How to trigger an effect through midi

[puchelaar]

Hi,

I'm touring with a small show. I took over from another techie, who programmed lxconsole.

I figured out how everything works, apart from 1 thing; he programmed an effect in the Effects window. It triggers a small motor that is plugged in a dimmer.

So: motor > dimmer > patch to channel 40 > channel 40 is NOT in the cues, but only in the Effects.


We're triggering all the cues via midi from qlab, except this effect. For that he has to mouse over to the effects windows, trigger the effect, mouse as quickly as possible back to qlab and trigger the next cues at the same time.

The reason for this is that if the little motor is not shut off after 7 secs, it will start to break a part of the set immediately behind this.

Now I've added a Korg Nanokontroll2 into the midi-mix, so I can control some subs through faders. Ideally I would like to control the effect through a button or knob on the Korg, in a way that I push a toggle or momentary switch on the Korg, which should trigger CH40 to switch on for 7 secs and than switch off.


Is it possible to do that?


Kind regards from the Netherlands

[admin]

You can start the effect using a MIDI control change from the nanoKONTROL. This is in the Setup window's MIDI tab. With MIDI input enabled, click the "Detect" button.

Then, press a button on the nanoKONTROL. You should see the corresponding control number appear in the detection field (eg. "cc-3").

Click the + button to add an action triggered by the detected control change.

Use the combo box in the Action Command column to find "EFXstart:". Click the command text to add the name of the effect (eg. "EFXstart:Effect 1").

You can click the "Test" to confirm that the selected command starts the effect.

Effects have always needed to be stopped. You could repeat the above process to add and "EFXstop:Effect 1" action command assigned to the control change sent by a different button on the nanoKONTROL.

But, to do what your post requests, you will need to use the very latest build of LXConsole (under "Other Downloads"). v5.5.6 (14014.1) adds a duration setting to the Master tab of the effect editor. When specified, the effect automatically stops after running for the duration time. But, as always with new latest build versions, test carefully before using in a live production.

[puchelaar]

Hi Claude,

I don't have the nanokotrol2 here at the moment, so I can't try to implement it the way you describe.

Yesterday evening I did manage to get it working though (I think). I was not in a theater though, so was only able to look at what happened to the effect and the channel.

As I said; the other techie had already programmed the show and therefore also the effect. When clicking start in the Effects window, everything works as it should.

What I did yesterday, after reading this post https://www.macluxpro.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1017 , is add the effect to a sub (by typing it's name in the options tab under the subs window) and then a fader, and then made that fader accept a toggle from the Nanokontrol 2.

I'm using LXconsole 5.5.0, build 13526.1 btw.

Thanks for the quick reply.