jevans3142 / adc-bar-lx

Bar lighting controller for the ADC Theatre

ADC Theatre - Bar Lighting Controller

This repository hosts the software and hardware design for the ADC Theatre's bar lighting scene controller. The system is based around an ESP32 chip (using a development board typicaly found online as the DOIT board - 30 pin version, though as we are not using WiFi or Bluetooth etc the hardware could be easily adapted to another chip version) with DMX input and output, audio input for sound-to-light mode, and a remote scene set control panel.

Features

• Provides seven reprogrammable scenes which can be faded between from the easy to use remote control panel
• DMX input for programming scenes with highest-takes-precedence merge function for operating a more complex show without recabling
• Sound-to-light function for parties with four analogue filter channels to replicate an older system. Party functions can be enabled and disabled per scene
• Small OLED screen and menu system on the central rackmount controller for configuration
• In the event of power being disconnected the DMX input is directly connected to the output using relays to make bypass easy
• All scenes and settings are stored on an SD card

Build

The microcontroller used is an ESP32. After standard installation of the esp-idf FreeRTOS toolchain, currently building on v5.1.1 as a stable version with the configuration included in the src folder (ie. when building do not run the idf.py set-target esp32 command as directed in the esp-idf Getting Started instructions to set up the default build config - just go straight to idf.py build)

Hardware

PCB files in KiCAD format:

• Power supply
• Mainboard
• Sound-to-light
• Buttons (front panel)
• Remote control panel

In addition there are files for Schaeffer AG's FrontPanelDesigner application covering:

• Case including front and back panels
• Remote control panel

There are 3DM model files for two 3D printed elements:

• A bracket to hold the OLED screen to the case frontpanel
• A bracket to hold the SD card module to the case frontpanel

In addition to the standard components populating the PCBs one ESP32 'DOIT' style devboard, an SD card breakout module, and an OLED screen module are required, all purchased from eBay. Multiple spares are held of each item by John if required for the ADC.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2019-2022 John Evans and contributors.

adc-bar-lx's Issues

draw_byte() does not respect "type" field for drawing

draw_byte, which is called by the text drawing functions, defaults to using 'WHITE' draw mode regardless of what parameter was passed to the calling function.

S2L meters draw randomly over the top of the menus at incorrect points

When no SD card loaded, S2L and colourfade scene enables undefined?

No proper setup to ensure these arrive in sensible configs if no SD card settings loaded?

When unplugging external lighting desk input buffer is frozen in last state

When unplugging an external lighting desk the values should not hold but instead be reset to zero for the HTP merge

Screen refresh very slow

Total screen refreshes as implemented in screen_refresh() are very visually apparent. Blanking the display during the refresh hasn't made it better, neither has altering the I2C speed.

Possible fixes

• Implement a partial refresh for only a defined area of the screen (wish to do anyway for live data etc)
• We're creating and deleting the I2C command link many, many times per refresh. Why did I write it like this? Surely this is stupid...

DMX Input fails to read after channel 480

This is because the UART is triggering a data event every 120 bytes which is the default - during a break event the last set of bytes get lost.

See:
espressif/esp-idf#4537

Effects should fade rather than snap when scenes change

Front floods control

Control of building front floods and other FOH DMX devices: would require a major rewrite to accomodate second control panel, possibly second DMX output

Settings file to be plaintext rather than binary

• Makes it easier to edit and review on computer
• More resilient to changes - can use default values for anything not present. See similar storage module in sm-desk-video-switcher project

Up/down button ballistics

When using the up and down buttons in menu screens, holding the up and down button should speed up entry to reduce button hammering

Add controls for LED floods for party mode

Inconsistency in integer data types used

Across all files. Sort out using signed vs. unsigned. Remove unneeded data checks >0 when using unsigned.

Using HTP merge from other lighting desk results in odd flashes

Believed to be when output routine can't take the mutex in time from the input code when the two threads are trying to both read and write the incoming DMX buffer at the same time. Solution will be to double buffer or similar.

SD card IO on seperate task to speed up UI

SD card IO is currently done inline with refreshing the screen. IO could be performed in the background to improve snappyness