I have worked with Perform and Strand Shownet in the past and I believe it used to support Autofocus. Now it doesn't anymore and the alternative Horizon protocol (for use with Strands Palette software) doesn't connect to the desk at all. Is there a solution from Casts side? I already send an email to Strand technical support.
Hello Floriaan, As with all direct connectivity drivers for WYSIWYG, it is up to each console manufacturer to develop and support such drivers. CAST Software provides the necessary Software Development Kit (SDK) that enables this driver to be created, but it is impossible for CAST to create these drivers, because we do not have access to the console software code, and that is what is ultimately required: in essence, the driver basically needs to know how to listen for and how to interpret the data stream coming from the console, in order to pass it over to WYSIWYG. Strand is a Registered WYSIWYG Developer and they have the latest version of our SDK, so they are fully-capable of writing the necessary driver, just like they wrote the one for ShowNET. I am working remotely atm, so I cannot check my test records for ShowNET, but I do not believe it supported AutoFocus. I could be wrong though--it has been several years since I've had to answer a question about connectivity to Strand consoles. Anyway, I will check my files once I'm in the office in the morning and get back to you then with a firm answer. Cheers, Dany
Hi Floriaan, It turns out you were correct: the Strand ShowNET driver did support AutoFocus. Sorry about that. I realize now that I didn't actually answer your query directly, but I think what I wrote above makes my answer quite obvious: if the connectivity driver is not working as it should, there is unfortunately nothing we at CAST can do about it, as any fix/maintenance on such drivers must come from their manufacturer. Thanks, Dany
Thank you for your effort. I already contacted Strand, but all their efforts are going to the Neo console at the moment which they say will be supporting autofocus in the future. In the mean time the support for autofocus through the old Horizon driver was silently removed from the software somewhere along the way.
To briefly come back to this subject, is there an API for autofocus? How difficult would it be to add this to the driver? I noticed the driver for Shownet has a really small footprint. And would it be possible to add autofocus to an 'open source' protocol such as art-net?
Hi Floriaan, I am not a developer, so I cannot tell you what the effort involved might be to add AutoFocus to a driver, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that several of the drivers written over the years by lighting equipment (consoles, nodes, etc.) manufacturers, were written in a few hours, and they included both AutoFocus and AutoPatch, and tested successfully from the start. In other words, it should not be either hard or time-consuming for a developer to write a driver or add something to it. To answer your first question, AutoFocus (and AutoPatch) are all part of the same API and available to any and all Registered WYSIWYG Developers--including Strand, of course. However, they are the ONLY ones who may write or modify such drivers. As for your second question, no, it is not possible to add AutoFocus/AutoPatch protocols to open source protocols, because these protocols require specific interaction with the console's system software. Therefore, since no two consoles (by different manufacturers, I mean) share the same system software, the necessary "connections" are simply impossible to achieve. Dany
