Q Light Controller+

So I'm wondering if there will ever be a plugin or feature created to support bringing in video signals via SPOUT (for Windows) or SYPHON (MAC)?

The way I see it, it's openly available freeware and writing a simple receiver plugin shouldn't be too difficult. I've already toyed with my own Processing applet I wrote to take a SPOUT signal from Resolume and sample a matrix of pixels and push them (via SPI) to a series of WS2812B led's (in matrix formation).

You could easily take the received SPOUT/SYPHON signal coming into QLC+ and downscale/sample it for whatever resolution your RGB matrix is. This would make creation of dynamic patterns a breeze and would allow people to utilize external video control software for mapping/patterns (Resolume has some fantastic generative source effects) and would be an open source solution.

Just my thoughts. What is the protocol for plugin/feature creation in QLC+. I don't have a huge amount of experience with programming, just some Processing and Python apps, but would be willing to assist in development and conceptualization of this feature.

Hello,

If you want to tinker:

https://github.com/mcallegari/qlcplus

Plugins are in the "plugins" folder, many examples are present, and this thub.com/mcallegari/qlcplus/tree/master/plugins/dummy is a dummy plugin. It can be used as a template.

FYI, starting from resolume version 5, resolume can send artnet packets, which QLC+ can receive easily. ( http://resolume.com/blog/12462/resolume ... oint-ooooh )

All good, except for the fact that QLC+ plugins are not designed to handle signals other than universe/channel/value
In other words, even if you receive a video signal into a QLC+ plugin, the plugin itself knows nothing about running functions, RGB matrices or whatsoever.
All they can do is sending elementary signals that QLC+ can process and eventually turn into Function controls.

The way to go is to create another RGBsometing class, (RGBImage/RGBText/RGB...) that would read the video data from SPOUT.
Currently it can't be a plugin, it must be compiled in, so if you want it as a plugin, you need to create plugin framework for RGB matrix algorithms (which may be worth on its own...)
...not to mention licencing issues...

I understand that this would not be direct video-to lights. I'm no newb.

My thoughts is that since most of the values sent to smart LED's are 0-255 anyways (one each for red, green, and blue channels), just push those same values already stored in the matrix/table through to the DMX conversion and then out for each frame. You would downsample your video, or you can sample just the pixels you want (in grid/linear layout etc). Either way I think this would be really neat for full RGB led fixture patterns.

I'll take a look at the git and see if I can play around with it.

Question: Why not let resolume take care of downsampling, and use the already existing ArtNet plugin ?

Because that would require Resolume. The reason I'm thinking of creating a SPOUT plugin would be to grab from any SPOUT-capable source (the SPOUT support list is growing evermore). That way you are not limited by the software package you're using to manage your video/pattern content. I just use Resolume as an example because I have it already. But if you want to use TouchDesigner, VVVV, Processing, Openframeworks, Modulo, After Effects, Mapio, Virtual DJ, LightJams, or Milkdrop for instance (among others), then you would need a way to convert that data into raw RGB color values etc.

*EDIT*

And I'm aware most of these other software packages do have some form of DMX/artnet protocol as well, but versatility is the name of the game for QLC+