Davidmk

What's with the "8fpn12" and "Hhpn12" in the attached image? I'm getting these (apparently) extraneous characters whenever I put a single or - as here - double cue-trigger in the macros field. The playback(s) & cue(s) do exist and they are named.

Yep! 😞

Glad to hear you are sorted. If you apply a pallette to a fixture that wasn't included in the pallette (but the fixture type was) then it gets the values from the first fixture of that type. I'm not a big user of any pallettes except colour so the first thing I do after patching is create colour pallettes for all my LEDs in a range of colours adjusting each fixture type so that they look the same. That way I can be confident that selecting a colour will give me consistent results across a number of fixture types and in different cues. Also if I, or the director, decide the colour isn't quite right I can adjust it once for the whole show. I do something similar with beam & shape but in a more limited way but, reading up on pallettes for this I am reminded that pallettes can contain attributes from other groups, handy for zoom & focus which change with position due to the different throw.

I haven't, at least not on a regular basis (I'd put a one-off down to finger trouble I suppose). As it happens I'm doing some offline programming today, part of which is correcting a cue that should have some fixtures in it but has actually got all of them. I'll let you know how that goes. If you could send me your show & capture files I could load them up and have a play. Got the desk & computer already set up.

Itwould be good if you could report back to the community so we all know what it was.

Oops, missed an important bit, should read... ...select the fixtures you DON'T want in the pallette (and only those), press Home and then press Update... Anyway, now you have Keith on the case you won't need me 😀

Sounds like you have all the movers in both groups and probably in your pallettes as a result. First, check on the groups screen whether you have "multiple select" or "single select" highlighted. For this you need single. Select one of your groups - if the other is highlighted then the group you have selected contains the fixtures in the other group. Delete both of your groups and recreate them. This will not affect your pallettes. You could delete and recreate you pallettes making sure you deselect Snapshot and Smart tag in the record options window. Alternatively, select the fixtures you DON'T want in the pallette (and only those), press Update and select remove in the update options window before tapping the pallette.

The fine channel may not display any recognisable pattern, it certainly wouldn't follow the sine wave. Forget about DMX and binary for a moment and consider this... Imagine a parameter, increasing linearly by 0.75 per step. It would go 0.75, 1.5, 2.25, 3.00, 3.75 and so on. The whole numbers are going up while the fractions are going down and yet it would still plot an ascending straight line on a graph. The whole numbers are analogous to the coarse byte, the fractions to the fine byte. As @Erics says above, calculate a 16bit result then output the most significant byte as coarse, the least significant byte as fine. Couple of other tips... I may be wrong about this but I think some (most? all?) fixtures ignore some of the least significant bits of the least significant (fine) channel so, even if the fine output value changes by a small amount the fixture will not move. Most programming languages use signed integers with negative numbers represented in "twos complement". You need unsigned integers so, unless your language has an unsigned integer data type you may have some work to do there. Maybe you should do your calculations in floating point and write functions to convert results to 8bit, 16bit MSB and 16bit LSB. This will be easier if you use the right language to start with. Some, at least, of a finished project will need to run in real time and it should be capable of multi threading and interrupt handling. Its a bit like a swan, serene and beautiful to look at but paddling like anything under the surface. 😀 Full disclosure... Before retiring I was an analyst programmer for 40 years or so and, while I never attempted the project I have spent time thinking about it. Feel free to DM me, maybe I can help here & there.

Just finding out if I have issue. If I can post this then I'm not.

From the release notes for 7.13... "To update a console running ZerOS 7.8.2.39 or older, please visit zero88.com/manuals/zeros/software-updates/zeros-usb-creator for instructions." There are two version numbers that are displayed by the desk - one of them is the underlying LINUX version number something like 7.8.1.2 - you are not interested in this. I think the ZerOS version is displayed somewhere in the startup text and probably elsewhere. If your showfiles have a .zos extension then they were saved with v7.9.8 or later. If the version in your desk is actually newer than 7.8.2.39 then you start the desk in the usual way and use setup to initiate the software update. Try reading the release notes again, in particular the instructions on the last page.

Yes. (Nice short answer 😀)

How good are you with spreadsheets? If you recorded one cue with everything in it on the master playback and output it as a CSV then, I think, the top row would give you all the used channels and what they are used for. Turning that into what you want would require good spreadsheet knowledge but it ought to be possible. Have a look at it and see what you think. (I've used CSV output once, to get details of cues alongside the script for a play, took some doing but at least, once it was done, I could refresh it with a new CSV as the cue stack changed.

Why didn't I know that? Thanks!

Any chance of "everything" pallettes allowing a combination of colour, beam, shape and position? Edit: Oops, just realised that this is already in the list a "looks" pallettes.

Absolutely! Please.

This could be what I want. I'm not consistent about which interface I use and the laptop is probably trying to use the same one as last time. I'll give that a go first. Thanks.

As you are both talking about Capture... My biggest problem with it is getting the desk to control the live view. Even though I've had it working when I shut down both desk and laptop overnight I have a Dickens of a job getting it going next day. there must be a right order to start Capture and the desk but whichever way I do it I seem to have to restart both of them a couple of times to get the link going. Any suggestions?

If you haven't already, check the manual here. Can you be more specific about your problem? For example, can you find your fixture in the library? Is there an error message? Does it suggest both channel number and DMX address? Are you on the latest version of software, or at least a recent one? Is the library up to date?

Pretty much all the KB articles have been incorporated into the manual here. I suggest you select the correct console version and search for MIDI as the information you require may be under mode than one heading.

For the benefit of anyone following this issue... The app isn't supposed to connect while the desk is paired to the Hue hub. If you want to add anything to the hub it has to be on a network that has Internet access. The network you have your desk on should NOT have Internet access. It follows, therefore, that you need to connect the hub and the device with the app on to a different network to add devices. If you want to use the app for other reasons while the hub is on your lighting network then obviously your Apple or Android device needs to be on that network. You may get a message warning you that there is no Internet - do not ignore this as you may have to accept it to get connected properly and for the app to work. You also have to unpair the desk and hub. Be methodical and patient and it should work in the end. Try not to be in the position of connecting the app while under pressure, do it before you are in in trouble and it should all just work when you need it. Don't forget to re-pair the desk and hub when you are finished with the app. This should be a nice addition to the solutions available but it is a marriage of theatre and domestic technology and your mindset needs to accommodate this. Have fun!

I've done some more thorough testing full results have been emailed but what I've found is that it is probably my Pixel phone causing the issue. A Galaxy tab seems to connect OK However... Although it connects and although the desk is unpaired, when I switch the lights on with the app they go off after a couple of seconds. I had to disconnect the desk from the network to get control through the app.

I'll re-check this. I found that, even though I thought I had unpaired the desk, the app just hangs and will not connect.

OK I can see how the Internet connection is useful but it isn't as smooth as the rest of the implementation. It's a shame that it is the hub that needs to access the net because a phone or tablet can usually do that while connecting a wired device could be problematic out on site. Especially in the middle of a field. What it means in practice is that all the Hue devices you have need to be known to the hub before you go out and that in turn means you will allocate all those channels whether you are using them or not. Is there a chance that the desk could allow you to select which devices to patch from those known to the hub? I'm guessing that the hub doesn't need Internet access to remove devices, does it need access to add more of devices it already knows about? Is there any way that the app could connect to the hub even if some functions (like add an unknown device) would be unavailable?

As always, Ian is spot on. Heartily endorse his work

So I've updated ZerOS on one of my desks and dipped my toes into the Philips Hue water. The desk picked up my already linked lamps (all two of them) and I could turn them on and change the colours - all pretty simple. However I'm a bit bothered about adding new lamps to the hub. I don't see anything that says you can do it through the desk, to do it with the app requires the hub to be unpaired but then the app still won't connect to the hub even though my phone is on the same network as the desk and the hub. Is this because that network doesn't have an Internet connection? Since the desk network is never going to have an internet connection (because the desk isn't supposed to be connected to the Internet and because it isn't convenient in the middle of a festival field) do I have to reconnect the hub to my home network to add or remove lamps? Or am I just missing something here?