ALBION & Lighting consoles integration (guide)

This is the written guide for ALBION & Lighting consoles integration, and a video version of it can be found in the following article: ALBION & Lighting consoles integration (video)

This guide will show you how to:

• Link a pre-programmed light console project to PHOTON;

• Extract lighting fixtures IDs and Attributes;

• Merge predefined fixtures groups to optical markers;

• Assign lighting fixtures groups to optical markers;

• Automate lighting fixture movements with tracking data.

Description

Completing the steps listed above will allow the lighting designer to fully use PHOTON and ALBION’s optical tracking features and show previsualization tool.

Since this product’s integration is built on lighting console project XML exports, the lighting designer will not have to reprogram lighting fixtures in the PHOTON’s interface.

Besides providing a WYSIWYG-like previsualization feature and interactive control over moving lights in 3D, the initial lighting fixture calibration process will also be greatly eased by this products integration.

Even once the console is connected to PHOTON, the lighting designer will still be able to work directly from the board and ride the pots to modify lighting patterns and change lighting fixtures assignations on the fly without having to deal with the media server interface.

This step-by-step document has been strictly developed for MA Lighting’s grandMA consoles product series.

PHOTON and the lighting console will communicate through the Art-Net or sACN protocol. Please make sure that both the server and the console are on the same network and that Art-Net or sACN is enabled in the grandMA network settings.

The Art-Net protocol is built on class A address scheme. They range from 2.1.1.1 to 2.255.255.255 for the primary address or 10.1.1.1 to 10.255.255.255 for the secondary address.

We highly recommend using sACN over Art-Net. sACN is far less stressful for networks and much more efficient on terms of processing than Art-Net. The sACN protocol allows the user to choose between multicast and unicast transmission. Also, the grandMA will automatically throttle the framerate from 42 fps to 1 fps if no changes are made to parameters within a Universe. (Normal operation will resume once parameters are modified.) Finally, sACN is mostly used in modern lighting networks, while Art-Net relates to older lighting technology.

Lexicon

• Fixture layer: a complete layer of fixtures used in the current grandMA project.

• Fixture type: the definition of a specific DMX fixture.