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    tadawson
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High End Systems fixture library entries

Is is just me, or does support for HES fixtures in EOS/ION seem really, really sloppy and shoddy?  The only thing I can find that is even close to a standard X-Spot is "X-Spot/CM/RG/IS-R", whatever the heck that means, and it's a channel shy of what a correct X-Spot profile should be, and two of the four parameters for gobo wheel one are greyed out, can't be deleted or edited, and don't appear on any encoder, making gobo rotation on the wheel impossible.  Not to mention, the manual never even mentions a greyed out parameter in the fixture editor, what it means, and how to correct it. 

X-Spot Framing personalities don't exist at all, nor do the Lithomotion personalities.

For Intellabeam, the world pretty much abandoned the 8 bit personality years ago, since moves were so jerky, but surprise!  That's all that is on EOS/ION. 

Studio color looks correct, but for the life of me, I can't seem to be able to access the control channel to manage the fixture (same for I-Beam and X-Spot - especially important to be able to lamp off X-Spot correctly to allow it to cool.

Another poster here has stated that the only available Cyber personalities don't come close to what a normal Cyber runs either.

And for the personalities that do appear to be close, why in the world did someone choose to rename all the parameters/ranges/etc. from the vendor nomenclature to different, less coherent names that are very confusing to those of us used to HES fixtures?  Why, oh why, was something simple like "Focus" displayed as "Edge"?

Considering that HES has publicly documented it's DMX definitions for a long time, as well as it's nomenclature, and considering that I first saw ION/EOS at LDI '07, the excuse that "It's New" does not really fly that well any more . . . . .

One of the venues that I supply gear to and do a lot of work in just got an Ion, largely on my recommendation based on features and playing with it at LDI.  Imagine my horror when I discover that the library is so bad that it won't support much of anything that the site has without major editing . . .

Anyone else notice this?  Oh, and we are on 1.4.5, so it's not a downrev code issue either . . . .

 

- Tim

  • in reply to jhessler

    John -

    I have all the X-Spot and I-Beam 13 channel documents back at the office, and will send them along as soon as I get back.  On the HES site, the 13 channel personality was definited in a "extended DMX" option document, since it was not in the initial fixture release.  You will also not see it in the docs for the High End controller, since those are not DMX based - they ran the Lightwave Research protocol.

    X-Frame is 37 channels, and basically, gobo wheel two and the iris/FX module go away, and you add a framing module, which has, IIRC, something like 13 parameters - two each for four shutters, shutter rotate, and iris and iris mode . . . .

    I understand the desire to "normalize" the control across brands, but the inconsistencies are what are killing me.  Also, if a fixture editor can't do *EVERYTHING*, then I consider it broken.  A document on how to generate ASCII uploadable definitions would be very helpful as well, as that would allow the end user to circumvent the (at least to me) insanely frustrating fixture profile editor on the Ion . . . .

    Do you have an e-mail I should send to, or just post this stuff here?

    - Tim



    [edited by: tadawson at 9:47 PM (GMT -6) on Thu, Apr 23 2009]
  • in reply to tadawson

    Tim

    My email is john (dot) heller (at) etcconnect.com.  I will speak with some folks and see if we can improve the docs to get people through this easily.

    Thanks again,

    j

  • in reply to jhessler

    John -

    I sent the docs on the X-Spot Framing as well as Lithomotion options, as well as the detailed docs on Intellabeam 13 channel to your e-mail a few moments ago - please check and verify receipt!

    - Tim

  • in reply to tadawson

    Tim

    Got 'em all and they look good.

    Thanks much

    j

  • in reply to derekleffew

    derekleffew said:

    Recently, on the LightNetwork forum, Brad Schiller and Scott Blair defended Barco's position of not releasing their fixtures' DMX protocols to the general public.  Agree or disagree, it made for an interesting read.

    Derek,

    Do you have a link to this discussion?  I searched for it but couldn't find it in the last month's postings.  It seems like it would be counterproductive for a company to not release the DMX protocol for their fixtures. High End has always published that information in the past.

    -Todd



    [edited by: tdrga at 9:56 AM (GMT -6) on Fri, Apr 24 2009]
  • in reply to tdrga

    The thread is titled "Showgun DMX Protocol" and was started 18 Feb.

  • in reply to derekleffew

    derekleffew said:

    The thread is titled "Showgun DMX Protocol" and was started 18 Feb.

    Derek-

    Thanks - I found it.  Interesting reading and I can see both sides of the issue, but am not leaning one way or the other until I think about it a bit more.  I haven't played with the newer High End fixtures, so I had not noticed that they had changed their policies.

    I did have trouble with the EOS profile for the Showgun when we had some in for an event, but that was over a year ago and we haven't used any since then, so I'm not sure if that profile has been sorted out.  If I remember correctly, I couldn't get the LED ring to respond.  At the time it wasn't a major issue, so I didn't pursue it.

    -Todd

     

     

  • in reply to jhessler

    As a quick followup to this post, as of 1.9.6, the lamp controls for X-Spot are still incorrect.  Fortunately, with the addition of lamp control editing to the patch, they were fixable . . .

    Basically, you forgot to take the shutter (channel 6) to closed (dmx 0) in order to enable the control channel.  Add a level of 6 @ 0 to all the entries, and they all work correctly.  Otherwise, you need to manually close the shutter first, or nothing works, which pretty much destroys the purpose of lamp controls . . .

    - Tim

  • in reply to tadawson

    Tim, thanks.  Will have our test group look into this issue.

    a

     

  • in reply to Anne Valentino

    Thanks.  I have verified that what I have done works on the live fixtures, and the manual is clear in the DMX documentation of the two channel requirement.  If you just look at the verbage, I don't think there is any note in the control channel section that the shutter close is required to enable, but it is in the DMX chart  . . . perhaps that is what someone tripped over.

    At any rate, now that we can edit lamp controls, I finally have full function, so this isn't as much of a priority (it was a major pain having to pull DMX and wait for things to shutdown on timeout) and we have not yet gotten 1.9.8 loaded, but I doubt there will be a difference there . . .

    Since I was the one who sent the X-Spot manual to John Hessler on this initially, I have also e-mailed him directly with these details.

    - Tim

     

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