Universal fixture control widget

[msikorsk]

Hi,
First of all, congratulations to Massimo Callegari and all contributors, amazingly great job. QLC+ is simply great.

Lighting is my hobby and I’m not a professional user but I was working on many lighting control software, including professional solutions from Compulite (all series of Vector) and GrandMA. I’m lucky. My brother and my best friend are professional lighting producers. This gives me an easy access to many “toys” and newest equipment.
Sometimes we test new devices and my most common comment is… This is much easier to manage it with QLC+ . You should see their face. Especially when we try to learn something new on GrandMA.
Once again, GREAT JOB!

One question/suggestion.
When we use professional lighting control console and we want to set scenes we can easily select fixture or group of fixtures and set most of channels precisely with simple 4 physical encoders.
Depending group of parameters four wheels change their functionality (pan, tilt, dimmer, etc.). This is extremely useful. Especially in case of moving heads and scanners.

I would be happy to see a widget on VC letting assign fixtures and groups of fixtures and control them through input device. All the time, the same function with the same knob/encoder. Pan would go to first knob, tilt to second, dim on first knob of respective layer, etc.
This would limit number of items required on VC and make job easier for those moving from Compulite or MAlighting to QLC+.

Following video illustrates this functionality on GrandMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwINIy4aNnc

All best,

Marcin Sikorski

[Baer]

Would totaly support such a feature where a can select fixtures or groups from a dropdown list or something.

At least for the Movementpart you can workaround using XYPad with fixture group presets i think.
Never tried it (because of lack of time) but according to documentation this should fulfill your requierements for moving

[msikorsk]

Hi,
Yes, you are right. This is how I do it with pan/tilt. Is a kind of workaround but quite inflexible with fixture selection.
Requires many presets defined and takes a lot of VC space.

Marcin

[MidCity]

I'm not a moderator, but this might do better in the feature requests section.

I would like to bump this thread, so we can get it in the right place, and hopefully see this functionality in the future.

As far as I have figured out there is no way to do this with QLC+ in it's current state. There is some functionality for individual fixtures in a widget with cloned pages set for each unit. You could also make groups in pages of their own, but that gets clunky when programming. The ability to label pages might make that somewhat better.

This is something that is a base practice on all professional desks. ETC's EOS series is most notably the easiest to use in this respect. Though it is fairly easy on the MA and HOG as well.

[sbenejam]

Hi,
First of all, congratulations to Massimo Callegari and all contributors, amazingly great job. QLC+ is simply great.

Lighting is my hobby and I’m not a professional user but I was working on many lighting control software, including professional solutions from Compulite (all series of Vector) and GrandMA. I’m lucky. My brother and my best friend are professional lighting producers. This gives me an easy access to many “toys” and newest equipment.
Sometimes we test new devices and my most common comment is… This is much easier to manage it with QLC+ . You should see their face. Especially when we try to learn something new on GrandMA.
Once again, GREAT JOB!

One question/suggestion.
When we use professional lighting control console and we want to set scenes we can easily select fixture or group of fixtures and set most of channels precisely with simple 4 physical encoders.
Depending group of parameters four wheels change their functionality (pan, tilt, dimmer, etc.). This is extremely useful. Especially in case of moving heads and scanners.

I would be happy to see a widget on VC letting assign fixtures and groups of fixtures and control them through input device. All the time, the same function with the same knob/encoder. Pan would go to first knob, tilt to second, dim on first knob of respective layer, etc.
This would limit number of items required on VC and make job easier for those moving from Compulite or MAlighting to QLC+.

Following video illustrates this functionality on GrandMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwINIy4aNnc

All best,

Marcin Sikorski

Take a look to the Channel Group Editor. http://qlcplus.org/docs/channelsgroupeditor.html

[msikorsk]

Take a look to the Channel Group Editor. http://qlcplus.org/docs/channelsgroupeditor.html

Thanks,
but I see no option to make it with this function. I want to control individual fixtures with the same "knobs", just by selecting one or group.

Marcin

[Baer]

So finally most other issues on my own lighting desk are solved (reminds me on creating a thread for this) I'm planning to implement a virtual console widget to achieve something like that.

Idea is to have a widget containing some standard controls and a fixture selction list
If you select a fixture or a group of fixtures the channels of the fixtures are assinged to the controls dependent on channel type.
The controls will act in level mode using the new overwrite feature

For a first iteration i plan to use 1 Slider and 4 knobs containing Intensity 16bit Pan and 16bit Tilt, but could be extended easily later.

I'm also thinking about a possibilty of storing this into (existing scences)
Should be possible by using existing functions providing only the channels used by selected fixture/group.

To the developers:
Do you think something like that is possible within current software structure?
What are the pitfalls of qlc+ internals i should be aware of?
Do you think this might be of general interest?

[mcallegari]

To the developers:
Do you think something like that is possible within current software structure?

Yes, but I doubt I will accept a feature so big at this stage. Most likely this is something for QLC+ 5.

What are the pitfalls of qlc+ internals i should be aware of?

No idea.

Do you think this might be of general interest?

You should ask the majority (users), not the minority (developers)

[Baer]

Thank you for your answer Massimo,

So as you statet that such a major feature would probably not going to be accepted (which a can understand because of your effort on qlc+5) I will implement it only working for my own needs, with no active plan on sharing it
Makes also things much easier for me...

Neverthless it would be great to see such a feature in QLC+5 from the begining..

[FlorianSTV]

I would love such a feature! Are there any plans to add something like that in QLC+ 5?

[giacomo]

I wasn't aware of this old request and I had a similar idea for v5 but in the 2D View: what if the widgets could be controlled from an input device?
In 2D you can already select fixtures in several ways and it's the right place for recording or modify scenes, with a simple midi controller we would need to just make a selection and then control live all the main parameters.

[FlorianSTV]

This sounds like an even better idea, because it integrates better into already existing workflows. Additionally (but i.m.O. with less priority) a similar strategy for the simple desk would be nice (like showing pages with a controllable count of fader and then i could directly control channels instead of fixtures, if I desire to do so).

Additionally to faders, it would be nice to incorporate encoder wheels in this process. This way, I don't have to worry about absolute values, but could just use it to change the current value (rather than overriding it when switching fixtures).

[kproth]

Interesting thread. Is there a fork out there where the OP implemented some of this?

To me, it seems like it could be awkward to use the Virtual Console to setup scenes in this manner; I perceive its primary goal is to operate a light show at run time. Consider that you have to go into Operate mode for the VC widgets to be active; in Design mode, where I suspect a lot of scene setup would be done, the VC widgets are also in design mode...

It seems like one approach would be to map external input channels to specific channel types (Pan, Title, Intensity, Shutter, R/G/B, etc), at least for the Function Editor and Simple Desk modes, and then be able to use them to adjust whatever is selected. Without having to go through a VC widget...

[giacomo]

The paradigm design/operate mode it's 30 years old and things have quite changed in the meantime.
Me and Florian are speaking about improving v5 workflow.
Maybe you should write a message to Matthias.

[FlorianSTV]

I'm new to qlcplus, but I will try to understand the current code. Maybe I can get an idea how this behaviour could be implemented. Although this is probably too big a feature to be tackled by me as a novice

Some further thougts:
- This feature should be globally configurable (if/which external inputs to use)
- It should be usable in widgets (pan/tilt, intensity, color picker etc.), but also in the DMX-View and when modifying functions -> leads to probably different implementation needs
- If more faders are needed, than are configured, there should be pages inserted to switch between currently active faders (maybe as a sliding window to prevent splitting inside rgb etc., but I'm not sure if this is necessary). Probably a minimum of three different sliders/encoder wheels is sensible, but I don't think it should be enforced.
- When switching widgets/fixtures the value should only be updated after moving the slider etc. again (to prevent unintended behaviour when switching fixtures/widgets)
- A further advancement could be to use external buttons to switch between different fixtures/widgets in programming.

[FlorianSTV]

I just found this forum entry: viewtopic.php?f=12&p=57594#p57594

It seems like Massimo already plans to integrate such a feature

Maybe it would make sense to continue this discussion there? I'm not quite sure

[giacomo]

Hi Florian,
that pull request was in 2019... I really hope you can succeed!
Of course you do what you want but I belive you should start with a more narrowed goal:
the 2D View is the core for programming/editing, it would be already a super result to have external inputs for the widgets.
Probably this would solve globally your 2nd point plus the 3D View, and it would help for this basic feature request never answered/implemented:
http://qlcplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15872

Your 5th point:
I'd drop the natural idea to control the fixtures and I'd think it more rather a better interaction with the software,
an user should be able to map an external controller to the 2D widgets but then all the selections are done in the software.
As well I wouldn't add complexity with extra buttons, in 2D View you can already select multiple fixtures easily on the plan, following what ever pattern you need. What would be the benefit to switch to the next fixture from the controller?
(it'd be useful but in a scenario much more complex than what qlc+ offers)

Your 4th point:
For me the external slider/knob should start affecting the widget when it matches the value, this would solve the problem when changing selection.
It's already possible in v4 > https://docs.qlcplus.org/v4/virtual-console/slider
There is already a "monitor channels level" function in the software and I'd expect this behavior for the 2D Widgets.
Same manual page as above.
It has been already asked a year ago and maybe it's been corrected: right now the 2D widgets do not update with the output but they show the previous value
http://qlcplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15934


Good Xmas