Apologies if some of these have been raised before as ideas, I did read a couple of threads on similar requests before I signed up but can’t seem to find them now.
I’ve been using photon 2 for a little while to control some basic cheap LED PAR lights at small parties we hold. I’m dead pleased with it, it does most of what I want it to, I can leave the iPad on the DJ booth running on the live screen and the DJ can control the light show for the most part with little instructions.
However, the flaw is with the way solo works. I create a set of buttons for colours or moods and a second set of buttons for sequences or FX. As things stand however I can only use the solo feature on one set of buttons because it works globally on the whole page. This means when sequences are selected you have to remember to deselect the one(s) that aren’t running, not all people remember to do this so often I go and check on the app and find almost all the sequence presents latched on. It would be really useful for me if you could group buttons logically on the Live page and have the solo feature work only within that group. It would also be good if these groups of buttons could be moved around the page as one unit to make rearranging the dashboard a tad easier and if they were identified with a border outline to segment the dashboard a bit.
I’d also love it if the app was able to be slightly more intuitive on the sound to light so you could attribute different sequences to different parts of the music. It’s mostly drum and bass that gets played at our parties and it’s not the best when there’s a vocal breakdown in the music but the sequence is still firing at 170bpm. Sure I have buttons for slower sequences but this relies on the DJ being aware enough to think to change it at the given point. Some do, most don’t as they’re not focused on that. A mode were you can tell the app to run sequence A, B or C in a quiet or slow bit and sequence X, Y or Z when the beat kicks in would be a great addition to the app. It would also be great if it would accept audio from an attached sound adapter for line in, as the audio at our parties is very loud and overwhelms the iPad mic.
Sequences of sequences would be great, especially if it had a random mode and the ability to apply basic settings to groups or fixtures from the live screen without having to create a preset for every one. For example setting a colour on a fixture or group, I seem to create a lot of presets just holding these really basic settings.
Don’t get me wrong I really like this app, it’s dead easy to use compared to some others and it only took me a couple of evenings to figure it out and create a light show that looks pretty good! But for our needs these few features would really enhance it’s useability. Even without them however I will still continue to use the app, it runs the show nicely, so good work on what you have created! I spent a long time looking for this kinda thing and tried several different apps and programs before hitting on Photon.
Many thanks,
Mike.