Tips on rotating fixtures within pixel matrices, and how to split a composite fixture into individual nodes.
Posts Tagged ‘Designer’
KiNet PSU Discovery
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011With a Pharos control system, you can discover and patch KiNet power supplies with ease. The discovery system allows you to pre-patch fixtures onto KiNet power supplies offline, and then associate discovered power supplies with the patched power supplies when you’re ready to commission the project.
Using discovery to find KiNet power supplies on the same network as the computer running Pharos Designer is a simple process. In the Patch view of Designer, select KiNet from the tabs of different protocols. You’ll see something similar to the screenshot below:
KiNet tab in patch
Let’s first take the case where you are starting a new project. If your power supplies are on the same network as Designer then you can discover them now by clicking the ‘Discover’ button. When discovery is complete, click on the ‘Show Discovered’ button to see a table of discovered power supplies. Select the power supply you want to add to your project by pressing the button on the left of the table row and click ‘Add Selected to Project’. Alternatively, you can click ‘Add All To Project’ to add all of the discovered power supplies to the project at once. You can now patch your fixtures to the power supplies.
KiNet Discovery in progress
Now let’s say you’ve patched fixtures to power supplies offline but don’t know the IP addresses of the real power supplies. For this example we have created a new power supply by going to the Patch view of Designer and clicking on the ‘Add’ button in the Protocols tab on the right of the application window. It is crucial that you select the correct type of power supply in preparation for associating later. We have patched a 2×2 iTile to the power supply, which we have named ‘iTile’ for reference.
Adding a PSU offline
With Designer on the same network as the power supply, click the ‘Discover’ button as before then select the discovered power supply that you want to associate. Select the pre-patched power supply from the Power Supply list (‘iTile’ in the case of our example) and click the ‘Apply Selected to Power Supply’ button.
Linking discovered PSUs
It’s worth noting that if you have multiple network interfaces active on your computer, Designer will ask you which interface you want to use to discover power supplies. Every time you click ‘Discover’ the table of discovered power supplies will be emptied and then repopulated with the power supplies on the chosen network interface.
For more information on patching in Pharos Designer, see this page on our online help.
Screencast: Simulating Timelines with Audio
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011If you’re programming lighting that needs to be synchronised with an audio track then Pharos Designer has a great feature to let you simulate the two together by using Winamp as a timecode source.
This screencast is also available via our iTunes podcast.
Using Control Keys with the TPC
Thursday, December 1st, 2011Simply put, a control key is a string of characters that links an object in Interface Editor to a trigger in Designer. When you are creating an interface for the Touch Panel Controller, you can assign a control key to each item in Interface Editor. These items – buttons, sliders, colour pickers and keypads – can be given any control key that you wish. By default, the items are given a unique control key that relates to the type of item and the order that it was created in. For example, the first button from the top left of the first page created is assigned the key of ‘button001’. In smaller projects, you might want to rename these control keys to something that relates to what the button does, so it’s easy to keep track of what buttons you want to trigger with.
Property Editor
In this example, the buttons have captions which appear on the item, and we have given them a key that relates to their caption. You edit the key in the property editor, found on the right of the application window. Here, for the ‘Activate’ button, we have assigned the key ‘activate’ which will be very easy to assign when we come to setup triggers in Designer.
Once you have linked your Interface Editor project to a TPC in your Designer project, you can start creating triggers. Have a look at the controller properties section of the Designer online help for more information about linking Interface Editor projects to TPCs.
Trigger in Designer
The first thing to do when creating triggers for the TPC is to set the controller number to the relevant controller in your project. This populates the trigger parameter editors with control keys from your Interface Editor project. As you can see in the screenshot, when creating a TPC Button trigger, the control keys that we assigned to the buttons have been added to the drop down menu, making it simple to link your buttons to triggers.
For larger, more complex files, it’s a good idea to leave the control keys as their defaults. This enables you to use one trigger to respond to multiple items by capturing the number in the control key as a variable. You can do this using the standard variable capturing syntax used in Serial and Ethernet triggers, for example you would type ‘button<3d>’ into the button name box to match any button with a default control key, capturing the number as variable 1. You can then use this in an action or a script just as you would with any other variable.
Please have a look at our online help for more information on TPC triggering and on using variables in trigger actions.
Designer v1.9 now released
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011Pharos Designer version 1.9 is now available. This release is includes support for our two new controllers – the Touch Panel Controller and the LPC 4.
What’s New in v1.9
- Support for new LPC 4
- Support for new Touch Panel Controller (TPC)
- TPC Button trigger
- TPC Slider Move trigger
- TPC Colour Change trigger
- TPC Keypad Code trigger
- TPC Page Change trigger
- Temperature trigger
- Set TPC Control Value action
- Set TPC Control State action
- Set TPC Control Caption action
- Set TPC Page action
- Disable TPC action
- Lock TPC action
- Set Screen Brightness action
- Associate Interface Editor file
- Set default screen brightness & inactive level
- Set screen Inactive and Off timeouts
- Set auto screen brightness for ambient light adjustment
- Wake screen on proximity detection setting
- Patch information displayed when hovering over fixture
- sACN output supported by all lighting controllers
- Flexible eDMX patch for TPC and LPC 1/2/4, just like the LPC X
- LPC 1 allows TPC to output local DMX via its second DMX output interface (DMX proxy)
- Dual IP addressing for TPC and LPC 1/2/4, separating output protocols from management traffic
- Intensity trigger actions support fade and delay times
- New Timeline Released trigger
- New Toggle Timeline action
- New Colour Fade group preset
- Enhanced flicker effect
- New Lua script functions to change timecode sources
We would very much welcome your comments and feedback as always. Please get in touch with us at support@pharoscontrols.com.
We hope you enjoy what Designer version 1.9 has to offer you.
Happy programming!
Flagging up Flags
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011Flags are an often underutilised feature in the Pharos Designer software. However, they are very useful, as they allow triggers to be placed in a timeline.
Timeline with Flags
This image shows a timeline called ‘Media On’ that plays back video content on a matrix. As you can see, flags have been placed at 5 second intervals along the timeline.
Flag Triggers
The flag triggers shown here relate to the flags on the timeline above. These triggers start a short timeline that creates an impactful, flashing lighting effect using a timeline called ‘Spike’. More interestingly, they also close an output contact on a Pharos RIO 08.
Flag Trigger Setup
Contact closures can be used to activate relays, which in this example fire pyrotechnic devices. Setting up flags as triggers is simple: just add a trigger with Flag set as the trigger type and change the parameters to correspond to the relevant flag. You can then add actions just like you would with any other trigger.
For more information on triggers, see this page in our online help.
Fine-tuning a Timeline Element
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011When adjusting the length of a timeline element, the default behaviour is for elements to snap to the nearest tenth of a second. Sometimes, you may need to be more specific than this.
Precise adjust of timeline element
In this example, we have a media clip that we want to last for 18.36 seconds. A quick way to fine-tune the duration of this element is to hold down Shift whilst dragging the end handles which allows you to adjust the timing to the nearest hundredth of a second.
This method also works for moving an element on a timeline, although you often want an element to snap to the end of another element, in which case simply hold down Control whilst dragging.
For other handy keyboard shortcuts, see this page in our online help.
Note that the start and end times of an element can also be set precisely by entering the values directly in the Timing section of the element properties, shown on the right of the screen.
Designer public beta available
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011For those who would like a sneak-peek at some new software, Pharos is making a beta version of the forthcoming Designer v1.9 available for download and evaluation. This software will include support for the two new controllers – the Touch Panel Controller and the LPC 4 as well as many new features, including:
- Flexible eDMX patch for TPC and LPC 1/2/4, just like the LPC X
- Dual IP addressing for TPC and LPC 1/2/4, separating output protocols from management traffic
- LPC 1 allows TPC to output local DMX via its second DMX output interface (DMX proxy)
- sACN output supported by all Lighting Controllers
- Patch information displayed when hovering over fixture
- Intensity trigger actions support fade and delay times
- New Timeline Released trigger
- New Toggle Timeline action
- New triggers and actions for TPC
- New Lua script functions to change timecode sources
- Enhanced flicker effect
Also available for evaluation is a beta version of the new Interface Editor. This application allows you to build themed user interfaces for the TPC, creating and organising multiple pages of buttons, sliders and colour pickers.
Beta software is for evaluation only – please do not use this software for any active projects without first consulting us. Please ensure you have backed up any project files that you are using with release software as you will not be able to open them in v1.8 after saving them in v1.9 beta. If you discover a bug, please email support with details of your computer, the project files and instructions to help us reproduce the problem.
As always we welcome your feedback and comments, and please get in touch if you have any questions.
Pharos Designer v1.8 now released
Friday, January 7th, 2011Pharos Designer software version 1.8 is now available. This release is primarily intended for the revised LPC with support for its new features, such as Analog Input triggers and the onboard DMX-in option. This release also includes support for the forthcoming RIO Audio device.
What’s New in v1.8
- Support for revised LPC hardware
- Multi-function serial port: RS232/RS485 (including DMX in)
- Multi-function digital/analog inputs
- Explicit universe count selection for LPC X and LPC
- Modules tab is now called Interfaces in Network view
- Support for new remote device: RIO A
- Remote audio triggering from up to 30 frequency bands per stereo channel
- Remote timecode input
- Remote MIDI triggering and MIDI timecode input
- New Analog Input trigger (for the revised LPC hardware)
- New Analog Input condition (for the revised LPC hardware)
- New RIO Audio Input trigger
- New RIO MIDI Input trigger
- New RIO MIDI Output action
- New Disable RIO Audio Input action
- New RIO Analog Input condition
- New RIO Digital Word condition
- RIO Analog Input trigger can now fire on ‘Any’ input of ‘Any’ RIO
- Fixture comments exported/imported to/from CSV files
We would very much welcome your comments and feedback as always. Please get in touch with us at support@pharoscontrols.com.
We hope you enjoy what Designer version 1.8 has to offer you.
Happy programming!
Pharos Designer v1.7 now released
Thursday, September 30th, 2010Pharos Designer software version 1.7 is now available. This release includes support for 64 bit operating systems and Windows 7 and introduces discovery tools for KiNet and RDM. Designer v1.7 also integrates with our new Installation Manager software.
- RDM discovery: LPCs can now discover, identify and address RDM-capable fixtures. You’ll find the RDM configuration tool in the Patch tab.
- KiNet discovery: Designer can now discover and associate KiNet power supplies, streamlining KiNet setup for large installations.
- Improved accuracy for LPC X clock: now accurate to one part per million, in line with the LPC 1 and 2 clocks.
- Colour temperature support: all presets on the timeline now allow a colour temperature to be programmed. Fixtures with colour temperature channels and hot and cold channels are now supported.
- DMX-in via Serial Port for AVC: yes, the AVC has a new DMX-in option! You can now select a new mode of operation for the AVC’s serial port and use the connection for DMX triggering. We think this opens up great opportunities for the AVC – particularly in theatrical applications when the lighting desk is cueing projection content provided by the AVC.
- AVC brightness master: new action allowing mastering of video intensity from incoming realtime variables, such as DMX-in levels.
- Offset function for 2D presets – for all those 3D array projects out there!
- Timeline reports include hold/loop status.
- Import fixture plan improved with additional new fields, including rotation angle & fixture dimensions.
- Export fixture plan tool.
- Saving in new versions prompts to archive in previous version.
- XML controller status and feedback for custom web pages via HTTP requests.
A couple of housekeeping points to note:
- AVC Firmware: please note that to upgrade an AVC to v1.7 you must run the AVC firmware upgrade tool. This is expected to be a one-off, one-way process; restoring an AVC to version 1.6 firmware is not straightforward. Please only upgrade your AVC to version 1.7 if you are certain it will not be required immediately for any version 1.6 installations. Please contact support@pharoscontrols.com for more details.
- Mac OSX for PowerPC: from now on, we will be making separate installers for Intel and PowerPC Mac users.
- As always, please ensure you have archived any active v1.6 projects and please remember to reinstall v1.6 to edit or work with them.
We would very much welcome your comments and feedback as always. Please get in touch with us at support@pharoscontrols.com.
We hope you enjoy what Designer version 1.7 has to offer you.
Happy programming!
