Q Light Controller+

I am evaluating the use of moving heads for our theatre show use (both drama and musical).

I have a scene that sets the XY co-ordinates of a moving head. This works well the XY and even fine movement and other parameters can be set.

The problem is that, from here onwards I want to control the head via an XY pad (or even sliders), but the XY pad does not have the same values set by the scene, it would still be where the head was last adjusted by the XY pad. If I touch the XY pad now the head will first move to where the XY pad was and then have to manually moved back to where it just came from and where it should be.

What I would like is the XY pad to be updated with the values set by the scene. Or, if I use a slider, that the slider is updated.

Can we not maybe link channels in a scene to specific widget (slider, knob, xy-pad xaxis etc) and when that scene is called it updates the relevant widget.

Or alternatively, set a widget so that if it is linked to 1 fixture with 1 level, that it picks up the value from the output signal and updates itself.

In my use case, I can then have a scene that sets a bunch of parameters, including XY and then, using TouchOSC, the pad's XY is positioned at the same place as the widget and I can continue the use from there.

Example: performer enters stage left and a moving head goes on him. He moves across the stage and the head follows him and then he exists stage right. Another actor enters stage left. This I would like to trigger off a scene as the colour can change, the iris etc - also I can run it via a chaser so that move in black goes on, the head is sent the new coordinates and then move in black is turned off.

Currently, I have to manually move the XY using the pad and that is a mission to get right. The performers usually have stage marks that is very carefully set up so a specific scene is the only way to get the lights right.

In my opinion this is a really good idea. I'm sure that it has been discussed before though. The only thing that you have to remember is that different people use QLC+ in different ways so whilst this may be an excellent edition for some, it may ruin others' workspaces. A toggle switch on the sliders would be a nice idea.....

The Simple Desk sliders update and show the current values, and I have used this to tweak moving head positions live, when they're not quite on the performer.
It's very easy to use the mouse scroll wheel to "roll" the value up or down.
But you can only move 1 slider at once.

Using the simple desk would not really be possible whilst running live. We normally run a specific workspace in kiosk mode. Also having to find the channel in the simple desk may take too long.

It is because the simple desk do update the sliders that I had hoped it would be a not too complicated change, especially if it is switch-able at the widget level, so as not to break existing workspaces (as Connor mentioned).

It's obviously possible to implement, it's a matter of priorities and available time.

I believe the intent was that if you set a position, sometimes you don't want have another function (like EFX) override it.

Then there's the case when you have xy pad linked to multiple fixtures, each with different position. What should it display?

One solution is to display several gray ("passive") dots for actual fixture positions and one blue ("active") dot that sets the positions.

Another is to track the first one, and select all.

Finally, tracking may be switched on and off.

How does it sound? Seems reasonable? (I'm not promising anything, just thinking loud...)

Hi Jano, thanks for the response and I know about priorities and available time, so whenever it gets attention is fine...

My use is mainly linked to XY pads & sliders in level mode linked to a single fixture or channel. So tracking the first one (or even a designated one) is perfect. The grey dots would also be great, in fact it will allow one to get a visual feel for where heads are.

While were here, can the XY pad not als (optionally?) display the xy 0-255 values? We usually work out performers positions carefully so it would help with that?

Jano,

If you are going to improve the XY pad, here is my request:
I would love to have a moving head "join" the XY pad inside a cue, sequence, or on a button click. So I could use for that part of the show only. Then when out of that cue, or sequence, or button click, release the fixture, so it can go back to normal duty.

Here is the use-case, I have a solo in the middle of a theater show. I "take over" some group of heads, or a single head. I track the performer for that song. The song could have multiple other cues in it. Then at the end of the song, fade out the moving heads. Release the moving heads. All goes back to normal.

I have not found a way to change assignments of moving heads to XY pad without putting multiple XY pads on the VC. I admit I have not tried very hard to work around this yet.

On my Tascam US2400, I have one midi joystick. Since that can only be assigned to one XY pad, I am stuck using only one XY pad for the above use-case (with my preferred joystick).

Bob

Bob,

try to put xypads in a multipage frame, and assign the joystick to all of them.
One pad for each fixture, one per page.

I implemented some improvements to XY pads:

- pan/tilt value is displayed in XY pad
- shift makes the arrow keys control fine value
- control makes the arrow keys use step of 10
- it's possible to use both ctrl and shift for faster control of fine values

It's only a PR yet, it's not merged.

Wow, Jano - those are really nice features! I am a huge fan of keyboard control. The problem is one cannot select an XY widget with keyboard - as far as I can tell, one has to click with the mouse.

Buttons have keyboard shortcuts, can they be added to XY pads?

I have come across another use case for scenes to update sliders. I am trying to implement control of Jinx via QLC+ (inspired by the brilliant use case# 3 - BLEM).

One can control the speed of the main strobe by means of a slider. The problem is 0=off and then it is fast to slow. It is difficult to find the right level quickly by using the slider.

So I set up scenes that sets the channel value to the different specific speeds that I like for the current workspace. The problem now is that I am stuck at that level. I need to actually increase or decrease it just a little to get the effect needed.

If I could set up a slider for the strobe channel and the buttons (actually underlying scenes) update the slider as they are pressed, then I could fine tune the setting by adjusting the slider which is now set to the same level as the scene called by the button.

I had a look at click & go to give me this but there are a few drawbacks:

1. Click & go levels are defined at the fixture level, so, to change it, you have to change the fixture. Unless you add new versions of the strobe channel and the modes to use it, you will mess up other workspaces. Having a scene update the slider directly puts this into the hands of the user - no fixture updates necessary and you can have whatever settings you want at the workspace level. If a fixture is in the main repository, this is an even bigger problem.

2. Click & go require 2 clicks, using a button requires 1.

3. As far as I can tell there is no input control for the click & go button - using buttons would give you external input control.

4. The eventual value assigned by click & go depends on where your mouse is within the defined macro in the grid view - it is hard to get a specific value, especially the start value of the macro. A button sets an exact value and then the slider can take it over.

The other big benefit would be for OSC users. They get the slider updated as well.