Manual channel control

The main action on the “Console” is moving faders. This sends a value straight to the DMX channel, and the fixture reacts instantly.

📍 Where: the mode switcher → “Console” → any colored cell.

How to set a channel value:

  1. Find the colored cell you need (the fixture name on hover will help — see 11.02).
  2. Grab the vertical slider and drag: up — the value rises, down — it falls. The range is 0–255.
  3. The fixture responds at once. This lets you “ring out” every channel and see what it controls.

What happens when you move a fader — depends on the channel type:

Channel type What changes on the fixture
Dimmer The fixture’s overall brightness
Red / Green / Blue The corresponding color component of the fixture
Pan / Tilt The head’s horizontal / vertical rotation
Strobe The flash rate
White / Amber / UV The brightness of the extra LEDs
Gobo / Macro The value of the fixture’s special channel
💡 Tip: the “Console” is handy as an addressing tester. Raise the dimmer on a channel — and see which real fixture in the room lit up. Matches what you expected? Then the address in Patch is set correctly.

Gray (free) channels move too. Their fader sends the value straight to DMX, bypassing fixtures — that is how you “ring out” an address that has no fixture in Patch yet. This is the way to find an addressing offset: the program sends to channel 12 while the fixture in the room answers on 13.

A free channel raised by hand is marked with a hand icon and an amber border, and a “Clear manual” button with their count appears at the top of the console — it zeroes all such channels at once.

⚠️ Note: manual values only live until the end of the session — they are not saved into the project file. “Fixtures → Reset all” clears them, and a blackout kills them too (a master at zero also drops the manual channels). As soon as you place a fixture at that address in “Patch”, the channel goes to the fixture and the manual value stops working.
💡 Tip: the console faders are a live mirror of the DMX output. They update about 10 times per second and show the real value of every channel right now, taking into account running scenes, chases and the master brightness. That’s why the “Console” is also handy as an indicator — you can see at a glance exactly what’s being sent to the fixtures.

Above every fader is the channel number, and below it a number: the byte going out on the wire right now. That is why with the master at zero or during a blackout the number reads 0 even while you hold the slider up — at that moment the wire really does carry zero.