CYM Colour Flags

Peter

Member
I believe this has already been brought up on this forum before, but after searching for it, it appears that you have lost quite a few posts, so will post it again.

We have a system that uses CYM color flags, I have set them up, and they are working quite happily, except for when I run some shows.

Essentially because the colors are changing so quickly, it is causing the flags to move too fast, we are using the Medialas STP8 actuators which require 25ms settling time.

Is there anyway to tell pangolin to quench the rate at which it is trying to drive these flags, as ideally I don't want to have to re-jig the show its self to make the color changes slower.

Kind Regards,

Peter Ranson
Laser Attraction
 
Hi Peter,

Yes, as far as I know, there is a way for our system to support these flags. If you go through the wizard and select "slow actuator color and scanner blanking" that will get you there, but this expects to see a real laser media projector with the color flags working a certain way and "inverted blanking" meaning 0V = on and 5V = "blanked".

If your color flags work in reverse compared to the way that a laser media projector works, or if you are not using "inverted blanking", then some adjustments will be needed in the palette. Rather than try to talk you through how to make these adjustments, I would rather just make you a palette file and send it to you by email.

Please try the wizard and "slow actuator colors" and see how well that works out. Just let me know by email if you need me to remake it to be inverted or whatever...

Bill
 
Wondering if you had luck with the slow actuator wizard setup. I am doing basically the same thing with a two color system with the STP8's and have not had luck gettting them to work well. they seem to not like the speed. Please let me know what you experieced. I would love to have a slow actuator palatte that is not inverted if you do not mind Bill.
thanks
Larry
 
Color flags are absolutely not fast enough to change colors within a frame. Color flags can only respond at a rate of around 20 Hz, or 20 frames per second. If you are scanning at 30K with less than 1000 points, this is faster than 30Hz for just the frame rate. Any color changes within a frame would be even faster.

Really, color flags are used to change color of an entire frame, not for changes within a frame. When you use them, I recommend you make entire frames the color that you want, or if you don't want to recolor the frames, use a "change colors" effect in Showtime to change the color of an entire frame. Color flags are a close-to-30-year-old technique...

I would be happy to make a palette for anyone on request. Just send me an email describing exactly what the palette should do with all signals. Please tell me how each one of the color flags should respond, how the blanking should respond and how the shutter should respond. To say "not inverted" is not enough unfortunately. Not inverted for what?

Bill
 
We have managed to get the required results by reducing the drive voltage. We have managed to drop it down to about 5.5 volts, which stops them hammering so fast. But we have had to make some adjustments on the programming too, but not as much we would have thought, reducing the drive voltage seemed to do the trick.
 
Peter, You mentioned you reduced the drive voltage. Are you saying the 12V supply??? I beleive Pangolin only puts out 5V on the color channels for a input signal. Please let me know. Also curious about what programming changes.
thanks
Larry
 
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