Tactile Surfaces on control desks

[Congo]

Yes I agree that HSV is a great way of selecting color,

its limitation thought is all desks that implement do so via a fixture library reference to either fixed colour wheel or CMY or RGB depending on what the fixuture has. but with no optoin to add in say CTO or amber or green or white , yes you could say that its up to LED fixture manufactures to make up for a lighting Desks inability to cope with more than 3 channels of colour mixing, but nearly all 1200w moving heads have variable CTO, which we expect and want full command of, then again how many people use it.

 

One great advantage of any screen based desk or OLED Buttons based desk is that the software and functionality can move forward and change with the times, as long as the human interface does not get to suck in its ways,

I think it will be an interesting few years ahead, with more and more manufactures launching USB wings and PC and Mac software, multi-touch touch screens soon to be readily avaliable, add into the mix a slowly increasing number of Video Lights from ( highend, robe, Barco,) which really are not easy to control from a lighting desk quickly.

 

amazing where we are now to what we had 24 years ago

http://www.strandarchive.co.uk/control/c_m.../tempusm24.html

 

Good luck with this Michael it will be interesting to see what you come up with. Mark

[Nick S]

Yes I agree that HSV is a great way of selecting color,

its limitation thought is all desks that implement do so via a fixture library reference to either fixed colour wheel or CMY or RGB depending on what the fixuture has. but with no optoin to add in say CTO or amber or green or white

 

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you here, but surely if a console implements this via a fixture library, the profile for a four color fixture should....contain four color attributes??? Desks can and do support more than three color attributes. The Eos I use for example has six encoders - two for pan/tilt, and four for whatever I want. As in, four colour attributes.

 

It's really up to fixture manufacturers to provide data and fixture profiles for instruments that use additional color wheels outside of RGB/CMY. Some do put a lot of effort into this (Ocean Optics, for example), whereas others don't...

[mac.calder]

Nick, it is more to do with how the colour picker works - ie mapping only to three colour channels. So when you use a colour picker in HSV, most desks will create an RGB or CMY value based on what you have selected, and pump them down the three channels, not taking into account that it may have magic amber etc - so the idea is that all fixtures with colour mixing should accept a three channel colour (best option would be to accept HSV) and then do the calculations internally to create the relative intensities of it's various colour mixing apparatus, instead of asking the desk to supply a channel for each item (ie give the fixtures some of the intelligence people credit them with having).

[scottmcleod]

You guys are ALL missing the point.

 

Today's consoles don't give a crap about what lights you have in the air, or how you're controlling them. They're strictly translators (and that's the hardest part). Picking colours is going through a swatchbook, or taking a complementary swatch off of the lead's outfit.

 

As for inputs, the mentality should be the same. Your device should be a touch screen at it's core, but allow for fader wings, button wings, encoder wings, etc... Maybe even as modular "blocks" or something along those lines.

 

What blew me away about the Strand LP and ETC Eos consoles is how EASY and NON TECHNICAL they were. That's where your true power comes in.

 

Why re-invent the wheel. It doesn't need re-inventing at the moment. Strand & ETC just blew everyone else out of the water.

 

(Take with grain of salt. I'm in a rotten mood today because I lost 3 hours of recordings from a show I did a month ago...)

[niclights]

Take with grain of salt. I'm in a rotten mood today

 

Clearly! :)

 

As for inputs, the mentality should be the same. Your device should be a touch screen at it's core, but allow for fader wings, button wings, encoder wings, etc... Maybe even as modular "blocks" or something along those lines.

 

I really don't think there is any 'should' about it. The topic is about what users want & many, including myself, will place much greater value on physical faders and buttons in preference to touch-screens and expansion modules etc. For me the latter would just be inconvenient. This is not an argument, but a reminder that there is no right & wrong, this being the very point of the topic.

 

Regarding the whole colour-control thing, given software can do anything within reason I would suggest the user can have all the various options available, should they wish. ie. colour pickers which translate/different models and (always IMO) a way to control a units channels directly.

[daemon]

Perhaps I'm showing my age here a little but in terms of buttons and a control surface nothing IMHO beats the Obsession II. Buttons all seem to be in the right spot, and the quality of the buttons is amazing. They work if you hit them softly but they also allow you to really bang 'em when you feel like it.

 

In terms of interface design I think the most important thing in consistency. I'd much prefer to be able to do the job properly and look at the stage and let muscle memory find the right buttons than have to keep looking at the control surface or monitors to see what is going on.

[Andrew C]

Somewhere in the dim and distant a similar question came up.

 

I mused on the possibility of a big TFT/ plasma touch screen that you could lay out however you like working. Eos this week, SP80 next, and a 500 series for the next show.

 

That said, for personal preference, nice clicky keys and faders please! :)

[MarkPAman]

I mused on the possibility of a big TFT/ plasma touch screen that you could lay out however you like working.

 

A bit like this one? :)

 

I'd love that to be part of my desk, but would still like sliders & buttons too. I'm yet to be really happy with any rotary encoder I've used though, they always seem to be too fast or too slow.

[norty303]

they always seem to be too fast or too slow.

 

Given that a lot of desks seem to give a wide range of fader curve options, it would be nice to have a similar option for the rotaries, instead of just 'fine' or 'standard', perhaps on a sliding scale.

 

Matt at Chamsys, can you add this to the feature requests list please? :)

[mac.calder]

There was a demo on the interweb I saw about three months ago dealing with "Coffee Table" PC which I always thought would make a cool interface - it is basically a multi-touch screen, however it also interacts with special objects - tracking things like their rotation etc.

- it is not an overly practical implementation, but many of the principals are still sort of cool.

[smalljoshua]

Micro$oft Make a Similar one

 

Josh

[niclights]

Given that a lot of desks seem to give a wide range of fader curve options, it would be nice to have a similar option for the rotaries, instead of just 'fine' or 'standard', perhaps on a sliding scale.

 

Avo Pearl (all variants) have some options here: Slow/medium/fast in either linear or one of two different 'accelerated' type systems - ie. subtle movement gives fine control and faster gives more coarse. Additionally you define this speed to two separate levels where you switch between by pressing attribute a second time (solid/flashing LED denotes mode). Finally you can hold [shift] for very fast useful for going to full or zero quickly.

[peter]

Given that a lot of desks seem to give a wide range of fader curve options, it would be nice to have a similar option for the rotaries, instead of just 'fine' or 'standard', perhaps on a sliding scale.

Our Leap Frog 48 & 96 and Frog 2 have this option - The Wheel Sensitivity can be set in a %, with 50% being the 'default' behaviour.

[N@ V]

Interesting... I'm embarking on a similar project. :-)

 

Mines written in Delphi, mainly because of the raw speed I can get with it (imagine hitting go and having .net re-jit the console code or doing a big garbage collect before actually doing anything?).

 

My console has two levels, a command line interface for the experienced ops who know what they are doing, and a point and click based one. An operator will be able to use either or mix and match as much as they want. I'm not keen on a glitzy GUI, only one that is functional and elegant, without straying from the windows standard too far (having to hold down CTRL when selecting multiple channels would get VERY boring).

 

My project is starting small, and I am aiming for the small theatres with a low budget, so will start out "cue based". Not sure how I'm going to make the interface easy to "busk" on yet, although I have some plans (after all, that's primarily how I use a strand 300 where I work).

 

I have also considered the whole question of the tactile interface. My first step will be to optimise the console for use with a standard PC keyboard or a notebook keyboard with a USB numeric keypad, possibly one with function key buttons on the top (like this one). POS keyboards also look like a cheap workable solution. There are also some USB shuttle/jog wheels (used for AV software) that might be used in conjunction with keyboards. After that, maybe looking into some of the wings available on the market, or look into the cost of producing a custom one myself.

 

Anyway there's my thoughts... :-)

[dbuckley]

Hmmm... lighting control package, written in Delphi, both command line interface and point 'n click controls, cue based, sounds awfully like PCStage :)

 

I'm quite happy to hold down ctrl (or shift) whilst clicking channels, works for excel...

 

You can't truly busk a PC effectively, in my opinion, it needs external surfaces, so having the computer lighting control program accept DMX512 and using an existing simple light desk as a surface is one option, or use MIDI and any of the numerous MIDI surfaces.

 

POS keyboards are a good idea, one I've used myself, for a more well known example, check out the half hog