Solution: ZerOS Suggestions, Bugs, and Questions

[PsychoTea]

Hey! I've been using the Solution for a few weeks now (on the latest firmware) and have a ton of bugs, suggestions and questions I wanted to discuss. 

 

Weird behaviour on cues when using 'Fader Controls: Colour'

Suppose I have 4 moving head washes with a Default preset/home (Record button -> Home -> Default) of full white, straight up.

Now I create a Playback with 3 cues, using red, blue, and green colours in each queue respectively. 

Then open the setup for the Playback, and set 'Fader Controls' to 'Colour'. There are two things that I notice:

1) When fading the playback back down from full to off, the colours will fade between the colour of the current cue (ie. green), and the colour of the previous queue (ie. blue). I'm not sure if this is intentional or a bug, but in my opinion a preferred behaviour would be if it faded from the current cue (ie. green), back to the default colour (white). At the moment it fades from green to blue, and then snaps back to white as the cue is released. 

2) Enabling 'Fader Controls: Colour' seems to break the colour fade between cues, but this works fine when 'Fader Controls: Colour' is disabled. I only just noticed this when playing around in Phantom ZerOS, and I'm not sure if this happens on the actual console.

 

Setting programmer time without using a submaster fader 

Is there any command line syntax/menu to set the programmer time without using a fader? I find the fader difficult to set to the correct value and it's also annoying to have to 'waste' a fader just to set a value which doesn't need to be modified often. Bear in mind this is different from the 'Time' value which is set under Special -> Time (although, I would also like to know if there is any syntax for setting this value, as it would be useful to have a few macros I can quickly flick between to adjust the global fade values of cues based on the genre of song, for example).

 

Set maximum/minimum for Programmer Time fader in fader setup

When you assign a fader to Programmer Time, it gives you a range between 0.1 seconds and (I believe) 11.5 minutes. Would it be possible to set a minimum and maximum value for this range in the fader setup (ie. between 0.1 and 5 seconds). This would make it much easier to set more precise values when setting the Programmer Time via fader.

 

Cue Step + Time button to fade to the next queue with set Time

Say I have 3 cues each with a fade of 0.5 set on Up, Down, and Colour. Would it be possible to add functionality such that when the time button is held and the cue step button is pressed, the fade time of 0.5 is instead replaced with the 'Time' value of the console (ie. 5 seconds)? My suggestion would be to make this apply to any fade parameter (Up, Down, Colour, Beamshape, Position) which is set to a non-zero value

 

Loading a look from the blind mode into the live editor

While I'm sure this isn't strictly the correct use of blind mode, would it be possible to add an option when exiting blind mode to load the current look back into the non-blind (live) editor/mode? This means theoretically you could set up your next look in blind mode, and then jump out to instantly load the new look immediately and simultaneously.

 

Remapping preset faders onto submasters within software, versus using dmx input <-> output

I saw a suggestion from @Jon Hole to another user on the forum a while back to allow you to use preset faders as additional submasters. By looping a 5-pin DMX cable between one of the DMX outputs and the DMX input, assigning the DMX input to submasters, and assigning the preset faders to give output on that universe, you could set the faders to act as additional submasters. I really like this idea, however it would be a much cleaner solution to be able to do this in software. I feel like the faders/dimmers are greatly locked down to simply being dimmers over channels 1-48 in the current software, and it would be great to free them up for some additional functionality.

 

Multiple DMX addresses on a single fader

I also noticed that it's not possible to 'group' multiple addresses onto a single fader. For example, if I have 2x LED 4ch. pars (R/G/B/Dimmer) which are set to different addresses (ie. 1,2,3,4, and 5,6,7,8), it's not possibly with software to run these two fixtures on the same set of four dimmers, to have simultaneous control. Instead you would have to modify the DMX addresses of the fixtures themselves to overlap. Would it be possible to have a single fader control multiple DMX addresses?

 

Selecting multiple cells in the programmer window & deleting entire columns

When creating cues, you often pick up data which you don't need. For example, if I'm creating a cue stack to act as a colour chase for a set of movers, I will often also get unnecessary position data. While this can all be removed, I noticed there is no way to a) select multiple cells at once for deletion, b) select entire columns or multiple columns for deletion, and c) 'group' fixtures by type (for example, if I have 4x moving heads, they will all be presented individually within the programmer rather than all under one set of columns). 

 

Bug: Phantom ZerOS seems to have no labels on the front panel of the console (Solution)

When I load up Phantom ZerOS on my PC (Windows 10), labels of the buttons don't appear on the "front panel" view of the desk. This also seems to happen with the Leapfrog 96, but not with the Orb XF or Frog 2 (possibly because the labels are on the button themselves rather than below? Not sure). Might be worth noting that PhantomJester seems to work fine. Screenshot: https://puu.sh/CrKKv/a5d72857bc.png

 

Suggestion: a fix/workaround for fixtures which incorporate strobe into their dimmer curve

Some cheaper fixtures (ie. the Lightmaxx Tri Par Wash) will incorporate strobe into their dimmer curve. This means when rolling the intensity between 0 and 100 (ie. in an effect), the light output will fade from dark to full brightness, then strobe awkwardly, before returning to full brightness again. Would it be possible to add some sort of workaround for this (perhaps in the fixture patch), where the desk is able to intelligently split the two ranges which are actually 'dimmer' and 'strobe' awkwardly mashed into one DMX channel? This means applying sine waves etc. on the dimmers of such fixtures would give the expected behaviour rather than strobing and flashing all over the place. 

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read through my post, and please let me know if you have any ideas/suggestions :-)

 

[PsychoTea]

Just thought of something else--

 

Shift + Key to open window onto the current selected desktop

Currently when you use the shift+key combo to open a window (ie SHIFT+COLOUR to open the colour pallette window) it will typically open onto Desktop 1. Would it be possible to make it open onto the desktop you are currently looking at, as opposed to opening the window and then having to cycle through Special->Screen until it opens on the correct desktop?

 

Thanks!