Moving head without dimmer channel

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    Hello all. I was wondering if anyone has had experience with having a light that has no dimmer\intensity channel. It's becoming problematic when building cue lists because of tracking values. Does anyone know if a way to either make a fixture profile or change a setting to get these 4 scanner that I have to play nicely? They have gobo, shutter, prism, colorwhrel. Pan and tilt. Thank you!

    Hi,
    if there is no "darkness" on any of the range of the dmx channels (fixture is alwas on/lighting), then probably not, because what the fixture's mechanics and firmware does not allow, the desk cannot force from.


    But I cannot believe, that these fixtures does not have a dimmer function. Is not a dimmer a part of dmx range of shutter channel, like: 0-50% dimmer, 50-100% shutter/strobe? In old times that was quite usual. Try to use Beam Raw fader of shutter of dot2 and go from 0 to 100%.


    If so, you can open the fixture personality in the editor and change Strobe (under Beam) to Dimmer, then change this new personality in the patch.
    Then dimming will work with wheel and highlight and the only change is, that strobing is then controled under Dimmer attribute.


    Edit: If the fixture is always on/lighting, the only mechanical way is to insert a solid circle instead of a gobo or color glass and use this as a dimmer :)


    A@

    Im sorry, I should have specified that the shutter channed does have "open and "closed" along with strobe and a reset for all motors. I've tried changing shutter to dim and various combinations of shutter subcategories and I just can't seem to get where I need to be.

    Hi,
    you do not write where, in...What you need is edit the personality in fixture editor and change strobe channel for dimmer. the difference is, that dimmer (Presettype 1) respect tha master and then works as you suppose. You can set there also the default values, higlight... Find and study fixture builder/editor (small MA sw for Windows). After the changes save the pers. as...myscan.xml and use this instead.


    A@

    Hello Lars, the issue that I'm having is that I have 4 scanners by a brand "passport lighting" that I can't find any information on and they do not have a dimmer channel but they have a normal shutter channel that controls open, close, strobe and motor reset. I'm wondering if there is a way to modify the profile I made to have a dimmer channel that controls shutter open and close like most fixtures. I've found it to be problematic when designing cue lists because it takes a lot of extra work to get the fixtures to turn off.

    Thank you for your help, Lars. The lights are now responding to "full" but I'm having an issue with the strobe function activating if I use a fader which I can only assume is the case due to the shutter being attached to the dim function. Do you know of any way to work around this?

    Hi Michael,


    unfortunetly there is no workaround for this.
    As the dimmer and strobe are on the same fader and you store 100% into your cue, you will always go thru the entire range when using the fader you've programmed.


    But if I rember correctly ther was also a 100% Dimmer value before the strobe range started. So if you just store these value instead of "full" (DMX 255) you should be able to control only the dimmer without affecting the strobe.


    Hope this helps!


    Cheers,
    Lars

    Hi,
    you are still looking for what your fixtures simply do not offer. I understand, but I would either make a presets for dimmer at 100 (...30%) or then a button with this preset stored in Cue 1 and use the preset directly or use Call and pushing the button. Both makes selected fixtures on in the programmer, respect the preset and it is quick. At At shortcut or Call this lasts the same time. I personally do not use Full at all.


    A@

    The Virtual Dimmer works perfect! Exactly how with a DMX Hardware Dimmer Channel

    If you want to connect hardware to your console and need additional signal translation or similar I can help you!
    Send me a private message!