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How short can ramps be? |
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Pony_God 
Senior Member 
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Naples, FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 551 |
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 Topic: How short can ramps be?Posted: 11 Nov 2008 at 5:31pm |
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I'm doing a number of quick fadeouts on my mini trees that don't register at all. |
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ChrisL1976
Beta Testers 
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Kankakee, Ill Online Status: Offline Posts: 1341 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 11 Nov 2008 at 6:01pm |
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I'd think 0.05 is way too short for a fade....Heck, I think its too short for a full on command.
 I'd throw together a quick test sequences and try some different time lengths.....0.1 0.2 0.3 and so on until you get the look you want. I'm pretty sure I dont use anything under 0.1....and that normally on either side of a solid ON command of 0.1 or longer. You eyes just dont see something that fast. |
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Chris
www.lightsonsixth.com |
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LightsOnLogan
Admin Group 
Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3187 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 11 Nov 2008 at 6:13pm |
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0.05 is an acceptable ramp duration. There is a firmware issue with 1.15 (beta) that D-Light is aware of where short duration ramps are concerned. If you downgrade the controller firmware to 1.14 or 1.13 the problem might go away (but the old problems that those firmwares have will reappear). I expect that once 1.15 is a release firmware this will be fixed, but only D-Light can answer that (I too am waiting BTW.. I have some 0.35 ramps that are glitching on 1.15 that render properly in earlier firmwares). Edited by LightsOnLogan - 11 Nov 2008 at 6:19pm |
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ChrisL1976
Beta Testers
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Kankakee, Ill Online Status: Offline Posts: 1341 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 11 Nov 2008 at 8:30pm |
You are right......0.05 does show up..........looks about equal to the shimmer command...Maybe is was 0.01 I was thinking....There was a big discussion on PC about this.. Edited by ChrisL1976 - 11 Nov 2008 at 8:34pm |
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Chris
www.lightsonsixth.com |
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Pony_God
Senior Member
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Naples, FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 551 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 12 Nov 2008 at 9:00am |
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Ah, alright, wasn't shure if it was hardware, software, or not valid. I have two main places that I use really short ramps.
1. Think begining of "Wish Liszt" BaDummmBaDummm, although, those could be converted to ONs without a problem.
2. Think "Carol of The Bells" BummmDaDaBummm. That would be the hard one to fix because I have the roof ridges/eves/outline as the main notes so I would have had to add an off to every single marker.
So other than the short ramps in 15beta, did I miss anything else? I havn't seen anything else funny going on. Any idea when 15 will be out of beta?
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LightsOnLogan
Admin Group
Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3187 |
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Posted: 12 Nov 2008 at 11:44am |
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If we must get this specific, 0.0154s is the fastest interval the protocol will recognize. Anything shorter is rendered by Aurora as 0.0154s.
FYI... that is 1/65th of a second. The human eye isn't even that fast... anything less than 0.02s might as well be rendered as on/off since it really doesn't matter anyway at those speeds. Edited by LightsOnLogan - 12 Nov 2008 at 11:47am |
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Pony_God
Senior Member
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Naples, FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 551 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 12 Nov 2008 at 11:59am |
That's about what I want... Kind of a sudo "blink" command.
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LightsOnLogan
Admin Group
Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Online Status: Offline Posts: 3187 |
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Posted: 12 Nov 2008 at 12:47pm |
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Send a 100% shimmer for a really short time (the command compresses really well for fast send and if you keep it short you should only get one firing pulse)?
BTW, 0.0154s is a limitation of ramps in the protocol, not of Aurora. The Aurora editor can go down to 0.001 resolution. Playback itself is limited to the frame size settings in playback properties (1280 is the default, which works out to 0.01451s). You can use a smaller frame size (e.g. 512) to gain better resolution, but you risk dropping frames if the COM can't keep up with the amount of commands you are sending in a single frame (I don't recommend messing with it!).
Since we are ducumenting these settings, I might as well touch on "frame offset" as well. The "frame offset" setting compensates for "protocol lag" (the amount of time it takes to send all of the bytes out the COM port). To compensate, the data being sent out is this number of frames ahead of where we actually are at. The default of "2" should be fine for most users. If the lights in the yard seem to come on sooner than in your visualiation, then a lower value can be used. If they seem to come on later then a higher value can be used.
If you are using speakers instead of an FM transmitter, you can compensate for the speed of sound being slower than the speed of light with the frame offset setting as well. Just use one of the negative number settings to make the lights go on later than in the visualizer. Trial and error at the street is best to fine tune this, but if you want the math:
Frame Size / 88200 * Frame Offset * -1 = Delay (in seconds)
The speed of sound is about 1125 feet per second (it varies with atmospheric conditions). If your speakers are 100 feet from the listener, this results in a propagation delay of 100/1125 = 0.09 seconds (very noticable). With a frame size of 1280, this works out to about -6. Add a couple in for protrocol lag and a setting of about -4 will time align the speakers with the lights. Edited by LightsOnLogan - 12 Nov 2008 at 12:48pm |
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Pony_God
Senior Member
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Naples, FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 551 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 12 Nov 2008 at 1:53pm |
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Do we really need to work with the speed of light to put christmas light up... Do we get time on Nasa's super computer too?
Hum... short shimmer, I'll see how that looks.
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Pony_God
Senior Member
Joined: 01 Sep 2008 Location: Naples, FL Online Status: Offline Posts: 551 |
Quote Reply
Posted: 20 Nov 2008 at 6:30pm |
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Alright, so I'm back at 1.14 so that I can get short ramps on the controllers, but they still do not display.
Now, I'm still running Aurora 1.02.
I did some testing, and a ramp that is shorter than .15 seconds does not show up at all, anything longer seems to be fine.
So I tested 100% intencity commands, they work down to .03, then it seems as though the TRIACs can't keep up and the lights start to go really funny. By funny, I mean that they might not all turn on, and will most likely not be at 100%.
So, if I _should_ be able to do a ramp .05, what an I doing wrong?
I have all of the controllers set to auto rate, standard 1280 frame, Aurora 1.0.2, fw/ 1.14, and lets call it 100' of cat5. Edited by Pony_God - 20 Nov 2008 at 10:17pm |
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