Thread: DMXorcist issue

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First let me say that Bryan's support has been great and we are still trying to sort this out. I thought I'd post here to see if anyone has run into the same issue as I'm getting...

The goal... routine 1 kicks off, routine 2 starts just before routine 1 ends.

Here's the setup...

Laptop
Enttech open on one usb going into a DMX Dimmer set up as two interfaces on DMX channel 1. I have two VSA routines are DMX channels 0 and 1, both routines are set for 33 seconds

The other usb is the dmxorcist with nothing plugged into it.

On the matrix is one houselamp for testing on interface one, and a laser on interface two

Everything works fine in VSA

Here's the odd thing... set my dwell time to 330 and everything works fine, set it to 329 and interface 1 on the Dimmer won't shut off.

Here are the lines in my config you would care about:

VSA Player,1,C:\Device 1 test.vsa,VSA 1,Input 1 ON,VSA 2 Active
VSA Player,2,C:\Device 2 test.vsa,VSA 2,Timer 1 Done,VSA 2 Done
Timer,1,Timer 1,VSA 1 Active,329,VSA 2 Active,Timer

I've swapped out the hardware and same results.

Any ideas?

I may be missing something but why do you need 2 separate VSA routines? Can't you simply have the laser start at 32.9secs on the 1st routine?

Hey Nelson,

Great question... what I'm trying to do is run a total of 7 or 8 routines and unless I'm mistaken (which I could be since I'm new to this) VSA has a limitation of roughly 32000 frames or 17 minutes. So one big VSA routine won't work for me although I did try it and it worked well with smaller time intervals.

Ultimately I'm looking to switch lights on my dance floor with no downtime and some of the lights take time to spin up. For example, moving from a laser to an LED could work if you get your timing just right but there would be a period of blackness, most likely interpreted as a flash by the audience. However, switching from any light to my scanners (fancy name for moving lights) won't work because they take 660 frames aka 21 seconds to spin up. Combine that with my time factor (each routine should be about 5 mins minimum with some stretching out to 15 for various combinations and I can't think of a way for me to pull this off just using VSA.

I also did some research on MonkeyBasic but I was told that I couldn't run multiple VSA routines at the same time which is what I need to do in this case so the lights overlap.

Does that help?

Also last night I switched laptops, and installed everything from scratch, no change so I think I can rule out hardware.

I don't believe VSA is limited to 32000 or 17 minutes. I know imports can have up to 65,535 events and I've create routines that were over 30mins long.

Worst case if you are limited in length, why not shut the lights off in the next routine. For example.
Routine 1 => Light A turns ON (stays ON at end of routine)
Routine 2 => Light B turns ON, Light A turns OFF (1 second into it)
Routine 3 => Light C turns ON, Light B turns OFF
and so on...

Also, you are correct, Helmsman (from MonkeyBasic) only plays 1 routine at a time (with the option to pre-load routines to minimize down time between).

Hope this helps.

Sounds like I need to play with VSA some more. If it can do it, you're right, one long VSA routine would be an option. Has anyone been able to duplicate my DMXorcist issue?