Automated Fixtures Moving Light Auto Tracking App

[TitaniumFish]

So I'm in the process of developing with my brother (who is a computer engineer) and app that will allow moving lights to locate you on a predefined area and then focus to wherever you are standing. I currently am imaging this as a method to quickly build focus pallets. It is currently very rough as it is the early stages of development and only functions for the ION (as it is the board I am most familiar with and is the most accessible for me to test)

I am currently unaware of an app or other tool that would allow you to do this.

Thus I would like to know if anyone in the larger community knows of an app that already does this or something similar? Or if there were such a tool what would you like/expect it to be capable of?

 

[sk8rsdad]

Commercially there's BlackTrax by CAST. There are likely similar systems in areas not directly related to theatre like material handling and missile guidance, for instance.

 

[TitaniumFish]

I have nothing else to say about BlackTrax other then wow, and I wish I had a tenth of the expertise that went into that device. Thanks for pointing that system out as I was wondering a while back if such a system could be created (the answer is now obviously yes)

The system that I've been working on doesn't track in live though, it only focuses to your local when you hit a button. Due to this though you don't need to have sensors in the air. You do need to have the euquivallent of a 3d rendering of the space but in reality all it needs to be is a spread sheet indicating the lights xyz coordinate from a common point.

Its meant more as a tool for allowing more rapid refocusing of the moving lights during programing phases, not for in show purposes like BlackTrax is for.

 

[derekleffew]

If I understand correctly, it sounds like a seldom used feature of the WholeHogII. I don't know if this was continued on Hog3/4, or if other manufacturers' consoles include(d) similar. I suspect gMA did/does.

 

[soundlight]

In MA, if you set up your fixtures properly in MA3D, you can just click on the stage in MA3D and whatever fixtures you have selected will move there. I've seen this actually used live where a macro in a cue grabbed the fixtures and put them in follow mode for the LD who then followed someone around stage using the trackball to drag the point around in MA3D. It's not a live tracking medium of a sensor, it's just a way to quickly get a bunch of lights pointed mostly properly (it'll be a little off due to hanging angles, &c. &c. unless you do p/t offsets every time you hang things).

As far as live tracking projects, one of my friends in college did just that. I forget most of the details, but it was relatively in depth and relatively difficult to do. There are so many new technologies coming out every year if not every month as far as accurate positional tracking is concerned, it's only a matter of time until the right ones make it back in to entertainment technology. BlackTrax is currently the only one that I know of. It's a 6-axis system if I remember right, X, Y, Z, P, Y, R. There used to be systems like Wybron's AutoPilot and Martin's funky system that used a followspot-like device to shoot some sort of beam at the performer for other sensors to track (can't remember the name).

 

[techieman33]

Avo uses a drawing tablet, you draw out the stage, move each light to the corners so it knows the boundaries and then you can point the lights anywhere on stage, or even follow someone around.

 

[deadlygopher]

There are two pretty serious engineering challenges associated with building this sort of system. It's pretty tough to understand where your target is in 3d space. Motion Capture companies have spent a lot of time and energy to build systems that almost work to locate rigid bodies in controlled environments. A lot of progress has been made to make them work live, but they're definitely not there yet. Major players in this world include Vicon and Phasespace. I've had some good experiences with Phasespace in some strange environments. It's a bit finicky to get set up, but reliable and easy to work with once you have it going.

The other big issue is accurately knowing where the light is. It's not too bad to grab translation with a disto, but getting your rotation dialed is pretty tough. A degree or two of rotation error will really screw you at any non-tiny throw. Lots of people are working on solving this problem, but I haven't seen a good (FAST) COTS solution yet.

If you're hacking on lighting control, I'd strongly recommend using OLA to handle your DMX interfacing. It'll get your code talking to lights pretty quickly.

Best of luck with this project! Keep us in the loop. A lot of people will use a well-designed robust system with these sorts of features.

 

[Judge]

Its a great idea and I wish you luck with it. Avolites used to have a system that used a graphics tablet with which you could mark the corners of the stage with and then built and update pallets with and it was really good, especially if you had heads in different mountings and on different axis. The beauty of this was that - you want this focus position to be here, at centre mic for instance. You did not have to worry about whether to pan and tilt it, you just selected the head and pointed the pen at the position on the tablet and the desk would work out how to do it, which is sort of what computers are for I feel. Once all positions were defined the deal was that every day you would just need to update four key positions on the stage and all others would update from that. In actuality they often needed a wee bit of a tweak manually but by and large it was a great system, and this was years ago before they got jiggy with Titan.