Virtual Console setup - group control

[projektil]

I´m building a virtual console and need some help for group control.

Let´s say there is 4 moving heads in 4 corners of a room. What would be nice is having multiple sliders that control the same parameter, for example dimmer.

slider A controls all 4 devices
slider B controls 1+2, slider C controls 3+4
slider D = 1+3. E = 2+4
slider F = 1+4, G = 2+3

Also, it would be nice to have clones of those sliders that invert part of the channels, so you still control let´s say all four devices, but two of them get inverted values:

slider A1 = group of 4
slider A2 = group of 4, but 1+2 get values 0-255 while 3+4 get values 255-0
slider A3 = group of 4, but 1+3 get values 0-255, while 2+4 get values 255-0
slider B1 as above etc.

Essentially, I´m looking for a way to have the same options for slider setup that are given for the xy pads: Select multiple values and have them inverted as needed (or even individually range limited). Why not use an xy pad ? Because it eats more space on the desk. Also because handling more than 4 devices in groups of 2 can´t be done with just xy - you would need additional axis.

This would also reduce the number of data that needs to be transmitted when remote controlling the console via MIDI (which is the next thing I will try)

Any ideas how to do this ?

[Chris De Rock]

for the first Question: Just put your Sliter to "Level Mode" and select your Dimmer Channels

[RogerI]

Did you ever come right? If so please post the solution here as we want to do something similar.

[siegmund]

If you are not afraid of getting a little more complicated, this should be possible with the loopback plugin.

[projektil]

Sorry for the late reply !

I ran into a bug in the stable version and now that this is solved I will continue setting things up.

Depending on what you need to control, here is what I currently got (using latest test version QLC+_4.11.0.19.exe) :

1. Controlling any group of devices (1234, 12xx, 1xx4, x23x etc) is easy as long as values are not mangled, simply assign multiple channels from the level tab of a slider.

2. XY-Pads could do the trick, even sqeezing them if only one axis is needed will be a workaround for VC layout. However, only a certain selection of channels is available for XY-Pad assignment. In my scanner setup for example, this works for position, but not for dimmer. So having one slider that goes 0-255 for dimmer 12xx but 255-0 for dimmers xx34 can´t be done that way. But at least for position it works.

Haven´t checked the loopback plugin, I would assume it´s similar to loopMIDI and other stuff, creating a virtual port that you send to, then get things back and mangle them further - just in DMX and not MIDI ?

To be honest I would prefer simply adding the same options we got for xy pads to the fader level tab, ie be able to invert, range limit etc. Maybe even better: have the modifiers from device setup enabled on the VC faders per device as well, in that way, real wild stuff would be possible.

Should we submit a feature request ?

[siegmund]

Haven´t checked the loopback plugin, I would assume it´s similar to loopMIDI and other stuff, creating a virtual port that you send to, then get things back and mangle them further - just in DMX and not MIDI?

I don't know loopMIDI but I assume it's the same. I really recommend you to have a look at it. Although it seems a bit complex at the first glance it is a very powerful feature which can help you with a lot of things.

To be honest I would prefer simply adding the same options we got for xy pads to the fader level tab, ie be able to invert, range limit etc.

Inverting sliders movement is already possible - with loopback you then have inverted sliders. Also range limit is already available for level sliders.

Maybe even better: have the modifiers from device setup enabled on the VC faders per device as well, in that way, real wild stuff would be possible.

Real wild stuff IS already possible Jokes aside - enabling this would be very complicated to implement and very hard to manage as operator when something goes wrong.

[projektil]

Hey, you seem to know the code

Is enabling ALL channels (as a selectable option probably) for XY pads something that could be easily done ? Like: Just skip the routine where out of the 17 channels a device has just 2 are selected ?

[siegmund]

Hey, you seem to know the code

I would not say that - let's agree on "I am programming myself and know a very small part of QLC+ code"

Is enabling ALL channels (as a selectable option probably) for XY pads something that could be easily done ? Like: Just skip the routine where out of the 17 channels a device has just 2 are selected ?

Sorry but I have no idea - I don't know this sections and since I didn't already worked with the xy pad I'm not fully sure if I get what you want to do.

[projektil]

Hehe, ok understood.

So a bit more use case of what I mean:

The xy pads offer a way to limit and invert the fader to value mapping, kind of a basic modifier and this setting can be changed per device and per channel (!).

So for the four scanners I use, I created a few xy pads, every xy pad controls all four scanners, the difference is in the selection of inversions:

XY Pad A : scanner 1-4, no inversion
XY Pad B : scanner 1-4 X normal, 1+2 Y inverted 3+4 Y normal
XY Pad C : scanner 1-4 X normal, 1+4 Y inverted, 2+3 Y normal
etc.

This allow me to control all 4 scanners at once, but give nice patterns where things run parallel or mirrored. I use this to create scenes which are then recalled at a later stage.

It would be nice to do this with dimmer as well, or maybe color, but those channels are not available for Pads. And using pads is a workaround in the first place for those things, it would make way more sense to have the same selection for faders:

Fader A : scanner 1-4 dimmer normal
Fader B : Scanner 1+2 dimmer normal, 3+4 dimmer inverted
Fader C : Scanner 1+4 dimmer normal, 2+3 inverted
etc.

Hopefully that is a better illustration. Will be offline for a while, so talk to you later

[siegmund]

Okay, I got a bit more insight in what you want to do. Still I think that this is already possible with loopback. I tried to implement fader A+b in the attachment, have a look at it maybe it is useful to you.