Davidmk

You are not alone. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt. 😀

Ditto. I generally want to record just intensity or everything else but intensity so SmartTag is a nuisance. I don't think I'm super-human (but I'm not disputing @Edward Z88's powers). It's probably because I'm not that I find myself baffled by SmartTag, Cue Only & Move On Dark. I've only done one show "on the button". I got through it but it was a mess. If/when I do another one I'll have to do some homework.

Yes, pretty much. Start from a problem (or something people want to do) and do a step by step guide. I still think flowcharts are good. Like "here's the steps" in order, with alternatives then link out to how. Not particularly relevant to your example though.

PS I've been up all night trying to write scripts for TouchOSC. I've been a programmer all my adult life but I've struggled with this. The Hexler manual doesn't help much, it assumes you know Lua. The Lua manual is better but I still don't know how to implement a multi-dimensional array. Making progress though.

It is a general problem that manuals tend to tell you what "things" do not what "thing" you need at any given time. It is much easier to write them that way and, IMHO, the ZerOS manual is much better than most by this metric. Knowing what "thing" you want is much harder. How does a writer cover the finite, but huge, array of possibilities without rivalling War And Peace? They can't, basically, and that is where training steps in. This forum also picks some of it up - how often do replies say "see the manual here"? I have see very few of the training videos, my brain just doesn't like that input channel very much. So my take would be a separate "how to" guide giving you the workflow to plot a show (including how to add & correct cues) in one chapter, how to set up the desk for busking in another, etc. The history of questions posed on this forum should give an idea of other topics. Flowcharts could be a big part of it too. An online version could include links to the manual to get the details. I'm waffling now. I'll leave it there.

To change the default see the manual here but this will only apply to new cues. I think the only way to change existing cues is to view each playback in turn and change them individually. Not quite as tedious as it sounds as you can use the down arrow key to move down the cue stack.

Thank you!

Hear hear!

I'm mildly (but pleasantly) surprised by this - using a fader means sending - and therefore processing - a lot of messages in quick succession and I would not have been surprised if the desk was overwhelmed by it. Good news in deed.

@Finn Tegeler OSC is going to be available in the next release which is in Beta test right now. I've opened a thread to talk about what people want to do with OSC here if you want to see what I'm doing but, frankly, it might be better to wait until V7.14 has been released and I've got OSC sussed. I'll be happy to share whatever I've worked out then. Meanwhile the OSC thread is for people to suggest what they'd like to do with it.

@mikeb Had trouble replying to you here, updated the errors thread and now this is working. Not sure what you are asking/telling me in your post - it looks like you are doing sensible things with TouchOSC Mk1 but are they working as you expected. In particular, are the fader controls working?

Weird! - I was expecting the dreaded "forbidden" error.

I'm having trouble replying to Mike in the same thread. I don't get an error - I just can't type anything in the reply box. Couldn't PM him either. (Sorry @mikeb) However, as you can see, I'm fine replying to this thread! (W11/Chrome)

Sorry I can't reply in German, Google translate will have trouble with this. When a fixture isn't being controlled by something it will assume default values. Default for LED colours is usually white. Usually these are set in the profile as the "Home" value. If you bring up a playback that sets a colour on a fixture that isn't currently being controlled by something else it will start at the default then the fade will be from that to the playback colour and this may be what you are seeing. You could change the profile but its likely that when an official profile becomes available it will also default to white. Easier is to change the default. To do this, select your fixtures, set all the colour parameters to zero then update Home. It should offer you some options, select Default. See manual here.

@KWR88You're welcome @kgallen Further to my PM regarding OSC out and triggering external things from the desk (rather than the desk from external things) Consider this... TouchOSC (this is the only app I've found so far) can send any OSC message to any or all of the OSC devices on a network. It can send different messages to different devices from the same control action and messages can be MIDI if that is what you want (though it can't send MIDI to FLX unless you have a MIDI output device plugged in, probably not a practical option on a tablet) so a TouchOSC control could be used to trigger a desk and a sound device at the same time (well very nearly). I can't (at the moment) see how a TouchOSC go/next cue button could trigger specific sounds to accompany specific cues in a stack but I'm pretty sure you could trigger a single cue (as in go/cue number) and it's accompanying sound from the same TouchOSC control. TouchOSC is a bit of a challenge - the original version (TouchOSC Mk1) was easier (and free) but more limited - its still available (and still free) though. Hopefully the powers at Z88 will spot the marketing potential of OSC out and keep it near the top of the ToDo list - would be nice if that included feedback to OSC controls as well. In the mean time I'm planning to investigate all the options I can for what we have so far.

I'm a big user of MIDI at the moment but OSC looks set to provide a simpler and more versatile replacement an looks as though it is generating some interest in the community. Obviously this forum is the place to share ideas and experiences but... How many of us are interested? What are people hoping it will do for them? Is anyone already using MIDI but hoping to replace it with OSC? To kick it off: I have a post elsewhere describing my use of MIDI in some detail, with a show file, but briefly I use a couple of 64 button MIDI controllers sending Notes commands to set colours, gobos, positions and run effects on LED pars, LED moving head washes and moving spots. It's very convoluted using Notes to trigger single cue PBs that then use cue macros to trigger other cues in cue stacks. It works but it takes 6 pages of PBs and it's quite inflexible taking hours to modify and days to set up from scratch. I also have to carry around and connect up the MIDI controllers and the box that converts from USB to proper MIDI. I anticipate OSC will fit into a single page of PBs, use a cheap Android tablet & a small portable router and have some potential to make limited changes on site. Come back with questions, ideas, whatever.

Someone, @Edward Z88probably, will likely come in with the answers on Monday.

I think you are supposed to be able to do it with any type of pallette but colour is the example in the manual. That said I had no luck when I was trying it the other day. Just assumed it was my fault though.

You could just hire a desk, easier to find I expect and has the same effect.

First of all, clear + fader button releases the playback which is why the heads return to their default position (which happens to be home as defined in the fixture personality but doesn't have to be). It also stops the cue stack running and sets the next cue back to cue 1. You should be able to restart it but how will depend on the playback settings. You say you're in "manual fader 1 way" I haven't used this but, reading the manual. It looks like raising the fader will play cue 1 (heads move but stay dark), lowering it and raising it again should execute the 2nd cue, lighting the fixtures which should remain in the same position. If you just want a fader that lights the moving heads without the movement being visible then there are other ways. You could just record position & intensity onto a playback and set the button to Go/snap then press the button before raising the fader You could separate position & intensity onto separate controls, useful if you have multiple positions you want the fixtures in.

@Muller Light I already trigger cues using midi. I'm hoping I can do the same, more simply using OSC. Perhaps you can do it with a different media player that can be controlled using DMX (ideally via ArtNet or sACN) to play the files. There are, I think, Raspberry Pi solutions like this but you'll need to do some research.

@kgallen It's a bit mad I grant you but it works. I'm really hoping OSC will let me simplify it. Maybe even do more with it.

Hi Jon and thank you for asking. In order to explain my anticipation for OSC I first need to explain how I operate shows currently (using midi) So I primarily busk for music gigs. I usually don't know the music and have limited information about what is coming so I need to produce "looks" on the fly. I do this by having pre-prepared colours, positions, gobos & PT FX for moving heads that I combine as required. These are stored in multi cue PBs so that only one state is live at any time and they fade from one to the other. To select the cues I want I use a couple of Novation Launchpad Minis giving me 128 buttons sending midi notes. These fire PBs containing 1 cue each. Most of these are actually empty queues but I use the cue macros to fire the cues in the multi-cue playbacks as required. My show file is attached but, to explain... My Launchpads have 8 rows of 8 buttons it is difficult to label them (you can't write on them and most self adhesive materials that you can write on simply don't stick) but you can set their colours. As I need to be able to pick the correct unlabelled button quickly and correctly the 8th column is reserved (more on that below) leaving me 14 buttons. The first two rows of the first Launchpad are used for colours on our LED pars with the button colours representing the colour it sets. I have 12 colours plus White so one of my 14 buttons is spare. PBs 1 through 7 and 9 through 14 are for LED colours. As described above, these each have a single, empty, cue with a macro that triggers a cue in PB 128. PBs 8 (row one, button two) & 15 (row 2 button 7) have empty cues but no macro as they are unused. The cue macro in PB 16 (row two, button eight) releases PB 128. This 8th button is used for the same purpose in other sets of buttons. PB 128 contains cues that set all LED PARs to a colour (again Red, Pink Magenta, etc) All the buttons on the 1st Launchpad and the first few rows of the 2nd operate in this manner controlling colours of the even numbered PArs only, the colours of our MH6 moving head washes, the colours of our MH7 hybrid moving heads, PT positions of the moving heads plus gobos, zoom and PT FX of all MH6 & MH7 moving heads, The last few rows of the 2nd Launchpad work differently. The PBs matching these have actual information in the cues and the macros are not used. Typically these control things like strobing or scanning the audience with moving head lights. When I want these I press and hold the relevant launchpad button. Now all that works nicely if used carefully but there are problems. First there's the issue of labelling the launchpad buttons, I have to use cunning colour coding and even then I have to rely on memory a lot. Setting it up is clunky, the launchpads can only be set up with musical notes (not note numbers) and that takes ages and is prone to error (which is why my early mistake of starting at note one instead of zero which resulted in the last button of the 2nd Launchpad being unusable remains uncorrected) This clunkiness means it is risky to modify anything on the fly so I stick with it even though I could be using empty buttons for gig-specific effects. In fact I only do modifications when I find something wrong or when I have several days to make changes then manually check and debug them I have found, to my cost, that sending midi commands too quickly can result in the desk locking up. The 1-to-1 relationship between midi notes and playbacks means I have to leave PBs unused and take up the first 5 and a bit pages with PBs for midi triggering (i'd much prefer to have them all at the end rather than the beginning). It also means I have to change o lot of stuff on the desk if I wish to re-arrange my buttons as well as running the Launchpad editing software. Not being able to trigger a specific cue in a specific PB using notes means using a lot more PBs than is ideal It should be noted that I did, initially, try ordinary macros fired by the cues - this was even more clunky, less maintainable and, because macros use the command line, fraught with problems because they are slow and can fail or mess up other things if you are doing anything on the desk while they are running. So, I'm hoping OSC might provide a smoother way of achieving the above. I've used it before with a software lighting control (QLC+) and Touch OSC (both have moved on somewhat since then so I'm not sure if what I used to do would still work - even if I could remember the details). My dream is that I could use Touch OSC (or something like it) to create a control surface with buttons. Each button being configured to trigger a specific cue in a specific PB (i.e. transfer the T128/1 from my dummy cue to the OSC control). This would be easier to create & maintain, could even be customised to particular shows (or genre at least). An Android tablet (running Touch OSC) would be smaller & lighter to carry and quicker to connect up although I would miss the tactile nature of the Launchpad buttons. OSC won't help if, like midi notes, the relationship between controls and playbacks is fixed and I will probably stick with midi if that is the case. Beyond that, it will depend on how OSC is implemented. I don't really want fader controls through OSC - they are the reason why I bought a proper desk with proper physical controls (having tried both QLC+ and Martin M-Touch - now Onyx Touch from Obsidian - however things like Speed Override or Programmer Time could be candidates for fader controls. Stables Default 2023 03 27.zos

Doh! It was highlighted and I just read the first post, saw the link and followed it. I swear my brain is turning into Marshmallow.

Nice try but when I followed the link you gave I got this I don't see how it makes Zero 88 information easier to find. The products drop down does mention FLX if you look carefully.