E1.31 multicast addresses

The issues found when using the Input/Output Manager panel
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sparkyb
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2015 11:53 pm
Real Name: Ben Buchwald

Right now when you set an E1.31 output to multicast, it only lets you edit the last octet of the multicast address. This is problematic in two ways. The E1.31 multicast address is supposed to match the universe number. By only allowing editing of the last octet, this limits QLC+ to using only the first 255 E1.31 universes, and not universes 256-63999. The 2nd octet should also be editable and only 239.255.x.x should be fixed. But the other issue is that it always defaults to 239.255.0.1 even if I edit the universe number, so if I want to make it match (which it should or most devices won't get the data), I have to type the universe number twice. The workaround to the first issue is that if you uncheck multicast you can still type a multicast group address as the unicast address and it still works (I tested this). Obviously this is even less ideal than just typing the universe number twice though. But my suggestion is, that with multicast checked, no part of the multicast address should be editable and it should be calculated from the universe number (correctly supporting all 64,000 universes). If you really wanted to send to a multicast IP that doesn't match the universe number you can always uncheck the multicast check box and enter the address as in the current workaround, although needing to do this should be extremely rare. This workaround wouldn't work for inputs, but I'm not sure non-standard multicast groups are ever needed anyway.
sparkyb
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2015 11:53 pm
Real Name: Ben Buchwald

I actually decided to see if I could fix this myself since I've spent a lot of time reading the QLC+ code but had yet to try to actually build it myself. Turned out to not be that difficult to fix. I submitted a pull request.
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