Jess_her,
Those are good questions and I probably didn't do a good job of making that clear. Writing the firmware to the servo controller is the same as any other PIC-based DIY controller. Using the Pickit and writing the hex file to the PIC is the firmware part. That must be done first before you can think about using the config tool. The firmware has special routines that allow it to accept the parameters sent by the config tool. So once the firmware is loaded onto the PIC, you can then use the configuration tool to set the endpoints, direction, channel assignments, etc.
Steps to get up and running:
1. Load firmware to PIC using your Pickit or whatever programmer you have.
2. Test the servo controller with Vixen or any other source of DMX data to make sure the firmware is loaded and functioning correctly.
3. Figure out your end point limits, directions and channel assignments.
4. Use the config tool to send the parameters from step 3 to the servo controller.
Please note, by default the DMX channel assignments are 1-8 for the servos and 9-16 for the LED outputs.
You are correct regarding cell intensity in Vixen. A value of 128 will put the servo in the center of it's range. Well I should say 127 is mid-point between 0 and 255. Although I thought you could only specify intensity as a percentage in Vixen. Is there a way to specify specific values? I haven't seen it, but I'd like to know how to do it if it can be done.
Remember, even though you may specify limited travel range for a given servo channel, you'll still get a full 256 discreet positions as related to the DMX intensity values. The controller will "scale" the servo travel range (as specified by the end points you set with the config tool) across 256 increments. So a DMX intensity value of 0 will correspond to the "Start Value" from the config tool, and 255 will correspond to the "End Value" from the config tool.
Let's walk through a simple example where we'll set the start and end points at 1/4 (start value = 63) and 3/4 (end value = 191) of the full range. The first illustration shows where we would like to have our servo travel start and end (see where 63 and 91 fall on the travel range). We want the low end point to start at the position associated with intensity value 63 (based on default full range). We want the upper end point to be equivalent to the intensity value 91 (also based on the default full range). The second illustration shows how the servo would behave after configuring those end point values using the config tool.
(servo travel distances are for example purposes only)
DMX Intensity: 0.........63..................91........255
Default Servo end points: |...........................................| << travel range related to DMX intensity value
|<-------- 1 inch -------------->| << default travel range (start = 0, end = 255)
DMX Intensity: 0.....................255 << still get 256 DMX intensity values
Adjusted Servo end points: |.....................| << now scaled across shorter travel range
|<- 1/2 inch ->|