mindbending midi for lights?

[Elke L]

Hi,

i'm wanting to control lights live from stage with various midi controllers, as well as some preprogrammed cues.

after looking at this site: https://qlab.app/cookbook/mind-bending-midi-binding, i am quite keen on finding a way to do this - update midi faders and rotary knobs constantly - with lights.

the script to generate the cues is made for audio channels, and i can't for the life of my figure out if it would be adaptable to light channels.

the idea is that i (the programmer and operator) will be on stage along with 3 performers and everybody should visible be operating the show. but i need a way to avoid the dips if a light is at 80% but the controller dial is still at 0, so that in this case nothing would happen until the dial is turned up to 80, after which the light can either be turned up or down.

any takers?

thanks,

Elke

[micpool]

Hi Elke

The techniques described in Mind Bending MIDI are really just intended  for adding MIDI control of a few faders on audio cues. They are not really scalable to a full lighting rig.

However this doesn't matter as unlike audio cues,  the light patch enables you to configure full MIDI control with feedback for 100s of lights (or lighting parameters)

It's set up in settings/MIDIcontrols/light Dashboard.

I'll post some example set ups using TouchOSC, which because it will run on just about any computer, tablet , or phone, is probably a very cost effective method of building  distributed control surfaces for multiple live operators.

Mic

[Elke L]

hi mic,

ideally i’d like to work with physical controllers instead of tablets or phones, hence the request for some sort of midi feedback.

this is mainly because of a visual request from the artistic team.

failing that, i might have to resort to several old style lighting desks and a dmx merger. 

but i prefer the thought of multiple midi controllers.

i’m not taking about many lights - there would be a larger part of the rig that is only controlled by standard cues. ( there will have to be some sort of light design unaffected by what the performers get up to).

thanks,

elke

[micpool]

On Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 3:20:36 PM UTC+1 elke.l...@gmail.com wrote:

but i need a way to avoid the dips if a light is at 80% but the controller dial is still at 0, so that in this case nothing would happen until the dial is turned up to 80, after which the light can either be turned up or down.

It’s not going to be possible to adapt the mind bending MIDI techniques to lighting cues to do what you describe above. The reason for this is that for audio cues there are script and OSC methods for both getting and setting levels. For  lighting cues,  the /dashboard/setLight method has no corresponding  /getLight method.

Your best options would probably   be a controller  with continuous encoders. The Behringer X Touch Mini is a very cheap 8 encoder controller that can control 8 QLab lighting channels out of the box. Because it is difficult to get current lighting levels you would probably have to restrict each X touch to a fixed set of 8 channels. Although the X-Touch Mini provides 2 banks which would appear to allow control of 16 channels without complex programming, unfortunately the bank that is not currently selected does not update in the background so when you switch to it if those channels have been updated elsewhere the change won't have registered on that banks display when you switch to it.

Mic

On Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 3:20:36 PM UTC+1 elke.l...@gmail.com wrote:

[Elke Laleman]

hi mic,

ideally i’d like to work with physical controllers instead of tablets or phones, hence the request for some sort of midi feedback.

this is mainly because of a visual request from the artistic team.

failing that, i might have to resort to several old style lighting desks and a dmx merger. 

but i prefer the thought of multiple midi controllers.

i’m not taking about many lights - there would be a larger part of the rig that is only controlled by standard cues. ( there will have to be some sort of light design unaffected by what the performers get up to).

thanks,

elke

On 14 May 2022, at 18.29, micpool <m...@micpool.com> wrote:

Hi Elke

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[Richard Williamson]

Depending on your midi controller you might be able to use my app - shift-faders - which you can get from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ek43vko9r3bff3q/AACJKmHxXnOiO2A79TlrsX22a?dl=0

It lets you map a channel to a fader and will have the behaviour you mention in terms of only capturing the light to the fader when you move the fader through the light’s current level. 

Whether this is useful does depend on whether I’ve made a layout for your specific midi controller. I can make more but I seem to have zero time at the moment so it may be a while before I can. But give it a go anyway

Richard

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[Elke L]

hi mic,

can you send those touchosc examples you mentioned? i’ll see if i can convince the team to use ipads.

thanks,

elke

On Saturday, May 14, 2022 at 6:29:20 PM UTC+2 micpool wrote:

[micpool]

Sure

Here's a touchOSC file and a matching QLab workspace for 5 dimmers 

Mic

[micpool]

And here's a quick screen recording. Apologies for the quality but its always challenging getting these within the 5MB file limit in this group

Mic

[Elke L]

thanks a lot