Communication between Quadcore and QSYS

[Elisabeth Luke]

Hi beautiful techy people!
I’m a Lighting Designer for a small theatre. I’ve got intermediate QSYS training and I’m very experienced with VP Quadcore. I have been using CueLuxPro to build lighting designs for productions.
I have a standard lighting design for everyday use designed in the VManager that we want students to use to learn the basics of stage lighting through the QSYS UCI.
We want buttons on the UCI for students to be able to call up simple lighting states.
I tried to use the VP Quadcore plugin for QSYS, but it isn’t as simple as we need for junior high level students.
I think I need to build a Command Button to call up the Playlists in VManager. I’ve got the IP address and the port set to 7000.
I’m not exactly sure how to get the VManager to communicate with the QSYS.
I can’t find anything in QSYS training to help me with communicating with VP products specifically.
I’m hoping that this community may have some suggestions and insight into making this work.

[Jorge Solano]

Hello Elisabeth,

Thanks for the clear explanation 

What you want to do is definitely possible. The main point is that Q-SYS does not communicate with vManager; it communicates directly with the QuadCore. vManager is only used to discover/manage the unit.

For this setup I would keep the everyday lighting states as cues in one QuadCore playback, then use the official Visual Productions QuadCore Q-SYS plugin behind the scenes. Your student UCI can then stay very simple, with buttons such as Stage Wash, Presentation and Blackout, each jumping directly to the required cue. The students never need to see the plugin controls.

One important check: if CueluxPro is still running and patched to the QuadCore, the QuadCore will be in CueluxPro mode and its internal playbacks are suspended. For this student setup, make sure it shows Stand-alone while testing. Port 7000 is the default TCP/UDP port, but I would try the official plugin before building custom TCP commands.

https://www.visualproductions.nl/downloads/miscellaneous

If the plugin still does not respond, please let us know the QuadCore firmware version, Q-SYS Designer/Core version and plugin version, and whether you can trigger the same cues manually from the QuadCore Playback page.

Hope this helps!

[Elisabeth Luke]

Thank you Jorge!!! It’s working brilliantly.

I have another question. I’ve been using the LSC Mantra Lite desk to create the lighting states. But it’s a bit harder to get full control over each fixture than CueLuxPro.

Is there a way to get the QSYS program to call up the CueLuxPro lighting states from the QuadCore instead of the lighting states made by the LSC desk?

[Jorge Solano]

You're welcome Elisabeth!

Great to hear it is working well

Yes, absolutely. You can use CueluxPro to create the lighting states and then dump/store those states into QuadCore Tracks. After that, assign the Tracks to the Playback cues that your existing Q-SYS buttons already call. This way you keep the fixture personalities, palettes, pan/tilt, colours, gobos and FX from CueluxPro, while Q-SYS still controls the QuadCore exactly as it does now.

I would first test this with one unused Track. Create a simple state in CueluxPro, store it into the QuadCore, then close or unpatch CueluxPro so the QuadCore returns to Stand-alone mode. Preview the Track from the QuadCore and, if it looks correct, assign it to one of your existing Playback cues.

One important detail: while CueluxPro is actively connected to the QuadCore, the QuadCore is in CueluxPro mode and its internal Playbacks are suspended. So use CueluxPro for programming, then let the QuadCore + Q-SYS run the finished system stand-alone.

Hope this helps!