Q Light Controller+

We ran into a small issue recently when testing out a few new LED bar fixtures we acquired. The fixture itself is comprised of several zones which is not uncommon for fixtures of this type so that you can use as few or as many addresses as you want. We created a fixture definition (which I will attach a bit later, I don't have it handy at the moment) and everything worked perfectly until we tried to utilize those individual zones in a RGB matrix.

We set each zone as its own head in the definition (similar to other existing bars in the library), but we think that because each of those zones only contains RGB channels and not a dedicated intensity channel, that the matrix function doesn't really know what to do. The fixture has a master intensity channel that is separate from the individual zones.

Is it possible to utilize the matrix function with the individual zones, or is it a pipe dream?

Please atrach here your fixture definition and example workspace.

Jano

Right then, sorry for the delay, work took a bit longer than usual today. I've attached the fixture definition and sample workspace. We only created the fixture definition using one of the multiple channel configurations, we didn't want to go all in on the rest of the modes until we knew we could make at least one of them work. I'll try to find a pdf of the manual to post as well, but might have to settle for a photo of the DMX confg pages.

To summarize the issue, adding the fixture to an RGB matrix causes the correct DMX RGB values to be sent to each "head" of the fixture. However, because the master intensity for the fixture is independent of those heads, only the last head in any given fixture of this type will actually illuminate (assuming that the master intensity or other effects channels are at the end of the list). We tested this with a few other LED bars already in the official fixture library and saw the same results in the fixture monitor. Unchecking the dimmer control option in the matrix causes none of the heads to light up as expected.

The only workaround that we have found is to create a collection containing the matrix and a scene that sets the intensity to 100%. This is less than ideal since we often use matrices attached to a fader to control their intensity in the VC and don't want to create multiple collections for different intensity levels for every single matrix pattern that we end up using.

What you see is https://github.com/mcallegari/qlcplus/issues/991

Bad news is that it's not going to be fixed soon.
Even worse news is that the whole dimmer control is going to be removed in QLC+ 5.

Now some good news:

When you attach a slider to rgb matrix, the intensity is varied by scaling RGB values, not by using master dimmer.
You can uncheck the dimmer control, and create separate master dimmer scene either one for all led bars, or one for each led bar/group of bars.

You may want to set the master dimmer scene(s) as startup scene (http://qlcplus.org/docs/html_en_EN/functionmanager.html check the green flag)

Thanks for that, Janos, the master dimmer scene was our solution as well, but didn't want to implement it until we knew for sure that was the only solution. We already use startup scenes for our larger moving heads to prevent people from getting blinded by 230W of unforgiving halogen, so that's business as usual for us.

Any reason to not set the dimmer to 100% in the Channel Properties editor?
http://www.qlcplus.org/docs/html_en_EN/ ... rties.html