LFI player and Vixen lights?

I currently use Vixen http://vixenlights.com for controlling holiday lights timed with music. I recently built a laser projector and would like to add the laser to my light show. The boxes that control the lights are not DMX but vixen works with them. Vixen has many plugins for outputs serial parallel and otherwise including DMX, and can launch exe files on cues as well. Vixen is not open source (it is free) but they give you the info you need to write your own plugin's also.

I am wondering if it is possible to have vixen send commands to LFI player to initate ild files perhaps through live show. I think live show can somehow be controlled by midi although I am not sure how. Basically I would need some sort of input serial or otherwise (Midi might work) that would basically use Vixen to press buttons in live show. I see LFI player has a section in prefrences called COM Settings, although I am not sure what this is for input or output and what kind.

Ideally it would be nice to use once pc running both Vixen and LFI player but I would be ok with two computers linked by serial or midi or dmx or something else.

Mostly I am looking for information about LFI player if you can send some sort of commands to control live show and if so how and what sort of commands do I need to send and where. If not perhaps an exe file that will basically play an ild file when it is launched. Once I know how to controll LFI player from a trigger I can figure out how to make vixen do it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by crap2020

I currently use Vixen http://vixenlights.com for controlling holiday lights timed with music. I recently built a laser projector and would like to add the laser to my light show. The boxes that control the lights are not DMX but vixen works with them. Vixen has many plugins for outputs serial parallel and otherwise including DMX, and can launch exe files on cues as well. Vixen is not open source (it is free) but they give you the info you need to write your own plugin's also.

I am wondering if it is possible to have vixen send commands to LFI player to initate ild files perhaps through live show. I think live show can somehow be controlled by midi although I am not sure how. Basically I would need some sort of input serial or otherwise (Midi might work) that would basically use Vixen to press buttons in live show. I see LFI player has a section in prefrences called COM Settings, although I am not sure what this is for input or output and what kind.

Ideally it would be nice to use once pc running both Vixen and LFI player but I would be ok with two computers linked by serial or midi or dmx or something else.

Mostly I am looking for information about LFI player if you can send some sort of commands to control live show and if so how and what sort of commands do I need to send and where. If not perhaps an exe file that will basically play an ild file when it is launched. Once I know how to controll LFI player from a trigger I can figure out how to make vixen do it.

---

LFI Player is open source so I am sure you could make it do whatever you want. Slap an interface on it and you're good to go.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JohnYayas

LFI Player is open source so I am sure you could make it do whatever you want. Slap an interface on it and you're good to go.

---

I am aware that it is open source, but I am not at this time looking to modify the software. It appears it already has some sort of MIDI serial interface built in for live shows. I just want more information about this interface and what sort of commands it is looking for.

I think LFI player already does what I need, I just can't figure out how to use it.



I am thinking something like Vixen light + com0com + LFI player would be an awsome and free combination if I can get them to play nicely together. The interface would be a little clunky on the LFI player side of things, but the capabilities and flexibillty of what it can drive and do would be more than any commerical software has.

I sent you a PM on how to contact Mike, the LFI author.

You could also use LSX's midi interface.

If you use LSX, you'll probably turn it around and use it to control Vixen.

Steve

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mixedgas

I sent you a PM on how to contact Mike, the LFI author.

You could also use LSX's midi interface.

If you use LSX, you'll probably turn it around and use it to control Vixen.

Steve

---

Thanks for the contact info, I will send the question to Mike. I played around with virtual midi ports and a virtual midi keyboard and I did get LFI player to respond to Midi inputs, so this is one possible solution for integration. What I found is that the midi control has nothing to do with the Com settings, and I have no idea what the Com control part is about and I can't find any documentation about it, but LFI player has settings for it. I also used a serial port sniffer to see if LFI player com stuff was for sending outputs, but it does not appear to be sending anything.

At this point I have a lot of custom hardware for light control that I built that I have a working driver with vixen. I am also familar with vixen and how to set up a show with it. I just want to add the laser show part to what I already have and I can use existing light shows. At some point in the future I was thinking about making new light control boxes that are also DMX compatible as my current ones use a protocal I developed, but for now I would rather get what I have working. I posted a question to the vixen form about midi output as I an not so sharp at C# and that is what the plugs are written in. I am much more of a hardware person and get into software only when I need to, and even then it is usally software for microcontrollers.

Thanks for your help

As a follow up I did contact Mike, and his reply was that I am correct it does have a serial input but he doesn't remember the commands but thinks it is something simple. I have tried looking in the code and just sending serial commands to lfi player but so far no luck, it is not something that is easy (for me) to find, but at least I know it exists, and welcome any help here.

Mike's response is below

"Yes, the COM port settings are related to LFI Player serial input. It was added a long time ago for something similar to what it sounds like you want to do. It's been a while since I looked at it, but if I remember correctly, it does work similar to the MIDI, allowing cues to be triggered via serial. It may also accomodate selecting pages, and *maybe* start/stop...but you'd have to look at the code for specifics. Also if I remember, the commands were simple text, someting like 'C1' would trigger cue 1, 'C2' triger cue 2, and 'P1' select page 1 in the live console.

Like I said, your best bet is to look at the code, as that particular functionality is undocumented.

Regards,
Michael "

To follow up again to my post after digging through the code and working with Michael, I can confirm what the commands are and that they do control the live show via a serial port. I used hyperterminal to send the commands along with a virtual serial port via com0com to test this.

The command syntax is

CUE=1 ...... to CUE=48

PAGE=1 ...... to PAGE=12