Up until now, the only gadget I've had in that ready-to-go form has been my remote buttons. I finally have a MIDI-controlled servo lying around that I could drop into a show that needed it. Although I have connected both Qlab and SCS with a lighting console, Qlab has almost always been the slave in the chain the lighting console has sent the MIDI command that keeps Qlab's sound events timing-locked to the console's lighting events. So far, practically, all I have done is used MIDI and micros to trigger sound effects from Qlab. You know which devices will respond because they are physically connected with MIDI cables, and the correspondences can all be made linear and logical instead of having the first relay be "fred" and the second relay be "ethel" and you've forgotten what name the third relay answers to, you know you always start with MIDI note number 1, so all you have to do is count up. I prefer using MIDI for the intermediary myself because I like the self-documenting aspect of that physical layer. Or reverse the sequence have Qlab's output translated into serial or USB output which then drives a relay board. The simplest form of this is to take a serial data input (such as the Arduino, which shows up as a COM port), and translate the serial stream into internal bus MIDI which Qlab will then read and act upon. Using simple software like Processing, you can write little translators that will act as go-betweens for serial devices, HID (like mice and keyboards), and internal and external MIDI ports. There are better solutions, however, to this particular physical connection! I have yet to find a device that my Arduinos have been unable to talk to.Ī couple more components (in the schematic I've been using, a diode, an opto-isolator, and a couple of resistors) allows the Arduino to receive MIDI via its serial port (I haven't yet tried this with Soft Serial but I have good reason to believe it may work.) It also may be possible for an Arduino to emulate USB well enough to fool a computer into accepting a MIDI signal via USB. As one example of designing a new physical layer, a single resistor is all you need to get an Arduino micro-controller to spit out not-quite-standard, but still quite readable MIDI. MIDI is, as a language, quite simple and robust, and so is the physical layer. It is when you geek out a little, though, that things really open up. I hasten to add that Sound Cue Systems and SFX also have these abilities, plus there are some other tricky ways you can get the same kinds of interactions with other software or even hardware options (I've done more than one show with an old Roland "Doctor Sampler.") A Korg nano-key has been good for that I double-stick tape it to the top of the sound board and mark off the "Go" and "rewind" keys with board tape and Sharpie. On the flip side of the interaction, I prefer using MIDI surfaces to control Qlab, as MIDI "Go" and "Stop" commands will execute regardless of where the cursor is or if Qlab is even focused. So Qlab could actually do something to a rafter. On a dance show a little while back we ran the entire show from Qlab, and while each music track was playing multiple Qlab auto-follow cues spat out MIDI Show Control commands to the lighting console, calling up non-sequential access lighting looks.Īnd when you include MIDI Show Control, there are motor controllers that respond to MIDI. There are lighting consoles (and some automated fixtures) that already speak MIDI. There are control surfaces (such as, the Korg nano series - I have seen video of a Korg nano-slider being used to control remote cameras in real time) Or the Behringer BCF2000, a motorized 8-fader control surface, that are already capable of communicating via MIDI. OSC gives you more detailed control and is the current choice among experimental musicians.īut MIDI is out there. I've seen workplaces with Mac Minis tucked behind display screens running video loops. What would Qlab do with a rafter? Or would it be ON a rafter? Since it is software, it can't "be" anywhere by itself, but you could certainly stick it on a Mac Mini and stick that in the rafters. (That particular search seems to turn up mostly references to James Bond computer games.!) I wonder what it was they were trying to find, and if anything I wrote was any help at all. Someone landed here using the above as a search term.
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