Q Light Controller+

Good Afternoon All.

I've been building on and experimenting with Version 4 for a few weeks now and have most things down. My single biggest problem is that I can not get a smooth fade effect out of the lights at all. It will only do a full fade in 4-Steps, so it is a harsh transition. I set the Fade-In for the Scenes to 1 Second. And I created a Sequence to go from Blackout to Color with a Fade-In of 1 Second.

For reference, I have a Lixada uDMX dongle controlling two UKing B117 lights via actual DMX cables. They are 8-Channel RGBW lights and have built in functions, one of which is a Color Fade that has very smooth transitions.

Is there a certain parameter I am missing in QLC that controls the number of steps for second, etc? Or is this a hard-coded 4-step fade regardless of duration? I changed the Master and uDMX frequencies to 120Hz, as another post recommended, and it didn't change anything, either.

Or is it a limitation with the Lixada controller or generic uDMX drivers?

Thanks.

Hi,

1. Check the numbers in the DMX monitor: do the numbers change one by one or do they change in steps? If they change in steps, the problem is in QLC+ and/or how you created the fade.
If they change continuously, the problem is later in the chain.

2. If you do manual slow fade (e.g. by using Simple desk faders) do the lights respond smoothly?

In general, the fade should be done in (duration * QLC+ master frequency) steps. For example, 2 second fade with 50 Hz frequency should be done in 100 steps.
Note that if starting and target values are too close together, some steps will be the same. For example, if the above fade is from 100 to 110 (a change of 10 values),
there will still be 100 steps computed, but every 10 steps will have the same value, effectively the fade will have 10 steps.

If you find out that the light reacts to DMX too abruptly, you may improve the situation by creating dimmer curve using channel modifiers in QLC+. (see e.g. https://eldoled.com/insights/why-you-ne ... ng-curves/ what are the dimmer curves)

Jano

I looked up the fixture manual here: https://www.uking-online.com/wp-content ... Q-B117.pdf

I also looked at your workspace, and I think I can shed light on a few of your questions.

Channel 7 (Function choice) has 6 zones or areas to choose from. That means, you have to put this channels value inside one of those zones to access that function, and channel 8 (Function speed) then should control the speed of the chosen function.

In the range 0 - 50 your Dimmer, RGBA and strobe channels will be active, if you go above that range they'll be unresponsive and the named function is active (not sure about strobe, to be honest).

The range 51 - 100 might make sense as a fader as it likely will step through a set of fixed colors.

It could be that the value ranges above that have subdivisions for different effects, but the manual does not mention this.

So, in my opinion, the way you set this up in your frame with faders thus isn't ideal - the faders controlling the range of each function zone won't do anything, as changing their value will do nothing but keep named function active.

Instead, you should add only one Fader in Level mode, with the Click&Go feature enabled and set to Chaser/Effect/Macro mode. That way, you can click the Click&Go button and select the function you want to produce, and you'll see a small bar that reflects your mouse position and the corresponding actual fader value inside that range (which does not matter really as long as it's in that range).

You also could make buttons in a solo frame, and create scenes with just this function choice channel set to a value in the desired area, if you prefer.

Anyway, all these effects are built into the fixture and QLC+ has no idea of how they actually look, therefore it cannot preview these effeects beyond the channel value in Monitor/DMX view.

If you want precise control over your color step/fade effects and their timing, you will have to put the function choice channel in the "DMX 8CH Control" range or leave it at 0, and reprogram the effects in QLC+, using scenes and chasers, speed dials and/or sequences.

I attach the modified workspace so you can see the C&G setup I described above.