README FOR SLIGHT Welcome! Glad you were brave enough to try out my little lighting program, and smart enough to read the README! You're a step ahead of just about anyone else, trust me. OVERVIEW ======== This program controls theater lights via the DMX-512 protocol. It employs the DMX4LINUX drivers to communicate with a number of DMX interfaces, notably Jan Menzel's LPR2DMX interface. He has GPL'ed the design (thanks, Jan!!) providing the hardware for a very easy do-it-yourself show-control system. This software simplifies the actual running of the show to the push of a spacebar for each transition. Writing cues is simpler, too: tweak levels to where you want them, then hit "record" and that scene is in memory. The biggest gain, though, is consistency when running shows: 90-second crossfades happen smoothly and precisely each time the show is run. SLight means to clone the best aspects of ETC Entertainment's popular software, Horizon. It intends, however, to drop most of the feature bloat and possibly some useful functionality in favor of simplicity. In particular, SLIGHT WILL NOT CONTROL MOVING LIGHTS. Well, at least not gracefully. If you have the budget for a slew of Intellibeams, you have the budget for commercial software like Horizon. HELP! ==== 1) FEATURE XXX IS UNIMPLEMENTED, or "I want it to control my MIDI pyrotechnics too!" Did you read above? This ain't a Hog. It controls simple dimmers, maybe other things that need a timed transition from one DMX value to another. Anything outside of that is beyond this software's welkin. Maybe for 2.0... email me with feedback, please. 2) I CAN'T GET IT TO COMPILE. Honestly, I don't know I'll be of much help for this problem, but you can email me and find out. I don't exactly have access to a whole range of compiler/QT/libc combinations. It shouldn't be a syntax error, because it sure compiles on my system! If it's a version- specific issue, see if you can figure it out and email me your results. A patch would be even better! 3) WHY DO YOU WANT ME TO INSTALL IT SUID ROOT? It's all about performance. Try this with and without doing the SUID stuff explained in the INSTALL file: Set up 500 channels, and hit the "One-to-one" button for 500 faders. Record a cue that sends them all from 0 to 100% in 0.5 seconds. Run the cue, watch it with dmxconsole or dmxdisp (both in the DMX4Linux package.) Note that the fade is not smooth, it flickers; to stop this flicker, you must install it SUID root (or run it as the root user) because the timer thread MUST have a higher priority than the UI thread. 3.5) ISN'T THAT A SECURITY RISK? Yes. Yes, it is. However, if you're running a public web server, a BIND server and a MySQL DB on the same machine you're running your lights, then you're asking for trouble anyway. Seriously, if you know of a way I can mitigate this risk, please tell me. I tried and couldn't figure out the uid business. 4) I FOUND A BUG! Oops. To the best of my knowledge, the core functionality of this program is bug-free. That DOESN'T mean I've tested all the pathological cases that your pathological mind can come up with. Please email me. If you can fix it, even better: send me a patch! You'll get a mention in the CREDITS file. 5) HOW DO I DO XXX? Read this file. Read the TODO. Most importantly, read the HOWTO: If I don't go over it in the HOWTO, it's likely not implemented yet. QUASI-LEGAL STUFF ================= This software is distributed under the FSF GPL, v2. A copy is available in this directory with the filename GPL. This software is provided entirely WITHOUT WARRANTY of functionality, fitness for a specific use, or anything else. If your dimmers blow up in the middle of a show, it's your fault, not mine. (I'd like to hear about it, however! (= ) Thanks for giving this software a shot. If you use it, or try it and discard as not useful, or find a bug, or just want someone to chat with, I'd really like to hear about it. Feedback will make this software better able to serve the needs of people other than me, for whom I wrote it originally. (= And as any open-source developer knows, nothing gives me a greater kick than the knowledge that others find this useful. Regards, Brian Teague, SLight author bteague@rice.edu NOTE: If this package is more than two years old (eg, older than May, 2004), I have graduated and the above email address is no longer valid! Please check the Freshmeat (http://www.freshmeat.net) project page for updated contact information.