HE10 Port interface details

[peteknobloch]

Hi,
I maintain a large Pipe Organ in Mesa AZ and we are planing to move to LED lighting in the near future. We intend to get a SLESA-UE7 which will be running in a stand alone mode. There are 11 buttons currently on the console for controlling 10 scenes. With DMX we plan to add a lot more than what we have now. We also have other functions like Screen, black-out and flag buttons that will also require triggering new scenes. All of this under control of the Organist.
I have already looked at the http://www.nicolaudie.com/online_manual ... Js2LoL.htm but it doesn't give me enough information about designing an interface between the Organ and the Lights.

I will be using the HE10 port being driven by a special board. The CPU on this board will send a binary value from 1-255 to the HE10 port. Right now I plan on using about 45 to 50 possible scene changes.

1.) How long must I keep this value on the port (contacts closed) so it will be recognized as a scene change?
2.) If a scene change was just selected, now long do I have to wait before I try to output a new scene change? This will be done by opening up all the contacts, waiting for some time, then closing the contacts again to select the new scene. What should the wait time be to guarantee the new change?

I am asking these because there may will be cases where a scene would be automatically started because of a function being turned off and the organist wants to over-ride the default scene change with a different one using one of the manual select buttons.
Pete

[simonB]

Hi Pete

1.) How long must I keep this value on the port (contacts closed) so it will be recognized as a scene change?
2.) If a scene change was just selected, now long do I have to wait before I try to output a new scene change

The device checks the port state each 40MS so be sure the ports are connected for at least 40ms to avoid messages being missed. Once the port is released, the scene is still held. If a new port is triggered, the running scene will be overridden.

[peteknobloch]

Your answer of 40ms makes me feel good. So I will probably use a value of 250ms just to make sure.

My next questions:

1.) What happens if I put an undefined scene trigger on the HE10 port. I am hoping that they will do nothing.
2.) I can't find any way for me to define a NEXT scene function from the HE10 port. Is there some hidden NEXT function?
3.) I am starting to wonder if I should be using another product other than the SLESA-UE7? We are trying to create an interface that the Organist can select scenes in a Live environment even though we are using a Building type model of your product.

If #2 doesn't support a NEXT scene function, I plan on doing this in my own interface board. I will define a button on the Organ Console that will just increment the last scene number and output it to the HE10 port. I plan to define all the main button scene triggers every 5 values (5, 10, 15, 20,. . .) As an example if a button on the console selects trigger 15 then that scene will be run. If the NEXT button is pressed, then I would trigger the scene defined as trigger 16. This would give me 5 next scenes for all of the defined buttons on the console. This is one of the reasons why I want undefined scene triggers to do nothing. I may even implement a PREVIOUS button.

Pete

[simonB]

1.) What happens if I put an undefined scene trigger on the HE10 port. I am hoping that they will do nothing.

Correct

2.) I can't find any way for me to define a NEXT scene function from the HE10 port. Is there some hidden NEXT function?

This is not possible. However there is are 'next' and 'previous' dry contact ports on the internal HE10 socket. More information on the pin configuration can be found in the datasheet here:
http://www.nicolaudie.com/downloads/fil ... asheet.pdf

3.) I am starting to wonder if I should be using another product other than the SLESA-UE7? We are trying to create an interface that the Organist can select scenes in a Live environment even though we are using a Building type model of your product.

If you only need to trigger 1 scene at a time, this should be fine. However if you need to combine multiple scenes, Sunlite Suite 2 live with a PC along with a MIDI controller could be a better way forward

[peteknobloch]

Thanks Simon,
I will probably not use the internal port since my controller will know which scene was just last triggered (less hardware).
Don't know if we want to go to the Suite 2. Mainly because of use of the PC. Our current lighting system has only be able to set 10 static scenes and the Organist's are OK with this operation. I was hoping to be able to select a scene then have another button that would just modify a few of the fixtures of the last scene. Will post another question in a new thread after reading more of the documentation. Again thanks for your help.