Cant connect to LEDs in My Auditorium, but I can connect to the Incandescents

[PBMS]

Hi. This is my first post as I am new to Q Light. I'm a drama teacher with two sets of lights, one in my classroom (6 LEDs) and the other in the auditorium with numerous incandescents and Leds. In my classroom I am able to control all the LEDS and take full advantage of this amazing program, but when I connect to the dmx controller in the auditorium I can only get the incandescent lights to respond in Q Light. I have added the LED fixtures using the drop down menu and choosing the make and model, but they don't seem to connect. When I connect the control back in to my old light board all fixtures are working. Am I doing something wrong?

[mcallegari]

[moderator] moved to usage questions

Perhaps you could have a look at the video tutorials to start
https://www.qlcplus.org/tutorials.html

[GGGss]

debugging 1-o-1
Installed desk is controlling the lights...
well connect QLC+ with an input to that line and have a look what channels get values...
(or look at the fixtures themselves and look for base address and mode)

[PBMS]

[moderator] moved to usage questions

Perhaps you could have a look at the video tutorials to start
https://www.qlcplus.org/tutorials.html

Hi. I watched all the videos, some more than once, before posting here. Just don't know what to do next. Everything is working great except one group of lights. Some of the same type fixtures are recognized and function perfectly in my classroom but not in the auditorium. I'm sure there's something I'm not doing. In the past I've always programmed cues directly into the board, and I've only just now started to use an outside program. The potential improvement to our lighting design is extraordinary if I can figure this out. Thanks for the help.

[PBMS]

debugging 1-o-1
Installed desk is controlling the lights...
well connect QLC+ with an input to that line and have a look what channels get values...
(or look at the fixtures themselves and look for base address and mode)

Hi, are you suggesting I run a line from my laptop to an input on the board? When I use QLC+ the board is disconnected and I am connected directly from my laptop to the system. This is all new to me so I'm a bit fuzzy on some of this.
Thanks for the help.

[GGGss]

The other way around - You'll have your laptop in between the daisy chain of your desks output.
(This assumes of course that you possess a DMX interface with an input.)
You use the desk as normal and sniff the values coming from it inside QLC+ (monitor function)
(Ideally you try to find the last fixtures in the daisy chain and connect there...

[edogawa]

Are your auditorium LEDs on the same universe as the incandescents? It's quite common for venues and hardware desks to utilize more than one DMX line(universe)... with a bunch of multichannel devices like LED spots/washes/bars, moving lights, scanners etc. you can easily arrive at 512 channels (which is the max channel count for a single universe). Therefore it makes much sense to e.g. put the dimmers on one line and daisy-chain all the LEDs on a second one.

To find out you'll have to examine your auditorium's DMX topology/cabling and/or hardware light board configuration, look at the channel/fixture patch and see if it has more than one DMX output. Different boards may vary pretty much in how they organize and name things internally.

Also you can inspect the LED fixture menues to see their respective DMX addresses - if these numbers match any of your incandescent dimmer addresses that indicates seperate universes as well...

[PBMS]

Are your auditorium LEDs on the same universe as the incandescents? It's quite common for venues and hardware desks to utilize more than one DMX line(universe)... with a bunch of multichannel devices like LED spots/washes/bars, moving lights, scanners etc. you can easily arrive at 512 channels (which is the max channel count for a single universe). Therefore it makes much sense to e.g. put the dimmers on one line and daisy-chain all the LEDs on a second one.

To find out you'll have to examine your auditorium's DMX topology/cabling and/or hardware light board configuration, look at the channel/fixture patch and see if it has more than one DMX output. Different boards may vary pretty much in how they organize and name things internally.

Also you can inspect the LED fixture menues to see their respective DMX addresses - if these numbers match any of your incandescent dimmer addresses that indicates seperate universes as well...

Hi. Thanks thanks for the help. I'll Check on that tomorrow.

[PBMS]

The other way around - You'll have your laptop in between the daisy chain of your desks output.
(This assumes of course that you possess a DMX interface with an input.)
You use the desk as normal and sniff the values coming from it inside QLC+ (monitor function)
(Ideally you try to find the last fixtures in the daisy chain and connect there...

Ok, think I got it. I'll try that when I get to school in the morning. Thanks again for your help.

[mlohrey]

Looks like you have received much advice already but I will add my thoughts.

I work in a school with a couple of small lighting systems. I would be surprised if you have a desk cable of running multiple DMX universes. But I could be wrong. You may have the budget

Do you know the DMX addresses of the LEDs in the Auditorium? You have to make sure that the addresses that they have in real life match the ones you have allocated in QLC+.

If the real fixture addresses match those in QLC+, all you need to do is unplug the output from the desk and connect it to the output from QLC+ on your computer.

Oh, and one more hint, simple desk is basically a bunch of sliders for each address in the universe. Even if you don't add any fixtures to QLC+ it will allow you to send DMX to each address on your lighting network. This can be very handy for trouble shooting.

Cheers

Mark

[PBMS]

Hi, Thanks. That was a big help!

[edogawa]

I'm curious, what was the issue in the end?