RGB-Matrix: dimmer control not working

[dani105]

Hi guys,


I used to do a lot of shows with QLC in 2015 and I am now revisiting my old showfile, because I will do a show in three weeks again with it.
I am trying to get it running in 4.10.5b.
Of course I did expect that things changed over this long time and the file might be totally broken, but I am not sure if i discovered an issue here:

I have RGB fixtures with RGB Matrices.
These now have a field at the bottom right that says "dimmer control".
I had a look at the documentation and that states "When enabled, dimmer channel of include fixtures will be set to 100% when the matrix is running. Uncheck if you want independent intensity control."
So when I set it to on, all the dimmers in the matrix are on all the time.

Now comes the problem: When I set it to off, then I expect it to switch the dimmer off and on with the chase.
At least, that was the behaviour in the past, the dimmer "moved" with the pixels that are on.
But now it stays off all the time, and for me that is a problem.
Is this intended? I would understand "independent intensity controll" that way, that the RGB matrix still switches the dimmer value, but independently with each step.
If I use non-RGB fixtures (dimmers) they get switched correctly.


My showfile is depending heavily on the fact, that the dimmers get switched on/off with the function.
I tried to find a workaround but nothing works.
Help would be greatly appreciated!


Best regards and thanks in advance for your hard work,
Daniel

[janosvitok]

Hi,

yes,this is new behavior. I will describe the intentions later,I'm now on phone. Cany you explain your use case in more detail? Maybe attach your or example workspace?

[dani105]

Hi,

oh no...
I attached a sample workspace of how my show is programmed and here is an explanation:

I have color szenes and chasers.
What I did in the past was to set the color on the chasers to R=1,G=1,B=1, so the matrix would still run (But it sets Dimmer to 255 when the fixture comes on).
Then I can select the colors from separate buttons and have the option to combine every color with every chaser.

I know that this is possible with the animation widget on the live panel, but:
Besides these I also have many scenes for "flashes" with the RGB fixtures. E.g. left flash, right flash, even flash, odd flash etc.
These are all mapped to my keyboard and I use them in the show, whenever I want to tap something in an uneven rythm (RGB matrices have a speed tap).
Now I want these to use the current color scene that is currently active for the flash, but with the chaser being off.
So that my flash always is in the current color of the song and I do not have to program colors into the flashes.

If I used the animation widget, I could not do these color flashes...
If I set the color szene for the flash, it overrides the chaser because the chaser uses the color for it's movement.


I hope you can understand.
Maybe a third mode where the dimmer is moving up and down with the chase (like before) could be introduced?

Best regards and thanks for your help!

[DESIGNFactory]

tried a workaround, matrix mask mode, solo frame for flash
hope it works, check it out
cheers

[dani105]

Hi,

thank you very much fur the suggestion.
This is far better than I was able to achieve with the current version.

But this is still not a perfect solution for me, because of the following:
I sometimes stop the chaser for blackout, but then I have full intensity and have to bring the fader down as well, so it takes too long I think.
And then the flashing does not activate on every fixture, when the chaser is running again.
It just flashes, where the chase currently is to 100%, because of the masking mode.
The flash is supposed to set the dimmer to 100% regarding of chase playing/ not playing or the submaster of the chase... :/

To me it seems too much to think about in comparison to the old behaviour in terms of flashes and other stuff that might be running along with a rgb matrix.

[janosvitok]

I've changed the behavior: now dimmers are set to full only when the color is not black (#000000). For black color they are set to 0.
Dimmers that do not control RGB or other dimmers (i.e. plain dimmer channels fo par cans) are set to lightness of the color.

Get a git build to test.

[dani105]

Thanks a lot, much appreciated!

I will checkout master this evening and try to run a build, if I find the time.
If not, I will try Sunday, since I will be away from this evening on.

[dani105]

I just built and tested with the latest commit - seems to work just fine.
Also everything else that I tested in combination with the matrices seems to be still working, I think nothing got broken through the change.

In my opinion the behaviour is suitable for everyone this way:
If you want to program like I did (matrix just for dimmer), you can do it.
If you need the dimmer to be off, you can disable "Dimmer control".
And if you want the dimmer on full always, you can make a separate scene with dimmer full.
In a collection you can start them together, so just in this case the programming would be a little more complicated.

If this makes its way into the next release I would be more than happy.