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Summary of Contents for Gilderfluke Br-miniBrick4
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Br-miniBrick4 Digital Output Show Control System The Br-miniBrick4 is a complete, stand-alone Show Control System. It features Four Digital (on/off) outputs and one trigger input. Once programmed, the Br-miniBrick4 runs from onboard nonvolatile memory.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Safety Disclaimer: Any electronic or mechanical system has a potential to fail. Certain applications using Gilderfluke & Company equipment may involve potential risks of death, personal injury or severe property or environmental damage (“Critical Application”).
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Br-miniBrick4 Overview! Attaching an Audio and/or Video Player to a Br-miniBrick4! Br-miniBrick4 LEDs, Switches and Connections ! LEDs:! Red LEDs! Green LED:!
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Which channel is which?..! ................How Much Time Is Selected?..! ..............OffLine Editing Window Presets..! ............... Selected Channels...…! ..................OffLine Editing Window shortcut menu..…! ............
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Set what your Br-miniBrick4 does on StartUp: Set what your Br-miniBrick4 does on each Trigger Input: Download your AutoDownload file: Close the AutoDownload dialog:...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 A note about this manual: This manual covers the specifics of the Br-miniBrick4. The Br-miniBrick4 can be programmed using the three buttons on its top, or using our free Pc•MACs software.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Br-miniBrick4 Overview The Br-miniBrick4 is a complete stand-alone Show Control System with four digital outputs and one 'trigger' input. Starting with firmware v3.39, the Br-miniBrick4 can also be used as a four channel LED lighting/flicker controller,...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Features of the Br-miniBrick4 include: • Automatic ‘program in place’ download optional Br-miniBrick4 Serial Adapt2 serial port adapter on your PC. It takes about five seconds to download a four minute show.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Attaching an Audio and/or Video Player to a Br-miniBrick4 The normal method of connecting an audio or video player to GilderGear is Sd-10 via the DMX-512 network.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Br-miniBrick4 LEDs, Switches and Connections There are only a small number of connections on each Br-miniBrick4. You will need to attach a power supply, whatever you are controlling, and (optionally) a switch...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Green 'Go' button: Green 'Go' button is used for programming the Br-miniBrick4 without a computer. See the ‘Programming without a Computer’ section of the manual for details on the use of this button. The green ‘go’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 The outputs are just like the standard outputs used on all Gilderfluke & Company Show Control Systems. We switch the negative sides of the outputs. You connect the positive sides (usually the red wires) of the four things you controlling to either of the two positive ‘common’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Programming Your Br-miniBrick4 Without a Computer This is demonstrated on the Br-miniBrick4 - Part 2: Programming Without a Computer video... The digital outputs of the Br-miniBrick4 can be ‘Programmed in Place’ using only the buttons on its top, or by connecting a serial port adapter and using Gilderfluke &...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Press and hold down the Red 'Record' button and momentarily tap the Green 'Go' button (or if an external trigger is received on input 'A') to start the Br-miniBrick4 running (yellow LED flashes quickly).
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 A show that is set to ‘play once’ will only play when triggered, and then stop and wait for the next trigger. A ‘looping’ show will start playing at PowerUp, and loop back to itself at its end.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Attaching Your Br-miniBrick4 to Your Computer This is demonstrated on Br-miniBrick4 - Part 3: Connecting to Your PC video... If you need multiple shows, or will be using your Br-miniBrick4 as a LED flicker/lighting controller (which requires four 8 bit analog channels), you will need...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Br-miniBrick4 LED Dimmer/Flicker Mode This is a new mode of operating that was added to the Br-miniBrick4 in June of 2020 starting with firmware revision v3.39. A Br-miniBrick4 typically has only one DMX-512 channel worth of data in its AutoDownload file.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Because it shares most of the functionality with its bigger brothers, the Br-miniBrick4 can have up to 255 shows loaded at the same time. A typical example of using multiple shows would be for lighting that flickers at a dim level until the Br-miniBrick4 is...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Br-miniBrick4 Serial Port Commands The Br-miniBrick4 can be accessed through the Br-miniBrick4 Serial Adapt2 USB serial port adapter from any computer running just about any modem program.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Start Global ‘u’ This command is available ONLY firmware revisions 3.07 and later of the Br-miniBrick4. This command starts the animation playing on the Br-miniBrick4. The shows will always start from the beginning.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 If a show selection has been made inadvertently, it can be cleared by sending a request for show number ‘00’. Pause Show ‘<00’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Getting Started with Pc•MACs and a Br-miniBrick4 (quickly) The following instructions describe how to quickly let the latest versions of Pc•MACs set up and program a show controller like an Br-miniBrick4. This requires that you use a version of Pc•MACs that supports drag-n-drop Audio/Video triggers (later than...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 browser or Email program may do this for you automatically. If not, you will need a program like unzip.exe or Win Zip to decompress them. Once this is done, just run the ‘Setup.exe’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Starting a New Br-miniBrick4 Show in Pc•MACs: This is demonstrated in the Br-miniBrick4 - Part 4: Starting a New Show video... To start a new Pc•MACs show for an Br-miniBrick4, just use the five following steps: ! Open Pc•MACs:...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 All the shows that run at a given ‘Site’ must use the same ‘Site’ file. This saves you from reentering the same stuff each time you start a new show.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 B r - m i n i B r i c k 4 a s a L E D l i g h t i n g / fl i c k e r c o n t r o l l e r, p i c k t h e 'Br-miniBrick4/flicker'.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 'Offline' Programming & Editing Your Show: This is demonstrated in the Br-miniBrick4 - Part 6: OffLine Programming video... If you have already moved the channels you want to edit over to the OffLine Editing Window, you can skip the next step and open the OffLine window directly.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Quick Tour the OffLine Editing Window..A complete description of the OffLine Editing Window and its features can be found in the ‘OffLine’...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 which is selected, the black line will be drawn as even thicker, and will be effected by any digital editing command that is invoked. Channels that are not selected, or are outside of the selected range of time will not be altered.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 the cursor in the analog pane of the OffLine Editing Window, the analog value of the cursor is also displayed. H) The names of the analogs and digitals are also listed at the left side of each pane.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 OffLine Editing Window shortcut menu..… RightClicking with your mouse on the OffLine Editing Window (avoid RightClicking on or near any analog or digital channels) will open a shortcut menu.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Adding Drag-n-Drop Triggers to Your Timeline..… You can add drag-n-Drop marker to your show by simply RightClicking with your mouse on the OffLine Editing Window (avoid RightClicking near any analog or digital channels).
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 by the dotted arrow. It starts on the desired channel, and moves left or right. You can select all the channels that are...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 <Shift>+LeftClick and <Control>+LeftClick modifiers to select a single output, a contiguous range of channels or random selection of channels. In the example above, the digital named ‘RN-64 Digital’ was initially LeftClicked to select it alone.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Sorting the channels on the OffLine Editing Window..When programming a fountain or light show, it is common that one light or jet may be used as a part of several different patterns. In one pattern, it might be part of a circle.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Drawing digitals with a right mouse click..You can draw (shown at left) or undraw (shown at right) any digital function by RightClicking on it and sliding the mouse left or right.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Modifying analogs with a right mouse click..The tools that are used to ‘mush’ analog channels around are called the ‘Rubberbanding’ tools. This is because Pc•MACs allows you to stretch and modify the analog...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 b) Ramp: This generates a dead straight line between each of the points. It is the most basic type of ramping available. The left and right...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 d) Curve: Like the Spline above, except that it doesn’t match the data before and after the effected area. The start and end of the edit is always at zero velocity (the lines are level).
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 f) Shift: This setting moves the analog movement in the direction you move the mouse without effecting the amplitude of the movements. This is as if the movements were drawn along the road surface of a drawbridge.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 h) Draw: This is literally a ‘pencil’ tool. This setting allows you to ‘draw’ an analog waveform using the mouse. It is especially useful for ‘drawing’ in flickering light patterns, cleaning up mouth...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 If the number of channels that you ‘copied’ does not agree with the number of channels you have selected when you ‘paste’, Pc•MACs will warn you of this imbalance.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Copy to a file…. Paste from a file..All the cut, copy and paste commands you tried out in the last sections can be used to save one or more movements to files in addition to the Windows...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Flip your show on its head..It invert command simply invert what you have displayed on the OffLine Editing Window. If digitals are ON, it will turn them OFF. If digitals are OFF, it will turn them ON.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Stretch and compress time..Starting with the previous illustration, with one or more channel selected, you can then change the amount of time it takes for the movement to take place. To do this, move the cursor up into the time bar.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Analog functions are interpolated when you stretch or compress them, so they come out fairly cleanly. There aren’t a lot of points between 'On' and 'Off' on a digital function, so you may see some rounding errors on the digital functions.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Use the ‘Edit’ menu’s ‘Delete time' if you need the actions to happen sooner. The selected output(s) will shift by the number of frames you have selected (also in this example by fifteen frames):...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Generating a ramp between two points..If you are only using digital channels, you can skip this step. Select one or more analog channels for one or more frames worth of time: Select the ‘Edit’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 The ‘Linear’ generates ramps that are straight lines. This is usually the only type of curve available from most other control systems and all lighting boards: When set to ‘Curve’, the ramp starts and ends with the ends level.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Copying from digital channels to analog channels..If you haven’t added both analog and digital channels to your show, you should skip this step.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Select ‘paste’ (shortcut: <Control>+V) Pc•MACs will warn you that you are pasting from digitals into analogs. Because that’s what you want to do, click ‘Yes’: If the ‘Preferences’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 You are unlikely to want square waves in your lighting channels. The ‘Preferences’ menu’s ‘Cut/Paste Options’ can fix this for you. The area shown as the ‘Area of Edit’...
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Because we didn’t add a fade in a the start of each waveform, the timing has not changed on the rising edges. With a half second fade out on the falling edges of the waveform, you can see that lights will stay at 100% for the same duration as before, and then fade out over a half of a second.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 The RN-58 jet and red LED are highlighted, just to make them easier to pick out from the crowd. Br-miniBrick4 v1.1+ Manual / March 22, 2021 / page 54 of 72...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Copying from analog channels to digital channels..If you haven’t added both analog and digital channels to your show, you should skip this step.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Select the ‘Edit’ menu’s ‘Paste’ command (shortcut: <Control>+V): The analog data is now in the digital channel: As you can see, the beginnings and ends of the digital function’s lines are aligned with the points where the source analog function crossed the 50% level.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Copying from Audio/Video tracks to analog or digital channels..If you haven’t added any Audio/Video files to your show, you should skip this step.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Offset: This shifts the resulting waveform upwards, so that it never goes all the way to OFF. Typically used with lighting to keep it from turning all the way off between sounds.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Ramp analogs to a color..If you haven’t added any RGB lighting fixtures to your show, you should skip this step. If you are programming RGB lights, you will want to ramp them to specific colors.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 At the end of the ramp time, the lights will be at the desired levels. You can use the fill command to extend these levels for as long as needed, or use the same ‘Ramp to a Color’...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Scale Analogs without stopping patterns..If you haven’t added any analog channels to your show, you should skip this step. If we have a chase or any other pattern that we have programmed into the...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 values are used to scale the entire length of the selected area evenly. To fade in and out, you set one to a high value, and the other to a low value. In this case, we will be...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 More ways to modify an analog channel..If you are only using digital channels, you may want to skip this step. Select one or more analog channels for one or more frames worth of time. Under ‘Edit’...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 'RealTime' Programming Your Show: This is demonstrated in the Br-miniBrick4 - Part 7 RealTime Programming video... This section presumes that you have already attached your...
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 Analogs at the Top…... The upper half of the Soft Console is used for programming analog (0-100%) functions. You can select to display zero to eight analog functions at the same time.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 When you are assigning analog functions, you will only see the analogs outputs you added to the Channels List on the inputs’ drop-downs.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 well. If your OffLine Editing Window is visible, you will also see these channels being drawn in as the show is recorded.
Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 AutoDownloading Shows: The final step in programming most shows is to generate an AutoDownload file to run on the permanent Show Control System. In this case, this will be your Br-miniBrick4.
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Use this section to set which show gets loaded and what happens when power is applied to the Br-miniBrick4. It can play the show, or just load the first frame of data from your startup show and wait for the first trigger to arrive. Most shows use only a single sequencer.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 ! Close the AutoDownload dialog: Once you have completed the AutoDownload, you can close the AutoDownload dialog. Pc•MACs will have saved all the settings you used for your AutoDownload to the show's Site file.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 • Connect the equipment into an outlet on a circuit different FCC and CE Compliance: from that to which the receiver is connected.
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Gilderfluke & Co.• 205 South Flower Street • Burbank, California 91502 • 818/840-9484 • 800/776-5972 • fax 818/840-9485 HEXadecimal to Decimal to ASCII to Percentage This chart shows decimal, HEXadecimal, and a few percentage equivalents to aid you when you need to convert between numbering bases:...
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