Software > xlights

Abstraction Ideas

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csf:
Tonight the fun of working on updating a grid based, has actually given me a pretty cool idea.... I think.... 

Originally my intention for xlights was to abstract channels in to groups.  Then  channels in a group can ether all do the same thing at the same time, or an effect can be applied to a group.

The first idea I came up with is should there be master groups that can contain sub groups in side of them? I think that may make for some clever grouping abilities, but may also cause more confusion to the user, since know you can have nested group, but can cut down on the total number of groups you need to create for your show.

Now comes for the bigger idea. Should groups be made up of channels or virtual channels?

Originally my idea was to make groups of channels, but I am starting to think virtual channels may be best.

The original idea would make things a pain quick if you wanted to swap the id of a channel in you show because you would need to update every group that uses that channel and re map it.

Now if we used virtual channels and then deiced you want to change the ID  all you would need to do is update the one virtual channel map and all the groups would update.

I know Cas mentioned some where that he was abstracting channels in Prancer and then seating them in vixen.

This leaves me wondering if I go with virtual channels if they should be part of the console or if they should be part of the xlights base. If we make them part of the bass it may force us to update the sequencer,will probably take a little longer to have done, and my make things a bit more complex for the user to set up at first, but I think the ability to change your channel mapping easily, would over all be a big plus.

If virtually channels are only for the console then it would only work for sequencers made in xlights.

If we make it part of the base then any sequence you use in xlights could be remapped.

tpctech:
Cool project!  I would go with virtual channels.  I come the pro stage lighting world.  Most light consoles use "control" channels and then the actual "dimmer" (dmx address or Sacn) is "soft patched" to the control channel.  This makes it very fexible to have several dimmers on 1 control channel also if a dimmer channel would fail it is easy to make the "patch" to another dimmer channel.  I had a situaltion in my yard where I used to have C9's along my eaves.  I divided them on 2 circuits because of the load and fed them from both ends due to where to run the cords down.  I then patched them to different dimmer boxes on each end of the house.

KEN 

sean815:
Im currently using another software product and I have remapped my controllers many different times. I think if you go virtual then it would be a benefit to the end user since it will be less complicated to remap.

RJ:
This sounds much like what I was trying to explian to cas one night on teamspeak as how I felt things would need to get to at some point.

If you guys ever want to hear my ideas, not that I could do them.  Let me know and we could meet in teamspeak for a chat.

RJ

csf:
tpctech I will definitely be interested in your feed back as we go along with this project.

I want to try and make this program more along the lines of the systems used to control profesional light shows. If there ideas are god enough to run and choreograph major live light shows, they should be good enough for our Christmas displays.

 Now granted the stuff I have worked with is probably far from the cutting edge of the pro stuff, but it has given me some good ideas so far to start from, such as groups of channels.


RJ I would definitely be interested in meeting with you in the chat to talk about your ideas.

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