2011 December 18 > Pixels

[Hecktique]

Absolutely LOVE this LED board programming tool!
Any chance we can look forward to actually incorporating Amber and White LEDs, as they can already be selected in the DMX adressing grid of the LED board (like RGB, RGBW, RGBA, RGBWA, White) but
so far, after generating a chase it only incorporates the red, green and blue LED's in Editor?

Keep up the good work and thanks in advance!

[support]

Thank you very much

We presently do not know how to manage "amber" and "white" channels.
(in our "computer friendly" brain, we can do all colors with RGB ; so "amber" and "white" look redundant for us)

Please tell us what function you would like to apply to "amber" and "white" in front of the pixel color, then we could try to code this function.

FYI, we will release soon a new Pixels with a new effect called "Picture motion" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s54qeklbgOA)

[Hecktique]

Thanks for the quick reply! Right now I use the Pixel Tool on an American DJ Hyper Gem Fixture, which I assigned in 256 Channel DMX Mode in Setup. This allows independent dimming control on all separate LED's on it's board, which are 64 Red, 64 Green, 64 Blue and 64 White LEDs. Now If I generate any Pixel Project Chase and see it run in Editor Mode, it excludes the utilisation of the White LED channels (RGB are on every first, second and third), so every 4th channel remains flat on value 0. It's still possible to add some "White Power" manually into the chase, so I can still sort of deal with it, but to have them included in
the chase generating process of the Pixel tool would be very convenient, I'd get brighter lighting from the Hyper Gem and I would think it could make, for instance, Black and White gif animations (such as 16x16_kaleidoscope_b&w_twist.gif) potetially even more dynamic.

Thanks for the effort and I'm looking forward to Picture Motion!

[support]

In a near future, we will release a beta version with a new function called "Master Fader" (viewtopic.php?f=31&t=1811&start=50). With this new function, you could do exactely what you are looking for.

Anyhow, please note that we are still looking to code an "auto calculation" for white channel value in front of pixel color. Any idea of how to proceed would be welcome.

We will keep you informed a soon as a beta version with "Picture Motion" is available.

[Hecktique]

For now, I found a satisfying, if elaborate way to solve the case within the Pixel tool itself:
I simply split up the hyper gem to 128 separate mini fixtures all in .pxl format. As follows:
1. Create and save a 1x1 grid RGB type fixture with dmx adress 1, save as Hyper RGB .pxl.
2. Create and save a 1x1 grid White type fixture with dmx adress 4, save as Hyper W .pxl.
3. On the main screen, draw the rgb fixture as a 3x4 resolution block.
4. Place the white fixture adjacent to the rgb fixture as a 1x4 resolution block.
5. Mouse lasso select both the rgb and white block, right-click and select copy.
6. Paste the selection adjacent to the original, becoming Hyper RGB #1 and Hyper W #1.
It automatically assigns the proper dmx adressses 5-7 for the rgb part and 8 for the white part.
7. Repeat 5. and 6. until there are 64 rgb units and 64 white units. I placed them on the background grid so that they represent the
led matrix board of a Hyper Gem fixture.
8. Now any effect I apply on the entire selection of rgb and white blocks works well on ALL the rgb and white leds.
So, in effect, it's as simple as mixing up rgb type fixtures with white type fixtures.
Once again, thanks for all your time and efforts.

[support]

This is very smart.
However, we will do our best in order to simplify this procedure.
We will make some test by applying some exponential curve for white channel, proportional of the average of RGB channels.

PS: outside of "white" channel, the "amber" channel remains a mistery for us.

[Hecktique]

Hello again

We will make some test by applying some exponential curve for white channel, proportional of the average of RGB channels.

Cool! A possible approach is to add a separate white curve this way, and bearing in mind that white is actually a mix of equal RGB percentage proportions (e.g. R 200%, G 200%, B 200%),
could it be possible to add a curve for amber as well, which should have a RGB percentage proportion of R 100%, G 75% and B 0%? That would be a RGB value setting of R 255, G 190
and B 0.

[support]

Thank you for the tip.
Noted in TODO list.