Monitor, manage and maintain the luminaires in your project from anywhere in the world with Pharos Cloud. With fixture status monitoring, Pharos Cloud delivers real-time visibility and notifications for your installation’s fixtures including their connectivity and configuration, as well as tools for adding new fixtures and replacing missing fixtures – all without ever travelling to site. Learn more about the new functionality in this news article.
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Prerequisites
Fixture status monitoring is available in Pharos Cloud for LPC family controllers running Pharos Designer 2.16.3 and later, and the forthcoming Pharos Express 2.1.2 and later.
Fixture status monitoring uses remote device management (RDM) to communicate with luminaires. The fixtures in your project must support RDM in order for Cloud to monitor their status. Consult the manufacturer’s documentation to confirm whether your fixtures support RDM.
RDM unique identifiers (UIDs) must be set in your project file for Pharos Cloud to correctly identify your fixtures. UIDs are automatically added to fixtures added to a project using RDM discovery, and can also be added manually in a fixture’s properties. For more information, consult the relevant Help documentation for Pharos Designer or Pharos Express systems.
Monitor Fixture Status
In Pharos Cloud, navigate to a Site and select the Fixtures tab to see a fixture status overview for the Site as a whole, as well as a summary for each Device in the Site. Click Refresh All to perform an RDM poll and update fixture status.
Select a Device to view the status of its connected fixtures in more detail. This page can also be reached by navigating to the Fixtures tab in the Device view.
The Fixtures tab at a Device level presents a variety of options including:
Unassigned Devices
This section appears when a poll discovers a device that isn’t assigned to the project. From here, click Options to start/stop identifying the device, add the unassigned device to an existing fixture, or use it to replace a missing device (see below).
RDM Fixtures Only
By default, this table shows all fixtures in the project. Use this checkbox to toggle visibility of fixtures in the project that don’t have an RDM UID configured, filtering the list to show only fixtures with status information.
Search
Use the search field to filter the list of fixtures by their Name according to your search term.
Refresh All
Clicking this button initiates a full status refresh on the selected device, polling RDM devices to update the status of connected fixtures. This process can take a few moments, depending on the number of fixtures in your project. You can also individually refresh the status of a specified fixture in the project – see Fixture Detail below.
Notifications
Use this toggle to set whether changes to an individual fixture’s status should generate notifications. When disabled, this toggle prevents events generated by the corresponding fixture from being included in fixture status notifications (see below).
Devices
Expand a fixture’s row (using the arrow on the left hand side of the table) to see a list of RDM devices associated with that fixture. A new table is revealed showing, for each device:
- ID – the RDM UID of the selected device
- Patch – the selected device’s patch, including protocol and address
- Status – the last known status of the selected device
- Updated At – the timestamp of the last poll which updated the selected device
- Mode – the mode in which the device is currently operating (supports modification)
- Start Address – the device’s current DMX start address (supports modification)
- Curve – the device’s dimming curve property (supports modification)
- Options – click this menu to reveal options depending on the device’s status (see below)
Device Options
From the Devices view, click ‘Options’ to reveal different options presented according to the status of the device.
An online device presents tools to identify a device, allowing you to remotely initiate RDM identification.
When offline, the device’s Options menu presents a Replace option. Clicking Replace opens device replacement (see below) with the current fixture automatically selected, allowing you to quickly swap out faulty devices without uploading a new project file.
Replace a Missing Device
It’s possible to replace a missing or faulty device in Pharos Cloud. Once a replacement device is connected, Pharos Cloud can be used to configure the replacement fixture’s properties and update existing programming to include the new fixture.
Ensure a replacement device is connected
First, arrange for a replacement device to be connected to the system. This might involve instructing a local engineer to attend the site and connect a replacement fixture. Once installed and connected, there is no on-site commissioning required – it’s possible to set the replacement fixture’s mode, specify a start address and assign the fixture to the project remotely via Pharos Cloud.
Peform a Fixture Status Refresh
From Pharos Cloud, click Refresh All to initiate a full status refresh. The replacement device connected in step 1 will now appear under Unassigned Devices.
Start the Device Replacement Tool
From Pharos Cloud, navigate to the relevant device’s Fixtures page and start device replacement using one of the two following methods.
If the device to be replaced is already showing as Offline, use option 2.
Option 1: Via Unassigned Devices
Option 2: Via Device Options
Click Unassigned Devices at the top of the page to view devices discovered at the last status refresh which are not associated with the project. The newly connected replacement fixture will appear here.
From Options, click Replace device to open the device replacement tool.
From here, under step 1, select the missing or faulty device that is to be replaced.
If the device to be replaced is showing as offline, it can be replaced directly from the Options menu under Devices. Otherwise, follow the steps in option 1.
Locate the fixture to be replaced and click the arrow on the left hand side of the row to expand the row and show its devices.
Find the device you wish to replace and click Options > Replace to open the device replacement tool with the device to be replaced (step 1) automatically selected.
After following the steps in either option 1 or 2 above, you will be presented with the device replacement tool with step 1 (the device to replace) completed.
The second step is to set incoming device parameters. These are the settings that will be applied to the new, replacement, device. Configurable options here include Mode, Start Address and Curve. Set these parameters as required by your installation.
In step 3, you will be presented with a summary of the changes to be executed. Review these carefully before clicking Commit to apply your changes.
Schedule Status Refreshes
In order to receive up-to-date fixture status information, you may want to consider scheduling regular status refreshes. These are configured in your project file, meaning the steps differ for Designer and Express systems.
Scheduling Status Refreshes in Designer
In Designer, create a new Real Time trigger with a Start RDM Poll action.
Configure the Date Time Mask Editor to fire at the frequency required. For example, the configuration below will fire at 3am every Wednesday morning.
Whenever the controller completes an RDM Poll, the poll results are immediately published to Pharos Cloud and visible in the Fixtures tab at site and device levels.
Scheduling Status Refreshes in Express
In Express, navigate to Main Menu > Edit Project Properties… > RDM Polling.
From here, choose the desired poll frequency and click Commit to save your changes.
Whenever the controller completes an RDM Poll, the poll results are immediately published to Pharos Cloud and visible in the Fixtures tab at site and device levels.
Receive Notifications for Fixture Status Changes
Pharos Cloud doesn’t just let you monitor fixture status, it can notify you of changes too. This is particularly beneficial for projects where a schedule has been configured and RDM Polls are automatically carried out on a regular basis. When Pharos Cloud receives the results of an RDM Poll, these are processed and checked for changes since the last known status. Notifications are then generated according to the chosen configuration.
Configure Notifications in Cloud
From Pharos Cloud, navigate to your Site and open the Settings tab. From here, scroll down to Notifications and click to expand the Fixture Status section.
From here, Pharos Cloud presents powerful granular notification control by site, device, fixture status and notification frequency. For example, you can choose to receive instant notifications for offline fixtures on all devices, but just a weekly summary of online fixtures.
Using the configuration shown above, the next time an RDM Poll identifies an offline device, an email notification will be triggered immediately:
Click here to learn more about Pharos Cloud, or visit the Cloud Support pages for more information.
