channels), then it is tricky to set up a colour then just fade in or out that colour, because you'd have to move the R,G and B channels proportionally to maintain the colour during the intensity fade up and down. Newer fixtures would have R,G,B and Dimmer built into the DMX map (4 DMX channels). Where the fixture does not have Dimmer built in, you can emulate the function on the desk. With your example, the "LED Par 56: Virtual Dimmer" has 4 control channels on the desk, but only 3 of these (the R,G,B) actually go out to the fixture over DMX (just the same as the "LED Par 56: No Dimmer"). The fourth channel - the dimmer (or virtual dimmer) is available on the desk, and the desk does the scaling of the DMX R,G,B values according to the level of the (virtual) dimmer channel on the desk. That way you can fade up and down the brightness of your R,G,B colour just by changing the level of the (virtual) dimmer channel on the desk. Unless you've got very old (10 years+) or very cheap fixtures it's unusual for them to not have Dimmer built into the DMX map these days. If you've got some of these... https://www.thomann.de/gb/stairville_led_par_56_alu_schwarz.htm ...then they don't have an inbuilt dimmer channel, so I'd recommend you use a fixture definition with a virtual dimmer. However this particular product has 5 DMX channels: CH1 is a MODE channel and CH5 is a SPEED channel. CH2-4 are RGB. It would be best to have a profile specifically designed for this fixture to handle the 5 DMX channels, plus add a virtual dimmer. You could get away with the two profiles you list but you will not have control of CH1 and CH5 and you would have to configure the desk to map that fixture to DMX address+1 compared to the address setting on the LED Par (because you want the desk R,G,B channels to line up with CH2,3,4 on the LED Par) and you'd have to make sure you didn't have any other fixture channel overlaying that CH1 and CH5 - i.e. you'd still have to space your addressing at 5 address increments. You wouldn't have control of MODE, but a value of 0 on that channel means you get RGB control and the desk should output a data value of 0 on an unpatched address. Hope that helps and I didn't over-cook the explanation... Kevin ETA: I just looked in the fixture library (release 35) and there is a Stairville -> LED Par 56: Virtual Dimmer in there that defines the 5 real channels (and adds a virtual dimmer). If that was what you were referring to in your opening post, then that's the one to choose!

I’m not aware you can set a proportional master over an arbitrary set of channels. Of course you could set up 4 channels and record that to playback 24 - but that is effectively a normal submaster but I suspect that is not what you’re after...

Hi Edward, This recent post is a perfect example: The ORB article is exactly what was needed. You knew it existed, so you found it. I was looking for something along those lines and found nothing - fortunately you came along quickly and helped Harry out. I ended up on this page, which gave me nothing of use: http://support.zero88.com/Legacy-products/Legacy-Consoles/Legacy-ZerOS/975362971/ORB.htm The link you found should have been on the Orb page I ended up at. Neither do I find your article on the Orb XF page. (I found it on Orb XF now I looked again knowing the title).

ZerOS 6.0.0 is very old. There is probably a more convoluted mechanism to update to something much newer. Once you're on the newer version (7.9.4) then future upgrades are probably more plug-and-play as we expect these days. I'm not familiar with Orb, but have you checked the desk menus/looked in the manual for the software upgrade mechanism? Did you put the new software in the root of the USB stick (i.e. not in any subfolder)? Hopefully Edward or Jon will be along shortly to give you the proper instructions! However you could have a look around on the forum for posts from users with similar requests.

No, just have an alphabetical list. I don't want to hunt around for Fat Frog, I just want to see it there in the list in front of me. Zero88 haven't made that many consoles (or dimmers, or whatever), it won't be hundreds of lines long. Users don't know or care about current/legacy (that's just the way developers see things not users), they just want an answer. To them, the box sitting in front of them is current. These days I find lots of websites have lots of hierarchy. The page makers love the partitioning. But as a user, trying to use the pages and find what you want is a pain, because the user's view of the world is often not the same as the product developer (as an aside I see this in more recent product manuals - they are laid out in the way the product developer thinks, not in the way the user needs to find and access information). I don't think relying on search functions is good. They are frustrating - you have to find a suitable term (that is hard) and then you have to filter through the results which could be too few if the search bind is strong or too many if the bind is weak. The KB is not that large (unfortunately), search should not be the main mechanism to use it in my view. Per product page, I think you should start by creating a clear list of what should be on the top page for every product. Let's say: Official Product Name - bold and underlined. Production date range - this gives the "legacy" information - the user can see it's not currently manufactured - but they are unlikely to care, they just want support. Optional item - any clarification needed to identify the product or variants - Put you LeapFrog disambiguation here and link to the relevant page for that product. A picture of the product! Cross-links to pages for other products in that family Link to latest manual - and the publish date - maybe a note to say what the latest software version is this covers. Link to latest software - and the publish date Link to latest release notes - I like the latest Frog release notes because they are all in the one document in reverse chronological order. And they read nicely, not just a table with one terse line from your bug database. And spell checked. The redline markup you use for FLX RNs is useful too. Then the Application Notes or articles - subdivided with subject headings or white space, but not hierarchy because the user then has to hunt through the linked pages to find the article because it's guaranteed you'd put it under a different section to where they'd expect. It would be ok to create a common sub-page for all ZerOS application notes (then point to that from ZerOS, FLX, Solution, Orb etc) and likewise for the Frog range (being careful to disambiguate Frog2...). Actually it would help you a lot if you created core pages once so it's easy for you to update and you don't forget to add the new thing here, there and everywhere. Please don't embed links in headings - it took me a while to realise name headings were links to lower pages. Making this page SmartPhone friendly would be really useful for when the user is on-site with a problem. Keeping the page flat is REALLY useful here - the signal is barely 3G where I often work, so not having to keep pushing and popping pages makes a big difference. Not all venues are in the middle of big cities with strong 4G coverage! Keep it simple. For you to update and the user to find stuff. Without the search. Sorry I appear to have waffled on again quite a bit... but hope it helps... a bit...! Kevin

You should be able to save your setup, just as per a show, to USB stick. Then update the ZerOS desk software, then reload your show from the USB stick. If you have your own fixture definitions (ones you created yourself) then you will need to reload these. Probably best to do this before reloading your show above. The showfile will carry with it all the fixture defintions required, but when you go to the next show you won't have the others that maybe weren't used in the particular setup you had at the start. Hope that makes sense and I understood your question correctly!

Not yet sorry. I think I read on another post that this might be supported in the future.

It's part of the ZerOS download:

It is. But the way to do it on FLX S is slightly different to the main FLX because FLX S doesn't have all physical buttons. It was covered very recently, have a look back a couple of months i the FLX S forum. I'll look too... Something like this: Also, have you read the manual is this respect...? https://zero88.com/manuals/FLX S User Manual v1.pdf

You'll need to patch this unit as 5 separate fixtures. If the unit has "common" channels, you'll need one fixture definition for that bit, then a fixture definition for the "repeated" part that is applied 5 times. This allows you to do things like P/T fans and colour sweeps across the unit as a whole. Have a search of the FLX forum, Jon and Edward have covered this approach several times to similar questions on multi-part units. It's something that is due to change in a future software release - but don't wait on this coming!

Page 18 for Chase playbacks: https://zero88.com/manuals/FLX S User Manual v1.pdf PhantomZerOS:

Sorry to bang on about this again... I really think you should flatten the hierarchy of the Knowledgebase and definately remove the separation of Legacy products from current and put into a single product type. i.e. put ALL lighting consoles from the birth of Christ to current day under a single Consoles listing. Put the software there too. I'm a Zero88 die-hard and I know what is current product and what is legacy and I still have to hunt around the Knowledgebase to find what I'm looking for - and I KNOW what I'm looking for and that it exists. If I go Legacy Products , your most popular product to date (I suspect), the Frog series, is not even listed under the Legacy Console heading! It's there when you push down again into Legacy Consoles page if you haven't already given up looking or didn't realise the heading was a link. I was just helping a BlueRoom member with Fat Frog and I wanted to provide some links to manuals/software etc. This was TOO HARD! That non-Zero88-born-and-bred would have no chance. He doesn't know if Fat Frog is current or legacy - and he doesn't care - or that the manual is quite out of date or that the latest software should be 10.12 and the release notes are full of really essential information. He would give up and go back to BR and moan about "how bad and unusable" Zero88 products are and they don't do what he needs or what the manual says so the software must be full of bugs etc etc. We don't want that of course, because we know that is not true!!! What I'm saying is the organisation of the Knowledgebase is not good for a USER even if the partitioning works wonderfully for you Zero88 chaps. Simplify it so a novice user can go Consoles -> Fat Frog (for example) and be there with everything he needs. All Consoles -> [null/Fat/Bull/Leap/Mambo] Frog [Box] links would go to the same Frog page with everything on it. Same for Jester, Solution, ORB, FLX ranges (and then console links to ZerOS likewise). But -> you do need to clarify Leap products at that page level because of the Frog/ZerOS variant confusion, viz Consoles -> Leap Frog (green) and Consoles -> Leap Frog 48/96 (blue) [or whatever it is!]. Hiding the "old stuff" isn't going to make people buy a new product from you, if anything it will drive them away. Please please please please please! Edit: Also can you put the darn manuals on the KB. It should be there, at the top on the page for the console. Just linked one for the FLX S. Is it on the KB, no. Is it on the Consoles splash screen, no (just the Quick Start). Is it on the bottom FLX S page? Yes, thank f* for that!

Ditto. I certainly struggle to use PhantomOS effectively (on a desktop PC with two sizeable pro screens) - screen readability and having to use the mouse to click virtual buttons (and right click to hold the shift key and all that). It's just a simile of what we had for the Frog range of desks, which had the same usability quirks. As I understand it (it's written here somewhere on the Frog forum), the Frog version was a tool that the software team developed for internal use and it got punted out to the user-base as a cheap/easy way to provide an "off-line editor" for the common user. For me though it was never designed from the outset as a usable off-line editor. Hence PhantomOS... Sorry Zero88 chaps...

Yes, install on a Windoze PC...

Oh come on! You've got a pretty basic fixture: R,G,B,W,A,UV colours, a dimmer and a strobe. Here's one I made for a similar fixture, it's probably pretty close to the one you've got, so probably not that much to change! Use the "Performer 18 Quad : 8 channel mode" as a starting point... LEDJ_P18Q_S7Q5_S9Q8.ift

If you're in a big hurry, use the Fixture Tools provided by Zero88 to write your own fixture definition. See here, there are instructions too:

Select light. Z key. First encoder.

See: https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/playing-back-cues/rgb-colour-mixing-on-playbacks

If you have a cue at blue, then a blackout on that fixture then a cue at white then this should be handled automatically by move on dark. However you need to make sure the blackout is a tracked cue not a "Save All" cue, which is the mistake I've made in the past!

Hi Richard, Brilliant work for giving this comprehensive feedback - I have some sympathy with some of your observations, particularly the messaging/error feedback. (In my experience of using lots of very expensive commercial software at work, this need has to be driven in detail in the requirements: if you just leave it up to the software engineers to code something ‘useful’ then the quality of the message depends on how much the coder sits in the users shoes and really understands what information they need for the particular issue). Some of your symptoms suggest old software to me - are you using 7.9.4 ? Welcome to FLX anyway, good to have you ‘on board’, Regards, Kevin

Sorry, I don't know. However I will be interested in the answer from Edward as I might end up investing in CAPTURE soon too... Sorry I can't help any more!

Maybe you've been pointed to this page already, if not, maybe this helps? http://support.zero88.com/Legacy-products/Legacy-Consoles/Legacy-ZerOS/ORB-XF/996119181/How-to-connect-apps-to-ZerOS-iOS.htm

😂

Use SETUP+PB button and set the shifted option to Pause. Then button=GO, shift+button=Pause/Back

See here: http://support.zero88.com/Legacy-products/Legacy-Consoles/Legacy-ZerOS/ORB-XF/975056031/Compatible-touchscreen-monitors-with-ZerOS-consoles.htm I think I've got the Iiyama 1731SR-B which is the one that Zero88 use for their training and demos etc.