Strobe and Dimmer Channel?

[soakes94]

How easy would it be for someone with no expereince with pic code writing to add a strobing channel and dimmer channel? I have some LED RGB floods that I want to react like commercial RGB floods and so I'm looking for a strobe channel and a dimmer channel that would then control the physical channels on the pic. So channel 1 would be a code channel and would make channels 3,4,5 (R,G,B) strobe and channel 2 would be a dimmer channel which would control channels 3,4,5 (R,G,B)

I dont know how much sense this makes and how easy it would be to work into the DMX PIC16F688 firmware.

Any ideas?

[chilloutdocdoc]

I've never worked with this at all, but I will be adding it to my DMX design (hopefully) so I will let you know how things go when I start. There should be a lot of examples out in the world as to how to do it. Never really taken a look at the Ren firmware or the Ren DMX firmware to test it out.

[soakes94]

Cheers :)

[P. Short]

I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. Can't the strobing and dimming be done directly from Vixen, without adding anything to the controller?

[soakes94]

Would DMX be able to carry the strobe signal? I tried strobing before with DMX and it seemed to be recieving to many signals and once and stuttered.

[David_AVD]

Strobing via DMX (software side) can be problematic when the timing of the on or off clashes (beats) with the DMX update rate.

When the DMX update rate is much faster than the strobe rate there is no issue, as the "timing uncertainty" is small as a percentage of the on and off times.

So, having the controller do strobing does have it's merits, especially at high flash rates.

[P. Short]

Back to the original question ... I don't think that would be easy at all for someone with no PIC experience to add it to the module. Or at least, not for someone without micro-controller assembly language experience. I'm still not sure exactly what effect you want to achieve, but I'm wondering if something off-board (like that strobe that Mactayl et. al. created for use with the Simple Renard) might work for you.

[soakes94]

Ive got lots of different kinds of fixtures all made to fit something on my house or in my garden and I want to be able to make them strobe like a strobe light however when I just try strobing through DMX I have issues as David_AVD described so I was hoping to add a channel to the PIC that just strobed the output channels that were turned up. Like a commercial LED PAR CAN where channel 1 is dimmer, channel 2 is strobe and 3,4 & 5 are RGB. I have experience writing in visual basic and I tried a bit of C# I think it was but thats it really. I'm happy to learn how to do it I just need to be pointed to where I can get my lines of code.

[David_AVD]

To be honest, it's probably a non trivial task for you to add a strobe function yourself if you have no prior experience with PIC programming.

[soakes94]

Would anyone feel like adding the strobe fuction into the DMX pic16f688 firmware for me? If its a big task i understand if people would rather not. I don't mind about the dimming function that much, it can be done through the software.

Steve

[P. Short]

At the moment I have no idea of what you want the controller to do. I'm not likely to actually do anything about it unless it turns out be of some general interest, but without a clearer picture I can't even judge this.

[soakes94]

I want to be able to strobe the channels that are enabled using a seperate channel. So channel 1 is the strobe function and depending how high a signal is being sent depends on the strobe speed so, if channel 1 is set at 0 there is no strobing but when channel 1 is set to 255 the channels that are active strobe. So lets say I have a RGB flood that has Red set at 255, Green set at 128 and Blue set at 64. When Channel 1 (strobe channel) is set at 0 my flood creates an organe flood but as I increase channel 1, the light starts to flash on and off, and when I reach full intensity on channel 1 the flood light is strobing at maybe 20Hz. When I talk about channel 1 I dont mean as in a physical channel, its a channel within the PIC that determins if the physical channels (2-9) strobe and if they do strobe at what speed they strobe.

I hope this makes sense

[soakes94]

I was hoping for something like this http://www.instructables.com/id/DMX-512-LED-Controller-w-LED-Display/

But with 8 channels and having the strobe channel at the start as channel 1.

Steve

[mschell]

This is typical for an intelligent DMX fixture. If you set the first channel for the fixture to higher than 128 (DMX uses 255 levels), the light output of the fixture strobes at a certain rate. Higher channel values increase the strobe rate. The second to fourth DMX channels set the RGB value, and sometimes higher DMX channels (relative to the base address) do special functions.

So Steve is looking to change the basic DMX firmware to have a channel value change the behavior of other channels, such as strobing whatever color is specified on channels 2-4. Since the value is local to the PIC, the PIC can do the strobing without worrying about resending channel values.

[P. Short]

It's not to hard to do, especially if you are using an external oscillator (current default for DMX version of the Renard firmware). However, now is not the time for me to do a Tom Sawyer project, although I'm willing to answer questions if someone else wants to do it.

[soakes94]

mschell is right, I want channel 1 to strobe or not strobe the physical channels. He msaid channels 2-4 however if possible I would want it to be all physical channels as I have some RGB+W+UV lights and some RGB+Amber so it would be channel 1 sets the strobe rate and channel 2-9 would be the output to the transistors.

I hope this all makes sense. I would do it myself however pic code is something I sadly have not mastered even to make a LED blink never mind turning DMX protocol into flashy lights.

Steve

[soakes94]

Would anyone be willing to do this for me? I don't know how much of a demand there is for this kind of firmware, I also dont know what would need to be done to create the firmware so I don't know if its a big ask or not.

I would really appreciate it if someone was able to create it but if its a big task I can understand why you'd rather not.

Thanks Steve

[chilloutdocdoc]

Steve,

I'll put this on the list of things I'd like to see happen out of the DC DMX firmware I'm working on. No grantees though.

Shoot me a pm