Hi & Dimmer/Strobe on single channel help

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  • Hi,



    Firstly, Hi. I'm new to lighting and Dot2 though have been looking at others PC solutions. I've settled on Dot2 for PC after looking at all the obvious alternatives. I'm actually a soundie who is also running lights. I'm running a very small show. 10 LED Pars, 4 of the below lights, 2 moving gobo spot (equally as terrible) and 2x24 (3x8) LED Bars. The 10 pars belong to and are installed in the venue I work in (80-100 person cap), everything else I've purchased and will lug and add when I think it's required. The venues consoles are horrid and I want to up the quality of the shows. My solution needs to be easy and relatively minimally hands-on because I'm paid to do sound, not lights. I settled on Dot2 as I use a touchscreen PC and Midi Controller but also if I grow into this, MA seems to be the right direction to head in. You may well scoff at my choice of lights, those in other programs forums have, but I'm not being paid anything extra to improve the lighting at shows I mix, I'm doing it because I want the shows to be better for bands, audience and venue. The invested money and time learning and programming are significant to me.

    I will have programming questions but it all starts with patching your lights which leads me too....


    Secondly, I'm not sure this is the best forum as this is fixture profile related, but I think that forum is shut. I'm using it on Dot PC so here I am. Please feel free to move it.


    I have a UKing B-136 mini moving head fixture (actually not branded UKing but it's the same down to the manual printing).

    In 14ch mode (my preferred) Channel 5 has the following:

    0-7 = OFF

    8-134 = Master Dimmer

    135-239 = Strobe Slow to Fast

    240-255 = Open


    I can't work out how to do that in the fixture builder. I am OK with losing out on the strobe functionality or using only the strobe functioning but adding a virtual dimmer but ideally, I could load and visualise it as per how it is. I've attached the manual for full channel assignment.

  • I don't have much experience in building fixtures - I can only suggest something in a hurry.

    On channel 6, add Shutter - STROBE 134 - 239
    def and highlight 134

    And add a virtual dimmer separately.

    Thanks to this, you will get functionality that is not present in this device - i.e. the ability to dim in strobe mode :P

  • Thanks. I can't quite find the attribute for the strobe though, thought I had but can't get it to work in Dot2 on PC (I didn't try very hard though). As long as my fixture doesn't start strobing when raising and lowering the dimmer, I'm happy enough. :)

  • I'm still having problems and I know what's going wrong, just not how to fix it. I've created a Strobe range on CH 6 134-239. On the actual fixture (not currently attached to the PC) I'm assuming strobe @ 0 puts the DMX value at 134, full dim. But in the visualizer, 134 just equals Strobe slow... very slow. So I don't have any way of seeing the fixture not strobing in the visualizer. There are no Open/Closed values to turn the strobe off. When I look at the possible attributes in the fixture editor there's a few things that could be strobe/shutter open. I should be able to work that out though. Wish me luck.

  • This won't work in 3D - because we set the strobe channel - (in the psyche parameters you should specify the Hz range)
    If you want this to be correct in 3D - you need to set the strobe range to the original values - set OPEN to default at parameter 134 - and CLOSE as in the manual.

  • I set an Open at 255 (which is also the default value for that channel) which seems to have done the trick in the visualizer. I have Strobe, Dimming and Open working as expected. I've yet to test with the actual fixture though.

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