Davidmk

See Special Playback Functions in the manual. Never tried it but the manual does say "there’s nothing special or different about the Master Playback compared to the other playbacks" You should also be able to set it up as an inhibit master if there are channels (like your house lights) that you don't want it to control.

I generally set lease time to the maximum available. If there's a down side to this (in the context of a lighting network), then someone please tell me because I haven't found it for myself yet.

If you aren't using your second universe and if your splitters work when not cascaded then you could send U1 on both outputs, one to each splitter.

That's a point. I'll try and make the desk is connected to power before anything else. I don't think I had a fixed order, can't remember, its been so long

Everything Edward says is, of course, correct. I would add another reason which is that many dimmers remember their last state until they get a new DMX signal. From this it follows that the last state on the desk should be all intensities to zero with the desk turned off last. That said, in our venue, the main power switches for the dimmers are in the dimmer room, nearer the stage door than the desk position (I pass it on the way in while dragging my desk behind me) so I turn them on first, then its the desk, power to the DMX fixtures and lamp-on to the moving heads (when I'm ready to use them). Been doing it that way for 20yrs, along with the other lampies with no issues (and still on the original dimmers). While the above is best some justifiable variations might be possible depending on the rig.

Oops, sorry. Got carried away there

Check out Cue Triggers in the manual here

If you want to know the colour values of a fixture or the palette they come from then there's always the parameter information on the output window... See the manual at https://zero88.com/manuals/zeros/desktops-windows/output-window if you think that might help.

That's brilliant. I'd look at doing something similar except I regularly have to carry my desk up a spiral staircase so I have to keep it down to something I can lift with one hand.

And that sticks OK? I'm impressed! Have you got a link to the film you used?

Absolutely!!!

Ah, now I've been trying OHP film with the buttons and labels printed onto it with a cut out plastic frame underneath. It works but I think I need a precision cut frame. I print the OHP in reverse and then turn it over so the ink is protected - especially useful if I wanted to put traditional LX tape labels on top and I attach it to the frame (and the frame to the Launch) with double sided tape. I'm happy with that part of it. In trying to make the frame a precise match I printed the button layout onto an A4 label and stuck that to my sheet of 1.5mm plastic but my cutting out with a Stanley knife left a lot to be desired. I only cut out the outside, not the little bits in between the buttons, but it was still too rough and I snapped the frame in one place. It worked though - I was afraid that pressing a button might trigger one of the adjacent buttons but that didn't seem to be a problem so the principle seems sound. I have been toying with buying a cnc cutter as it could open up some possibilities in other projects. Making frames in a precise and repeatable way may just be the excuse I need and if it works out I'll be able to make as many as I want with very little effort.

On a parallel note... If you must put a date in a file name then using international standard date format (year month day) will keep your versions in order (when sorted by file name). So rather than "morely dance sept 2020 r1" call your file "morely dance 2020 09 r1" Just a suggestion of course.

Thanks Edward.

A number of people have had similar issues, take a look in this topic - in particular to Edward-88 's post of 24th September.

I think it's more a matter of not having a choice, those controllers with buttons you can't use because they only send CCs. Enabling both CCs and notes would mean you could fire a given pb with either the note or CC with the equivalent value. You'd still only get the first 128 playbacks maximum. (From here I assume you have chosen to use as many midi controls as possible, references to 128 would, of course, be less if you only have a few controls on your chosen midi device.) Yes, we do. It still means reserving the first 128 playbacks, mostly doing nothing themselves, just redirecting to macros to do things with other playbacks. It is worth noting that you don't actually have to have a recorded macro if all you want to do is trigger a cue in another playback - there's syntax you can type into the advanced option of the cues macro setup. I discovered this too late but, actually, I quite like having a recorded macro so I've kept it that way. Firing the 1st 128 macros direct from midi removes a step from the setup along with the related "opportunity" to call the wrong one. It frees up those 128 playbacks (nearly half of them) returning the flexibility to run from whichever page you want and pushes all your midi stuff into the background where you are less likely to record over it or delete it. Finally, and this is an obsession born from 45 years of programming computers, it's just right - it is the obvious thing that should be triggered by an external input because it effectively makes that input do whatever you want it to. Finally... If you could choose your own start point for notes and CCs then you could have pbs 1 to 128 controlled by notes and 129 to 256 controlled by CCs (except you couldn't because there's only 240 pbs but you get the idea).

Thanks Edward. Glad to hear you do get time off, enjoy

That ought be enough to shut all of us up on the midi front, what are the odds it could happen?

One thing to remember is that even you have midi notes and/or CC assigned to playbacks you can still operate them through the desk so, while the number of controls you can use through midi is limited by the midi specification, which are actually controlled by midi depends on which notes/CCs you choose to send. I think! Mapping midi notes to macros would let you trigger any 127 (or 128) things. I presume "things" could be cues, playback, buttons or whatever you can put together a macro for (e.g. something silly like select group, apply position & beam pallettes and select colour with the macro then use colour picker to pick a range of colours manually) if that is what takes your fancy. Am I right Edward?

Thanks

Well, if there are no plans perhaps I could put some ideas out there Backwards compatibility. As we can see from this topic people have invested time and money in making the current facilities work for them. That said, maybe you could fiddle with the code around "first note" so that, while still being able to map note 0 to pb 1 you could map it or note 1 to any starting point. Could you borrow from the remote switches functionality and make midi notes work like a much bigger set of remotes? That would have a significant on the size of the setup screen so it might not fly but perhaps you could allow notes to execute macros direct rather than having to use pbs & cues to execute them. Notice I'm not mentioning CC, TimeCode, show control or any other midi controls. The more reasonably priced midi surfaces are predominately note based so I haven't really looked into them. Buttons are badly neglected with no button wing. Let's face it, if there was a button wing we might not even be having this conversation. In it's absence maybe you could allow notes to trigger buttons. The community would absolutely love USB midi, think how often that comes up in the forum. I've had a long career in software so I have tried to see how existing functionality could be extended, you have code that recognises incoming midi which could, perhaps, trigger existing code for remote switches and buttons. I do recognise that it isn't that simple and you cannot risk anything that would impact performance of the rest of the code but it must be worth a look. I would have loved that when I first got my desk, I used to use it with QLC+, but there's something about a physical control that gives you more confidence when busking so now I have midi working and I have made the investment in midi hardware I am less bothered. I could see the attraction for others using their existing tablets and if faders could actually be used to fade pb's then I might dabble with it myself.

I've kept the first 6 pages for midi control and moved my flexible control to pages 7 & 8 so I can use notes direct, can't say I've noticed velocity making any difference to fade times.

Yep, bought a Swan FLX+wing case, made a dog box, re-arranged the foam quite a bit, added a handle on one end and wheels on the other. I described the tablet set up in some detail in the FLX topic "Tablette wifi ou par cable?". I'm sure there must be a better way to link to it but I don't know it.

I expect it would, right now however I'm using a wired one with a mouse through a KVM because I also have a laptop running Capture. The KVM didn't seem to like the desk so I have another keyboard for that. Living room table, lock down lighting

I have an FLX (with monitor port) but I've dumped my monitor in favour of a tablet. Being smaller is easier to carry to a gig and it works just as well. Android is fine, I've tried that. iPad is available but I've settled on a re-furbished Windows tablet with a docking station so I can use wired network (with or without a router) and I can run other software (like the fixture definition editor) without carrying a laptop. I can also use a mouse if I want, saves reaching over the desk to touch the screen.