I’m currently building out a lighting system for a facility that has a mix of DMX and Hue lighting. So Photon seems like a great choice. In this setup, the app would likely be opened once, maybe twice a day, a static scene would be selected/set, and most likely the app wouldn’t be opened again until hours later at the end of the day.
My question is: Is Photon suitable for persistent, long-term lighting control in such a situation?
I see in other posts that Photon should, theoretically, work when the app is in the background on the iPad. That’s ideal. But what happens if the iPad is restarted, or if a user swipes the app off the list of background apps? And in situations where the app stops, what do the lights do? Do the lights maintain their current state, turn off, or revert to some other default?
Also, what happens if there’s more than one iPad in the facility running the app at the same time? Is this supported, or could there be unintended behavior in such a setup? Will changes on one iPad reflect on the other?
Any other considerations I should be aware of going into a project like this?
Hello and welcome
Yes, Photon is perfectly suitable for this kind of long-running installation. You can use it to control a static or persistent scene throughout the day without any problem.
The behavior of your fixtures when the app is closed (or if the iPad restarts) mainly depends on your DMX interface, it’s the device that maintains or drops the last DMX frame once Photon stops sending data.
Most interfaces keep the last state active until they receive new commands, so your lights should remain as they were.
When you reopen Photon in Live mode, it immediately restores the previous state and control resumes seamlessly.
Regarding multiple controllers: you should avoid running several Photon instances on the same DMX universe, as that would lead to conflicting outputs. However, you can absolutely run one iPad per universe if your setup requires it.
Overall, Photon works reliably for persistent installations as long as your DMX interface handles frame persistence correctly.
Hope that helps!
Feel free to share details about your use case, i would be happy to know for what you use are doing that.
Thinking more on the topic of multiple iPads tied to the same universe… but also just a general curiosity of how Photon works in general… Does Photon check/download the current state of the universe, from the interface device, upon opening, or does Photon simply start broadcasting whatever its last known, or default state is?
I’m fine with the restriction of one iPad at a time, but I’m just curious what behaviors to expect if we ever have to revert to a backup iPad.
Related: when we save presets, how/will those propagate to, for example, said backup iPad?
Your welcome !
Photon will not “save” the current DMX output from the interface device, it’ll not read the outputs from the device, it just send artnet or sACN data.
When you configured all your show, you can export it (from the home shows view), save it in the cloud for example and reimport it in an other iPad. This is not an active sync, it’s like save a copie of a Word document.
In the setup I’m working on, I need to be able to account for how other (less technical) people might end up using the product… So, these questions were more about anticipating screw ups, rather than a feature wishlist (although live syncing between iPads in a master/slave setup would absolutely be something I’d love to see).
So, the info you’ve shared was really helpful. I appreciate it. I’m sure I’ll be back when I move forward.