ADJ Mega PAR Profile Plus issues

[Prototype45]

Hi. I’m having some issues with my first Beam experiments and would like to share.
I’m using a ADJ Mega PAR Profile Plus connected through an Enttec ODE MK2 plugged directly into my MacBook Pro through Ethernet. I’m using Beam 1.3.0 in Ableton Live 11.1.1

Following procedure, my Par light is in DMX mode and, since I’m testing with this light only, I have selected adresses 1 to 10.

Going to Beam, I created a fixture profile using Stairville LED Par, which seemed to be close to the ADJ Par I’m using. I created a Universe 1 and Address 1. As a Tag, I simply put par 1 accompanied by C3 as a note value. Added my fixture.

Going to Ableton Live, I created a track in which I added a Par.amxd as an instrument. I added four C3 notes in a loop.

My issue, thanks for your patience, is when I press on play, my light remains off with no reaction. If I manually change my parameters in my Par instrument, my Par light has no reaction at all.

Can anyone help me out please? Am I missing something?
Am I using the wrong parameters with my ADJ Par lamp?
Have I misunderstood the Universes and Addresses?

Thanks so much for your help.
Sincerely

[Luka]

Hi,

The fact that you are not seeing your light turn on is most likely due to one of these two reasons:

1. Did you specify the correct IP address for your Art-Net node? You can see if the ODE MK2 is receiving Art-Net data if the ACTIVITY light on the node is blinking.

2. You are using a fixture profile with a channel layout that doesn’t match your fixture.

   Looking at the DMX implementation of your fixture, I see it has 4/5/6/9/10-channel modes.
   On the other hand, the Stairville LED Par profile (that comes with Beam) only has 3 channels (red, green, blue). Except in the 4-channel mode, this will not be enough to make your light turn on - the 5/6/9/10-channel modes also require the Dimmer channel to be active. Either way, it is best to use a fixture profile that exactly matches your fixture.

   Here are the 6-channel and 10-channel mode profiles for your fixture:
   ADJ Mega Par Profile Plus - 6ch.sbf (1.2 KB)
   ADJ Mega Par Profile Plus - 10ch.sbf (1.8 KB)

   Please try one of these (after you have set the corresponding DMX channel mode on your fixture) and see if you are able to turn the light on.

   I would recommend also having a look at Beam’s Monitor to confirm that Beam is actually sending any DMX after turning the Intensity up in a device in Live. When the color is set to white and Intensity is at 100%, the values in the Monitor (for your fixture in the 6 or 10 channel mode) should look like this:
   

   

Let me know if any of this helps.

[LNG]

I have been having the same issue with the same lights but running through USB with a dmx box. The fixture profiles seem correct after referencing the manual but I can only have partial control in ch4 mode. Can you help?

[Luka]

Hi @LNG,

The conversation with @Prototype45 about this continued over email and the issue was resolved in the end. It turned out to be a combination of a wrong fixture profile in the beginning (the one in the post above worked), network adapter/Art-Net configuration and having the Shutter/Strobe channel (5) set to 0 (which results in the LEDs of the fixture being OFF).

In your case:

• I just checked the fixture profile for ADJ Mega Par Profile Plus - 10ch that’s now included with Beam (that was not yet the case a year ago) and it appears that it is corrupted and some channels are swapped. Sorry for the confusion.

  The one in the post above should work, but please use this updated version with a different name than the one in Beam’s Factory profiles (to avoid a name collision):
  ADJ Mega Par Profile Plus - 10ch - FIXED.sbf
  Copy it to the Fixture Profiles/User folder (which you can find by going to Beam > Fixture Profiles…) and restart Beam in order for the profile to become available in the Patch Editor.

• The Shutter/Strobe channel is now by default set to 255, but if you use the shutterstrobe modulation in a Beam device in Live, make sure to set that parameter to 100% if you want the LEDs of the fixture to be ON.

Let me know if this helps!

[LNG]

Thank you!
Will test it out tonight.
Also unrelated but wondering if you know anything about issues with Beam and M2 Macbooks.
I tried using a different set of lights with my intel Macbook and it worked fine, same lights still can’t seem to connect to my new M2 Macbook.

[Luka]

Sounds good!

We are not aware of any issues with running Beam on Apple silicon computers. To discuss this, please open a new thread and provide more details about your configuration.

[LNG]

Finally got it working but the strobe function isn’t working in Beam/Ableton. Testing the light in Beam only works with the profile you sent and making custom fixture profiles for either 6ch or 10ch mode, the light doesn’t respond at all. Any idea why this might be happening?

[Luka]

Strobe device

Finally got it working but the strobe function isn’t working in Beam/Ableton.

Strobe device is not the appropriate choice for this type of fixture - please use the Generic device instead and choose the shutterstrobe modulation. Read on to understand this better:

As the manual mentions, the Strobe device supports controlling strobe-specific parameters stroberate and strobeduration, which map nicely to the dedicated strobe rate and strobe duration channels where the entire channel is used for continuous control of a single property (DMX values 0-255 representing 0%-100%), such as the channels 2 and 3 of Martin Atomic 3000:

However, the Shuttter/Strobe channel on ADJ Mega Par Profile Plus is a slot-based channel, where multiple different DMX ranges within 0-255 correspond to different properties/functions:

To emphasize this difference, I mapped this channel to the shutterstrobe modulation keyword in the fixture profile above:

This means that the Rate and Duration parameters of the Strobe device will not work with this profile and it is more appropriate to use the Generic instrument instead, where you can select any available modulation.

You could still make it work with the Strobe device by changing the shutterstrobe modulation keyword to stroberate in the fixture profile and setting the Range (in the Patch Editor) for stroberate to something like 64 to 96, to only use the STROBING SLOW - FAST and the LED ON parts of the channel (see the fixture’s DMX chart above).

Then the Rate parameter of the Strobe device will actually control the strobing rate intensity between 0 and 100%.

Test button

Testing the light in Beam only works with the profile you sent and making custom fixture profiles for either 6ch or 10ch mode, the light doesn’t respond at all. Any idea why this might be happening?

The Test button only sets the DMX value to 255 for channels that have dim, red, green, blue and white modulations mapped to them. This fixture has a Shutter/Strobe channel that needs to be set to a specific value (e.g. 255) in order for the light to turn on, even without strobing, otherwise it is OFF:

Since the Test button doesn’t (currently*) have any impact on shutterstrobe channel, you will not see the light turning on if that channel is at 0.

One way of working around this is setting the default value (the DMX value that Beam outputs if you don’t tell it to output anything else, e.g. by adding a device) for that channel to 255, to ensure that it is in the LED ON state when pressing the Test button:

Download here: ADJ Mega Par Profile Plus - 6ch - FIXED.sbf

Alternatively you can of course always just use a Generic device to test things.

*we are planning some upgrades around this area

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Let me know if this makes sense. If you still have issues with one of your custom fixture profiles, feel free to post it here and we will have a look.