Initial experience: Can't purchase on Mac, no way to update fixtures?

App Feedback Feature Request
1

I just purchased the pro version and have some feedback. I’m curious if some of my concerns are user error, or if there’s workarounds or fixes for some of the issues I’m seeing.

Currently I have 2 Chauvet 4BAR Quad ILS devices.

I just purchased the pro version because I need MIDI trigger support.

  1. First Issue: Can’t buy Pro on a Mac, nor can you “Restore Purchases”. I designed a bunch on my Mac, realized I couldn’t upgrade, so I bought it on my iPad.
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Clicking Restore just spins for ever.

Is this a known issue? Is a fix in progress?

  1. Second issue: No sync between devices? I also assumed that my shows/devices, etc would be stored in iCloud and that my iPad would pick up my work. This is a minor issue because I know you can export/import projects, but something that was surprising.

  2. Because my lights aren’t in the database at the moment, I had to create a custom device. (I’m using 19ch mode so I can individually address the 4 lights in the fixture). Creating this was pretty tedious, and I started small with just the lights.

Then I added my fixtures w/ their starting address.
Then I tested to make sure it worked.
Then I went back and added Dimmer & Strobe.
But the fixtures don’t auto update from the device they were based on?

I’ve had to delete & re-create the fixtures numerous times as I iterated on the custom device. Very annoying.

  1. No way to individually address colors for 4 separate lights in a single fixture. There is only 1 color control in a group, and it controls all of the lights equally. In order to do this I had to:
  • Create a single “device” that controlled Dimmer/Strobe/Built-in Programs for the overall light bar.
  • Create a separate “device”, to represent a single light. These had custom sliders for R, G, B, A.

So for my 2 light bars I now had 10 fixtures.

Then I’d have to create 10 groups so I could address them individually? At this stage I was questioning the whole process.

Any tips on how to do this in a better way?

Thanks for reading. I do like the app, but my initial setup was pretty frustrating and I’m hoping there’s some answers for my questions.

2

Yes you have to manually export to the cloud.
Yes creating custom fixtures is often needed and the learning curve is annoying. (But I think every dmx software is similar in this respect.)
Yes when you make changes to a custom fixture you made you have to delete any fixtures from your show(s) and re-add them. Then they pull in your changes.
I also had to split a 35channel fixture (Gigbar move) up into multiple fixtures in photon to get control over individual pieces of it. Then yes you assign the dmx addresses accordingly to control parts of that fixture and add them into your groups. Thats the only way I know how to do it in photon. But then you have complete control over everything.

3

Thanks, I guess I will just bite the bullet and deal with it.

Now the only blocking issue is that I can’t seem to restore purchases on my Mac.

4

Well that was strange. But a reboot seemed to fix the issue, so now I have the pro version running on my Mac. Much nicer.

1 Like
5

Hi I’m a little bit late :smiley:

Shure you can divide a complex fixture in several devices in Photon. But I dont think it is mandatory because you can add additional colours, strobes, whatever with customer functions to only one Device. Unlimited.