Lamina Lighting Control

01.Introduction

Lamina Lighting Control runs architectural lighting from the Q-SYS Core. It sends and receives sACN (E1.31), stores the presets in the design, and exposes every channel, trigger and fade time as a control pin. A wall button, a UCI, the scheduler and room-combine logic all recall the same look through the same path. Lamina Faders, a free companion plugin in the same download, adds an assignable fader bank.

02.Requirements

Component	Requirement
Q-SYS Designer	Tested with Q-SYS Designer 10.4
Q-SYS Core	Any Q-SYS Core processor. Verified on a Core Nano
Network	A Core interface on the same Layer 2 segment as the fixtures and consoles. See Network and sACN Setup
License	One activation code per Core. See Licensing

Lamina Faders needs the controller's Script Access set to All, see Lamina Faders.

03.Installation

The Lamina pack contains two plugin files:

File	Purpose	License
Lamina.qplugx	The lighting controller	Licensed
Lamina_Faders.qplugx	Assignable fader bank companion	Free

Before you update the plugin or change the design, export the presets. See Preset Backup.

04.Quick Start

The most common support call: Join Multicast is off on a new instance, so no multicast input arrives. See Network and sACN Setup.

05.Plugin Properties

Properties are set in Designer with the block selected. The plugin reads them when the design starts and holds them while it runs, so changing one is a re-deploy. Settings an operator changes live are controls instead: Per-Preset Fades on the Control page, Bank Select on the DMX monitor, and the whole sACN configuration. The Settings page echoes the eight controller settings read-only, under SETTINGS (edit in Properties panel).

Activation codes

Property	Range / Choices	Default	Description
Activation_Code	Text	blank	The activation code for this Core's Locking ID. Leave blank to run the demo. See Licensing.
Activation_Code_Backup	Text	blank	The code for the other Core of a redundant pair. Leave blank on a single Core.
Show_Locking_ID	No / Yes	No	When Yes, shows the Core's Locking ID in the plugin header and gives its pin the License~Locking ID name. See Control Pins.

Controller

Property	Range / Choices	Default	Description
Channel Count	1 - 512	512	Lamina's active width. The plugin transmits, fades and mirrors to the Ch pins only up to this channel, and the command pad clamps ranges to it. A lower count stops driving every fixture above it. Monitor cells past it render blank.
Display Unit	Percent / Decimal	Decimal	How the command pad reads a bare level after AT. Decimal takes 0 to 255. Percent takes 0 to 100 and scales it. The DMX monitor and the Ch pins stay 0 to 255 either way.
Protocol	sACN	sACN	The only value. Lamina speaks sACN (E1.31) and nothing else.
Passthrough	On / Off	On	On: Live is a selectable source and, while it is active, the working buffer follows the input. Off: Live Trigger is disabled and the input can only monitor. See Live Input and Arbitration.
Power-on Preset	Off, P1 - P15	Off	The look recalled when the design starts. A choice above Preset Count recalls Off and logs a warning.
Preset Count	1 - 15	4	How many savable presets the panel shows. The Off and Emergency looks are separate and not counted. Recall and save pins above the count exist but do nothing, see Control Pins.
Fire Alarm Enable	On / Off	Off	Arms the egress path. While Off, Fire Trigger does nothing. See Emergency and Fire Alarm.
Fire Contact	Normally Open / Normally Closed	Normally Open	Which state of Fire Trigger means alarm. Normally Open alarms when the trigger goes high. Normally Closed alarms when it goes low, so a cut loop or a dead contact reads as an alarm.

Debug

Property	Range / Choices	Default	Description
Debug_Level	Standard / Verbose	Standard	Log verbosity in the plugin's debug window. Verbose adds high-frequency output.

06.Network and sACN Setup

sACN configuration lives on the sACN I/O page as controls rather than Properties, so it is reachable from a UCI and can be changed on a running design. Input and output are configured separately: each has its own enable, universe, and interface.

Port and Layer 2 segment

Lamina sends and receives sACN on UDP port 5568, so allow that port in any ACL on the lighting segment.

Output universe and destination

The destination address is not something you normally type. With Dest IP blank, Lamina multicasts to the group address that E1.31 derives from the universe number: 239.255.<hi>.<lo>, where <hi> is the universe divided by 256 and <lo> is the remainder. Universe 1 is therefore 239.255.0.1, and universe 300 is 239.255.1.44. Put a valid address in Dest IP and Lamina unicasts every frame to that address instead, ignoring the group.

Control	Range	Notes
Universe Out	1 to 63999	The universe Lamina transmits. Sets the multicast group when Dest IP is blank.
Dest IP	Text (blank)	Blank multicasts to the Universe Out group. A dotted-quad IPv4 address unicasts to that address, and spaces in it are ignored. Anything else halts output, and Status reads Fault - Dest IP '<value>' is not a valid address - output halted. Correct the value to resume output.
Out Priority	0 to 200	The priority Lamina stamps on its own frames. Seeds at 100.
FPS	5 to 30	Transmit rate. Seeds at 15, and is clamped to the range - the crossfade engine runs on this same cadence.

Input universe and multicast

Control	Range	Notes
Universe In	1 to 63999	The universe Lamina receives. Independent of Universe Out - they are two separate controls, and pointing them at the same universe is a choice, not a default.
Join Multicast	Off / On (Off)	Joins the Universe In group so a multicast source can be received. Ships off, and nothing seeds it on - a fresh instance receives no multicast input until you turn it on. With it off the socket still opens on port 5568, but no group is joined and In Interface places no join - changing In Interface still re-opens the receiver, though.
Min Priority	0 to 200	The floor for accepting an incoming stream. Seeds at 100. Anything below it is ignored. 200 is the E1.31 ceiling, and the receiver rejects packets claiming more.

Choosing the input interface

Out Interface and In Interface each list Auto plus every network interface on the Core. Auto means something different on each side.

The input side reads the interface for one purpose: to place the multicast join. With Join Multicast off there is no join, so nothing on the receive path reads the interface, and the socket opens on port 5568 either way. The control is not inert, though. Changing In Interface re-opens the receiver whatever Join Multicast says. That clears the tracked source, blanks Rx Source, and restarts the kick timer, exactly as changing Universe In does. With Join Multicast on, Auto joins the universe's group on every real interface, skipping loopback and any interface without an address. Whichever interface carries the stream is covered.

Choosing the output interface

Output cannot cover every interface the way the input join does, because a frame leaves on exactly one interface. Auto pins egress to the first usable interface the Core reports, which on a multi-homed Core is not always the one facing the fixtures. A unicast Dest IP is the exception: there Auto is fine, because routing picks the interface by destination.

On a single-homed Core none of this matters. On anything else, name the interface that faces the lighting network.

When a named interface fails

07.Licensing

The plugin reads Activation_Code and Activation_Code_Backup when the design starts.

What demo expiry stops

The licensed product is the sACN output. At expiry the plugin sends three stream-terminate packets, stops transmitting, and greys out Out Enable. Out Enable still reads on; the license is what holds the output down. Preset, Off and Live recall, saving, the command pad and Import Apply grey out, and a recall or save from a pin is refused. The working buffer keeps fading, the DMX monitor and its output cells keep working, the input keeps arriving, and Lamina Faders still moves the buffer. Nothing it moves is transmitted. The alarm path is not exempt, see Emergency and Fire Alarm.

Activate

License status

Q-SYS prefixes the LICENSE box text with its own status word, so the box reads OK - ACTIVATED or Compromised - DEMO: 9:59 remaining.

Status	Color	Meaning
ACTIVATED	Green	A code validated against this Core. No time limit.
DEMO: M:SS remaining	Yellow	No code entered. Counting down.
DEMO (invalid code): M:SS remaining	Yellow	A code was entered and did not validate against this Core's Locking ID.
DEMO EXPIRED - Activation Required	Red	The demo ran out. "What demo expiry stops" above says what the plugin still does.

At expiry the plugin's Status control also reads Fault - License required - demo expired, so a Status Combiner sees the fault.

08.The Plugin Panel

The block opens on three pages, chosen from the tab strip Designer draws above the panel. The split is by job rather than by feature: what an operator touches is on Control, what the network needs is on sACN I/O, and what you set once is on Settings.

With one exception, nothing on the panel is panel-only: every control is also a pin, see Control Pins. The exception is the DMX monitor's cells, which carry no pins of their own. Those values reach the schematic through the Ch and In Ch pins instead. The reverse case is Fire Trigger, a pin with no widget, see Emergency and Fire Alarm.

Page	Holds	Covered in
Control	The preset rows, the Live/Off selectors, the save arm, the active-state readout, and the command pad.	Presets and Looks, Command Pad
sACN I/O	Input and output configuration, and the DMX monitor.	Network and sACN Setup, Live Input and Arbitration
Settings	Preset backup, the emergency look, and a read-only echo of the Properties.	Preset Backup, Emergency and Fire Alarm

Shared chrome

The header and the status bar render on all three pages, so the license state and the fault line are never a page away. The header carries the plugin name and version, the LICENSE readout, a LOCKING ID readout when Show_Locking_ID is Yes, and Refresh. Directly beneath it, the full-width Status bar is the plugin's connection and fault line - it is the same Status pin a Status Combiner reads. When more than one condition is active, the bar shows the most serious: an alarm, then halted output, then a rejected import. A value written to Status from outside the plugin, over QRC for example, is overwritten at once and logged as a warning.

Refresh re-opens both sockets, transmit and receive. Lamina already re-opens them by itself when the Core's interface list changes, so an interface coming back needs no button. Use Refresh for the case that is not a list change - a join that failed for some other reason. See Network and sACN Setup.

The DMX monitor

The monitor sits at the bottom of the sACN I/O page: 64 cells in 16 columns, each stacking the channel number, the live input value, and the output value. The input row is read-only. The output row is editable - type a number into a cell and that channel goes there, which is the panel's direct-to-channel path alongside the command pad.

64 cells is a view, not a limit. Bank Select with the < and > buttons pages it across the universe in blocks of 64, and the number of banks tracks Channel Count - eight at the default 512, one at 64. Cells past Channel Count render blank. The real per-channel surface is the Ch and In Ch pins, which are 512 wide regardless of what the monitor is showing.

09.Presets and Looks

A preset is a stored 512-channel look. Preset Count decides how many savable presets the panel shows, see Plugin Properties.

Two more looks exist alongside those and are not counted in Preset Count:

• Off - its own stored look, recalled by Off Trigger and saved by Preset Off Save. It seeds to all channels at zero, but it is a preset like any other: save a dim house look into it and Off becomes that.
• Emergency - the egress look, seeded to all channels full. See Emergency and Fire Alarm.

Recalling

Preset Trigger 1..N, Off Trigger, and Live Trigger select the active source. Exactly one is active at a time, and Preset Active, Off Active, and Live Active light to say which. State Readout names it in text: the preset's Preset Name if it has one, otherwise Preset N, or Off, Live, or EMERGENCY.

Recall is gated, and every gate fails silently by design rather than throwing:

Gate	Effect
Disable Wall Triggers	Blocks every recall - presets, Off, and Live. The panel legend reads PRESET LOCKOUT. Saving is not affected.
License	Recall is a licensed operation. An expired demo drops it. See Licensing.
Preset Count	Preset Trigger 9 does nothing when Preset Count is 4. The check is in the handler, not just the panel, so a pin or an external API call is bounded the same way the UI is.
An active alarm	While the fire-alarm egress is active, nothing but the emergency look can take the room. See Emergency and Fire Alarm.
Passthrough	Gates Live Trigger only. With it off, Live cannot become the active source. See Live Input and Arbitration.

Fading

A recall crossfades over Fade Time, which seeds at 2 seconds. Setting it to 0 does not snap - a zero or unset Fade Time reads as the 2-second default.

To snap, or to give one look its own timing, turn on Per-Preset Fades. It is a live toggle on the Control page rather than a Property, so it can move on a running design. With it on, each preset's own Preset Fade is taken literally, and 0 there genuinely snaps. With it off, the per-preset fields grey out and every recall uses the global Fade Time.

Saving

Saving is armed, not immediate. The sequence is arm, save, and it disarms itself:

Saving is licensed and is blocked outright during an alarm. Unlike recall, it ignores Disable Wall Triggers.

On startup

Power-on Preset recalls a look when the design starts. It is a Property and its list always offers P1 through P15 regardless of Preset Count, so a selection above the count would point at a slot the panel never shows. It does not: the plugin recalls Off instead and logs a warning, which means lowering Preset Count cannot boot the room to a blank look.

10.Command Pad

The command pad on the Control page is a console-style channel editor. The grammar is one sentence - channels, then a level:

1 THRU 8 AND 20 AT FULL ENTER

AT is mandatory: it is what separates the channel list from the level, and a command without it is rejected. Channels are single numbers, THRU ranges, or both joined by AND. The level is FULL, OUT, or a number.

Key	Does
0 to 9	Build up a number. It becomes a token when you press any other key.
THRU	Makes the two numbers around it an inclusive range. The range is clamped to Channel Count before it is expanded, so 1 THRU 9999 is bounded rather than enormous.
AND	Joins channels or ranges. Renders as + on the command line.
AT	Separates channels from the level. Required. Renders as @.
FULL / OUT	Level 255 and level 0.
ENTER	Parses the line and writes it into the working buffer.
CLEAR	Backspace, not clear-all. One press deletes one digit, or one whole token when no digits are pending. Press it repeatedly to walk the line back.
RELEASE	Throws away manual edits and snaps the working buffer back to the active source's look.

A bare number as the level is read through Display Unit: 0 to 255 on Decimal, 0 to 100 on Percent. See Plugin Properties.

The two readouts

Command Line echoes the line as you build it, in console shorthand: 1 THRU 8 + 20 @ FULL. A successful ENTER clears it. A rejected one leaves an ERR: code in its place.

Readout	Meaning
ERR: no_at	No AT in the line - there is no level to apply.
ERR: chan	Something in the channel list is not a number.
ERR: thru	A THRU without a valid number after it.
ERR: sep	Two channel terms with no AND between them.
ERR: no_level	The line ends at AT.
ERR: level	The level is neither FULL, OUT, nor a number.

WB Summary reports the working buffer as a whole - 8/512 active, peak 255: how many channels are non-zero out of Channel Count, and the highest value among them. It is a sanity check for "is anything actually on", which is otherwise a long scroll through the monitor.

11.Live Input and Arbitration

Lamina can receive an sACN universe as well as send one. The input is always a monitor: incoming values land on the In Ch pins and the DMX monitor's input row whether or not they are allowed to drive the room. Whether they drive it is what Passthrough decides.

With Passthrough on, Live is a selectable source like any preset - Live Trigger makes it active, and while it is active the working buffer follows the incoming frames. With Passthrough off, Live Trigger is disabled, the input can never reach the output, and the monitor keeps working. Passthrough is a Property, so that choice is a re-deploy.

Configuration lives on the sACN I/O page: In Enable, Universe In, Min Priority, the two source filters, and Join Multicast. The controls and the interface rules are covered in Network and sACN Setup.

Which source wins

Lamina tracks exactly one source at a time, keyed by the CID each sACN source puts in its packets rather than by its address.

• First to arrive acquires. When nothing is tracked - at startup, after a reopen, or after a loss - the first packet that passes the filters becomes the tracked source.
• Strictly higher priority preempts. A source claiming a higher priority than the tracked one takes over immediately.
• Equal priority is ignored. A second source at the same priority as the one already tracked does not interleave and does not take over. The first one holds until it stops.
• Lower priority is ignored while a source is tracked.

Min Priority is the floor for being considered at all: a stream below it is dropped before arbitration. Filter Source IP and Filter Source Name narrow the field further, by address and by the name the source puts in its packets.

Lamina also ignores its own output. The transmitter and the receiver are one plugin, and multicast loops back, so without that filter an instance transmitting and receiving on the same universe would acquire itself as its input.

The Rx Source readout

Rx Source (pin Input~Source) names the tracked source. It has three states.

State	Readout	When
Tracked	Console A @ 192.168.10.20 · pri 100	A source is being tracked. One that sends a blank source name degrades to 192.168.10.20 · pri 100.
Lost	LOST: Console A @ 192.168.10.20 · pri 100	The tracked source went silent or terminated. The identity persists as a breadcrumb.
Idle	—	Nothing is tracked: In Enable is off, or the receiver was just reopened.

The priority shown is the tracked source's current priority, and it follows that source - consoles lower their priority when releasing a cue, and the readout moves with it.

When the source stops

Loss is silence: 2.5 seconds with no packet from the tracked source, per E1.31. It keys on packets arriving, not on values changing, because a compliant source transmits continuously - a console parked on a static look is sending the same frame over and over, and that is not a loss. An explicit stream-terminate from the tracked source declares the loss immediately rather than waiting out the timer.

On loss, Input Present goes false, Rx Source takes the LOST: prefix, and the tracked source is released so a new one can acquire. The output is not touched.

Kick

Kick is the opt-in that turns silence into an action. Turn on Kick Enable, set Kick Timeout in seconds, and pick a Kick Fallback. Kick Timeout starts at 2 on a newly placed block. A block placed earlier keeps its stored value, and at 0 Kick never fires. Kick Fallback ships at Off. It only fires when Live is the active source - silence while a preset or Off is driving the room is not a reason to change anything, so Kick stays out of it.

Kick Fallback	On timeout
Off	Recalls the Off look.
Hold	Takes no action. The live frame is already held, so the room stays exactly as it was at the moment of loss.
P1 to P<Preset Count>	Recalls that preset.

The list offers only presets that actually exist. If Preset Count is later lowered under a saved selection, the fallback recalls Off rather than an unseeded slot.

12.Emergency and Fire Alarm

Lamina can take a contact closure from a fire-alarm system and drive the room to a stored egress look.

Wiring and arming

Two Properties configure the path, Fire Alarm Enable and Fire Contact, see Plugin Properties. Both are design-time, so there is no live toggle for arming or for polarity.

Fire Trigger is a toggle input pin with no panel widget. Wire it to whatever carries the alarm contact into the design - a Core GPIO, a contact-closure input, or any logic that resolves to a boolean.

The contact is debounced for 50 milliseconds, so a bouncing relay produces one transition rather than a burst.

What happens on alarm

The egress look snaps in - it does not crossfade. Fade Time and Per-Preset Fades are not consulted, because an evacuation is not a cue.

The panel then locks down. Preset recall, Live and Off, the save arm, the command pad keys, Import Apply, and the monitor's editable cells all go disabled, and the block is enforced in the handlers as well as in the panel - a pin or an external API call cannot move the room during an alarm either. Emergency Active lights, State Readout reads EMERGENCY, and Status goes to fault with EMERGENCY - egress active so a Status Combiner surfaces it. If output is halted during the alarm, Status reads EMERGENCY - egress HALTED: and the reason instead.

The egress look

It lives in its own slot - it is not one of the 15, and Preset Count does not affect it. It seeds to every channel at full, which is the safe default for an egress look on an unconfigured install.

To author it, build the look, arm Save Enable, and press Emergency Save on the Settings page. It cannot be re-captured during an alarm, for the obvious reason.

Coming back

When the contact clears, the alarm releases and Lamina restores what was running before, crossfading normally. There is one exception, and it matters if you drive the room from a console:

The license gates the alarm too

The licensed product is sACN output, and that is true during an alarm. A demo that expires mid-alarm stream-terminates and goes dark. This is deliberate: the license fault owns the output, and the alarm does not override it.

13.Preset Backup

Presets live in the design, which means they travel with the design file and they are lost with it. Preset Backup is the way out: the PRESET BACKUP card on the Settings page turns every stored look into a block of plain text you can copy anywhere, and takes it back.

It is text, not a file format. Copy it into a ticket, a password manager, a commit, an email to yourself. Nothing beyond the plugin is needed at either end.

Control	Pin	Does
Export	Presets~Export	Read-only. Holds the current blob. Copy out of it.
Import	Presets~Import	Paste a blob in.
Import Apply	Presets~Import Apply	Applies whatever is in Import.

Export rebuilds after every save and after every successful import, so the stored levels in the box follow the presets. Names and fades get no rebuild of their own: they are read at rebuild time, so renaming a preset, changing a Preset Fade, or retyping Emergency Name leaves the box carrying the old text until the next save or import. Save or re-import before you copy the blob, or the backup goes out with the old name.

What is in the blob

All 17 stored looks, always: Off, P1 through P15, and the emergency look. Preset Count does not narrow it - a design showing 4 presets still exports all 15 preset slots, so lowering the count and exporting cannot quietly discard the looks above it.

The format is a version line, then one line per look, five pipe-separated fields each:

v1
P|0|0|Off|0,0,0,0, ...
P|1|3|House Warm|255,128,0, ...
E|0|0|Egress|255,255,255, ...

Field	Is
tag	P for a preset (slot 0 is Off), E for the emergency look.
slot	0 to 15 for a P line; always 0 for the E line.
fade	The preset's Preset Fade. Off and the emergency look export 0.
name	The preset's Preset Name.
values	512 channel levels, comma-separated.

The value list is always 512 wide, whatever Channel Count is set to. That is deliberate: a backup taken on a design narrowed to 64 channels still carries the whole universe, so Channel Count can never truncate what you have stored.

The levels are the raw 0 to 255 values. Display Unit does not touch them.

Why pipes

The delimiter is |, and the reason is worth knowing before you hand-assemble a blob: tabs do not survive the round trip. A blob copied out of Export and pasted back into Import passes through a Q-SYS text widget, which strips tabs on the way through. The parser then sees one field per line and rejects the import with fieldcount. That was confirmed on a Core rather than reasoned about. A pipe is a printable character in the same class as the value commas, and it comes through intact.

Tab-delimited blobs are still accepted on import, as a fallback for older backups. Preset names are sanitized on the way out - a pipe, tab, or line break in a name becomes a space - so a name can never split a line into the wrong number of fields.

Round-tripping through a clipboard

The parser is deliberately forgiving about what a clipboard does to text. A blob copied on Windows comes back with CRLF line endings, which would leave the first line as v1 plus a stray carriage return and fail the version check. So a leading byte-order mark is stripped, CRLF and lone CR are both normalized, and the version token is read case- and whitespace-insensitively: V1 and v1 pass as readily as v1.

Importing

Import Apply validates the whole blob before it writes anything, so a malformed import cannot land half of itself and leave the design in a mixed state.

A rejection leaves every stored preset untouched, and Status reads Fault - Import rejected: <reason>:

Reason	Means
version	The first line is not v1.
fieldcount	A line does not have five fields. This is the one a tab-mangled blob produces.
valuecount	A line's value list is not exactly 512 long.
tag	A tag other than P or E.
slot	A slot that is not a whole number, or is outside its tag's range.
fade	A fade field that is neither blank nor a number.

The reason stays on Status until an import succeeds or the script restarts. An alarm or halted output takes the bar while either is active, see Shared chrome.

A successful apply clears the Import box - that empty box is the confirmation. A rejected one deliberately leaves your text in place so you can fix it and try again.

Writing to the preset store is a licensed operation, the same as a save, so an expired demo blocks an import. Import Apply is also blocked outright during an alarm, in the handler as well as on the panel. See Licensing and Emergency and Fire Alarm.

14.Lamina Faders

Lamina Faders is the second plugin in the download: an assignable fader bank that drives and follows the controller's channels. It is free and carries no licensing of its own - no activation code, no demo timer, no license readout in its header. It is a separate block with its own pins, not a page of the controller.

A bank points at a start channel and the faders under it take the channels from there up. Moving one writes straight into the controller's working buffer - the same buffer the command pad and the monitor's output cells write into - so a fader move is a manual edit with no fade on it, and it marks the state modified exactly as a command pad ENTER does. See Command Pad. An alarm is the exception: the controller refuses channel writes while it is in lockdown, so a fader move during an alarm never reaches the buffer. See Emergency and Fire Alarm. Traffic runs both ways: when a channel moves for any other reason - a preset recall, a command, live input - the fader tracks it.

Faders is free, but it drives a licensed controller. On an expired demo the faders move a buffer nobody is transmitting, see Licensing.

Linking to a controller

There is no property to type a controller's name into. The link is discovery plus the Lamina Component selector, and that pair is the whole mechanism.

At startup Faders scans the design's components and keeps the ones whose type identifies them as a Lamina controller. That scan is why the controller's block needs Script Access set to All - without it the controller is invisible to the scan. Faders does not match itself, so extra fader banks in a design never confuse it.

What happens next depends on what the scan found:

Scan result	What Faders does
Exactly one controller, nothing picked	Selects it and links. The ordinary case, and it needs no configuration.
A pick the scan still finds	Keeps it.
A pick the scan no longer finds	Ignores it and behaves as though nothing were picked. If one other controller is on the design it links to that one and rewrites the selector to match; if several are, you get Multiple Lamina found even though the selector still shows your pick.
More than one controller, nothing picked	Refuses to guess. Status goes to Compromised, the faders stay disabled, and you pick one from the Lamina Component selector. This is what the controller's Code Name is for.
Nothing found	Status goes to Fault and the faders stay disabled.

Before accepting a component, Faders reads Ch 1 and Ch 512 from it. Both must answer, or it is rejected as not a Lamina.

Refresh re-runs that whole resolution, and so does touching the Lamina Component selector. Refresh is also the recovery path: if the link breaks while the design is running - the controller's block is renamed or removed out from under it - the next read or write fails, Faders drops to Fault, and Refresh re-establishes it.

Status

The Linked LED lights when a controller is linked. Status carries the detail, and its reason text is what tells you which failure you have:

Status	Reason	Means
Initializing	(none)	The startup window before the first scan. Faders defers its link work and staggers it per instance, so a design full of fader banks does not do all of it in one frame.
OK	(none)	Linked.
Compromised	Multiple Lamina found — pick one in the Lamina Component selector	More than one controller, and no pick.
Fault	No Lamina found — set the Lamina block's Script Access to All	The scan found nothing.
Fault	Lamina link lost — press Refresh	A read or write to the linked block failed while the design was running.
Fault	Lamina '<name>' not found	The picked component could not be opened.
Fault	'<name>' is not a Lamina (no Ch surface)	The component opened but failed the Ch 1 / Ch 512 check.

15.Fader Banks and Copy/Paste

Two Properties size the surface. Both are design-time, so changing either is a re-deploy.

Property	Range	Ships at
Fader Count	2 to 32	12
Bank Count	2 to 24	8

The floor on both is 2, not 1. At a count of 1 the parameterized controls collapse to scalars, which breaks the indexed pins and the layout, so the plugin clamps to 2 rather than offer a size it cannot render.

How a bank maps to channels

A bank is a start channel plus the faders that follow it. The first fader drives that bank's Bank Start, the second the next channel up, and so on - fader n drives channel Bank Start + n - 1. Nothing wraps and nothing runs past the universe: a fader whose channel would land above 512 is disabled, and its readout and channel label go blank.

Bank Start is per bank, 1 to 512, and it is seeded once. On the instance's first run the banks are laid out contiguously - bank 1 at channel 1, bank 2 one Fader Count up, and so on, each clamped to 512.

AUTO DEPLOY takes bank 1's current start and cascades it across every bank, stepping by Fader Count and clamping each to 512. It re-strides the set after a Fader Count change, and it re-bases the whole patch onto a different channel: put bank 1 where you want it and press it once.

Selecting a bank

Bank is the canonical selector - the numeric SEL field on the panel. The SELECT row does the same job as a row of buttons, one per bank, with the active one lit. Bank Up and Bank Down are pins with no widget, for a wall plate or a UCI. All of them clamp at the ends; none of them wrap.

Bank Name names each bank, and Bank Name Display echoes the active one - editing the active bank's name updates the echo live rather than at the next bank switch. Bank Active is a per-bank output pin.

Fader Label names each fader, stored per bank, so every bank carries its own set. Sync Fader Labels changes that: on Yes, editing a label writes it to the same fader position on every bank, which is what you want when the banks are the same rig at different channel offsets. It ships No.

Copy and paste a bank

COPY snapshots the current bank. PASTE writes the enabled scopes into whatever bank is current when you press it. Three scope toggles decide what travels:

Scope	Copies
NAME	The bank's Bank Name.
VAL	The fader values - the look. Needs a link at both ends.
LBL	The per-fader labels.

All three start on. Turn one off and it stays off across restarts.

Values are the one scope that needs the controller: names and labels are Faders' own data, but values are read from and written to the linked controller's channels. Copy while unlinked and the clipboard holds name and labels only - and the echo says so, reading Copied Bank 3 (name/labels only — not linked). Paste with VAL on and no values to paste and the values are skipped with a warning in the log while the other scopes still apply.

The clipboard is transient. It is empty at every load, and the echo is cleared at startup so it can never advertise a copy it no longer holds.

Clipboard Text sets that echo's prefix. It ships Copied Bank; clear it to blank and the echo is the bank number alone.

Only the faders actually mapped in the source bank are captured. A bank whose upper faders run past 512 has nothing stored against them, so a paste cannot drop a captured zero onto an unrelated channel.

16.Binding Faders to a UCI

Every element of the fader strip is a pin, so a UCI, a touch panel, or another script drives the bank without the plugin's own panel being on screen anywhere.

Pin	Direction	Carries
Fader~Fader N	Both	The fader's level, 0 to 255.
Fader~Label N	Both	The fader's label text.
Fader~Readout N	Output	The formatted readout text.
Fader~Channel N	Output	Ch <n> for a mapped fader; blank when unlinked or past 512.

The 0 to 255 contract

Fader is an integer knob with a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 255. That is the range on the pin and it does not move. Bind a UCI fader to it and give the UCI control the same 0 to 255 range.

Value Display does not change that. It is readout text only: it decides whether Fader Readout reads 128 or 50% and it touches nothing else. It ships Percent.

The readout lags the fader, deliberately

When a channel moves on the controller, the Fader pin follows it immediately. Fader Readout does not. The text is rebuilt by a roughly 10 Hz collector that runs only while something is waiting and stops itself once it has caught up. Formatting text allocates memory, and a 32-wide bank tracking a live console at full frame rate would do it 32 times a frame; the collector is what keeps that off the Core's script budget.

The visible effect is that the slider and the number under it can disagree for a fraction of a second during a fast move. That is the design, not a fault. A bank switch is the exception - it formats every readout immediately, so switching banks never leaves the previous bank's numbers on screen.

Changing Fader Count later

Fader Count is a Property, so changing it means a re-deploy, and it re-dimensions the pins. Two things do not follow it:

• Bank Start does not re-stride. The starts were seeded on the first run and are yours from then on. Press AUTO DEPLOY to re-cascade them at the new width. See Fader Banks and Copy/Paste.
• Stored labels can come back wrong. Labels are stored per bank at a stride of the current Fader Count, so changing it re-indexes the whole store. Labels above bank 1 will not line up afterwards - expect blanks, or labels against the wrong fader. The plugin tolerates the mismatch rather than erroring on it; retype the affected ones.

Disabled faders still have live pins

A fader is disabled when Faders is not linked, or when its channel would fall past 512. Disabling greys the widget on the panel - it does not detach the pin, and a bound UCI control can still drive it. The refusal to write lives in the handler instead: a fader with no link or no channel takes the value and does nothing with it. So a UCI bound to a bank wider than its patch is safe - it cannot write past the universe - but it also gets no feedback that the move went nowhere beyond the greyed fader and the blank Fader~Channel pin.

17.Control Pins

Nearly everything on either plugin's panel is also a pin on its schematic block, so a UCI, a wall plate, the scheduler, or another script drives the same value through the same path. This section is the map.

Pin names read Group~Name. The text before the tilde is the heading Designer groups the pin under; the text after it is the pin itself. A control that exists more than once carries an index, and which side of the tilde it lands on varies: the faders put it on the name, as in Fader~Fader 4, while the presets put it on the group, as in Preset 4~Recall. The tables below give the exact form for each.

One rule shapes several entries in this section. A pin takes its Group~Name form from the panel layout, so a control the panel draws only conditionally has no such name while its condition is off. The pin still exists - it just appears in the pin list under its bare control name, with no tilde group at all. Whether it still does anything in that state depends on the control, so check the note where it applies. Show_Locking_ID and Preset Count both gate naming this way, and each is called out where it applies.

Some panel legends differ from their pin names: ARM SAVE is Transport~Save Arm, PRESET LOCKOUT is Transport~Disable Wall, SAVE OFF PRESET is Off~Save, LIVE and OFF are Live~Recall and Off~Recall, and the command pad's + and @ keys are Command~Key AND and Command~Key AT.

Lamina Lighting Control: header and status

Pin	Type	Direction
Connection~Status	Status	Output
Connection~Refresh	Trigger	Input
License~Status	Status	Output
License~Locking ID (see note)	Text	Output

Show_Locking_ID ships as No, and it gates the layout entry rather than just the panel widget. So on a default design there is no LOCKING ID readout drawn and the pin has no tilde group: look for it under its bare name, LicenseLockingID. Set Show_Locking_ID to Yes and the readout appears and the pin becomes License~Locking ID. It reports the same Locking ID either way. See Licensing.

Channels

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Ch 1 to Ch 512	Value	Both	0 to 255
In Ch 1 to In Ch 512	Value	Output	0 to 255

These are the per-channel integration surface. They carry no tilde group - they appear in the pin list under their bare names rather than beneath a heading, so look for Ch 1 rather than for a Channels heading. Ch is the working buffer. In Ch mirrors the received universe and is output-only. Both are 512 pins wide regardless of Channel Count - the pin list never shrinks - but the engine only mirrors the first Channel Count of them. At Channel Count 64, In Ch 65 to In Ch 512 still exist and sit at 0. See The Plugin Panel.

Preset pins

Here N runs from 1 to Preset Count. These grouped names exist only for the slots the panel actually draws; read the note below for the ones above that.

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Preset N~Recall	Trigger	Input
Preset N~Active	LED	Output
Preset N~Name	Text	Both
Preset N~Fade	Value	Both	0 to 60 s
Preset N~Save	Trigger	Input

All five preset controls are declared at the full 15 slots regardless of Preset Count, so the pin surface does not shrink when the panel draws fewer rows. What changes is both the naming and what those pins do. Preset Count gates the layout, so on a default design of 4 it is only slots 1 to 4 that get the grouped form above. Slots 5 to 15 exist with no tilde group: they are Preset Trigger 5, Preset Active 5, Preset Name 5, Preset Fade 5, and Preset Save 5, on up to 15. Note that the bare name for a recall is Preset Trigger, not Preset Recall.

Above the count, those pins do not all behave like the drawn ones, and the difference matters if you are wiring to them:

• Preset Trigger and Preset Save are gated. On a default design of 4, firing Preset Trigger 7 recalls nothing and saving to Preset Save 7 stores nothing. This is deliberate: it stops a pin, a UCI, or an external script from reaching a slot the panel does not draw. If you have wired a wall plate to a recall above your Preset Count and nothing happens, this is why - raise the count.
• Preset Name and Preset Fade still hold what you write and still round-trip through Export, but nothing recalls them while the count sits below their slot.
• Preset Active stays dark, because nothing can make a slot above the count the active source.

Raise Preset Count and each newly drawn slot takes its Preset N~ form and starts responding. See Presets and Looks.

Live, Off, and transport

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Live~Recall	Trigger	Input
Live~Active	LED	Output
Off~Recall	Trigger	Input
Off~Active	LED	Output
Off~Save	Trigger	Input
Transport~Save Arm	Toggle	Both
Transport~Capture Source	Text	Both
Transport~Disable Wall	Toggle	Both
Transport~Fade Time	Value	Both	0 to 60 s
Transport~Per-Preset Fades	Toggle	Both
Transport~State	Text	Output

Transport~Save Arm and Transport~Capture Source are one control each, drawn on both the Control page and the Settings page. See The Plugin Panel.

Command pad pins

Pin	Type	Direction
Command~Key 0 to Command~Key 9	Trigger	Input
Command~Key THRU / AND / AT / FULL / OUT	Trigger	Input
Command~Key RELEASE / CLEAR / ENTER	Trigger	Input
Command~Line	Text	Output
Command~WB Summary	Text	Output

See Command Pad.

sACN input

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Input~Enable	Toggle	Both
Input~Universe	Value	Both	1 to 63999
Input~Interface	Text	Both
Input~Join Multicast	Toggle	Both
Input~Filter IP	Text	Both
Input~Filter Name	Text	Both
Input~Min Priority	Value	Both	0 to 200
Input~Kick Enable	Toggle	Both
Input~Kick Timeout	Value	Both	0 to 600 s
Input~Kick Fallback	Text	Both
Input~Present	LED	Output
Input~Source	Text	Output

Input~Source is the Rx Source readout, and its three states are covered in Live Input and Arbitration.

sACN output

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Output~Enable	Toggle	Both
Output~Universe	Value	Both	1 to 63999
Output~Priority	Value	Both	0 to 200
Output~Interface	Text	Both
Output~Dest IP	Text	Both
Output~FPS	Value	Both	5 to 30

DMX monitor

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Monitor~Bank	Value	Both	1 to 8
Monitor~Bank Prev	Trigger	Input
Monitor~Bank Next	Trigger	Input

Bank navigation is the whole of the monitor's pin surface. The 64 cells themselves carry no pins - the channel label, the input echo, and the editable output cell are panel-only, 192 controls with no pin between them. Read and write channels through Ch and In Ch instead. How many banks are actually reachable follows Channel Count; see The Plugin Panel.

Preset backup pins

Pin	Type	Direction
Presets~Export	Text	Output
Presets~Import	Text	Both
Presets~Import Apply	Trigger	Input

See Preset Backup.

Emergency pins

Pin	Type	Direction
Emergency~Fire Trigger	Toggle	Input
Emergency~Active	LED	Output
Emergency~Name	Text	Both
Emergency~Save	Trigger	Input

Emergency~Fire Trigger is the alarm contact input. It is a toggle, and it is input-only - it has no panel widget and nothing reads it back out. It is grouped here deliberately so it sits next to the rest of the emergency surface rather than as a loose pin. See Emergency and Fire Alarm.

Lamina Faders: link

Pin	Type	Direction
Link~Status	Status	Output
Link~Linked	LED	Output
Link~Lamina Component	Text	Both
Link~Refresh	Trigger	Input

See Lamina Faders.

Faders

N runs to Fader Count.

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Fader~Fader N	Value	Both	0 to 255
Fader~Label N	Text	Both
Fader~Readout N	Text	Output
Fader~Channel N	Text	Output

Bind the Fader pin rather than the readout - see Binding Faders to a UCI.

Banks

N runs to Bank Count.

Pin	Type	Direction	Range
Bank~Select	Value	Both	1 to Bank Count
Bank~Select N	Toggle	Both
Bank~Name N	Text	Both
Bank~Start N	Value	Both	1 to 512
Bank~Name Display	Text	Output
Bank~Auto Deploy	Trigger	Input
Bank~Copy	Trigger	Input
Bank~Paste	Trigger	Input
Bank~Scope Name / Bank~Scope Values / Bank~Scope Labels	Toggle	Both
Bank~Clipboard Status	Text	Output
Bank Up	Trigger	Input
Bank Down	Trigger	Input
Bank Active N	LED	Output

The last three - Bank Up, Bank Down, and Bank Active N - are drawn nowhere on the panel and, like the controller's channel pins, carry no tilde group. They exist for a wall plate or a UCI that needs to step banks without the panel being on screen.

18.Troubleshooting

sACN input problems

No sACN received

• Turn Join Multicast on; it ships off. See Network and sACN Setup
• Check the Core is on the same Layer 2 segment as the source. See Network and sACN Setup
• Confirm In Enable is on and Universe In matches the source's universe
• Confirm Min Priority is not above the priority the source is sending
• Check Filter Source IP and Filter Source Name - a filter left from commissioning silently rejects everything else
• Do not wait for Status to tell you. An input-side interface failure raises no fault; watch Input Present, Rx Source and the debug log. See Live Input and Arbitration

Source found but values never update

• Check whether a second source at the same priority acquired first - see the next card
• On an older release this had another cause, see Known Issues

A source at the same priority will not take over

By design: the first source to arrive holds, and only a strictly higher priority preempts. See Which source wins.

Live values look stale after changing universe

Intended: a re-open holds the last values until a new source arrives, and only In Enable off clears them. See When the source stops. With Kick on and a timeout set, the re-open restarts the kick timer and the fallback fires when it runs out. See Kick.

sACN output and licensing

The fixtures are dark

• Confirm Out Enable is on, and that Universe Out matches what the fixtures are patched to
• Check the LICENSE readout. When the demo expires the output stops while everything else keeps working. See Licensing
• Check the Status bar for a fail-closed interface or Dest IP, below

Status names an interface and output has halted

A named Out Interface with no usable IP halts output rather than falling back, see Network and sACN Setup.

• Restore the interface. Output re-opens on its own a few seconds after the Core sees the interface list change
• If it does not, press Refresh in the header. The automatic re-arm fires on a change to the interface list, not on a retry timer, so a fault with an unchanged list waits for the button
• If you did not mean to pin egress to one NIC, set Out Interface back to Auto

Status reads Dest IP is not a valid address

Correct Dest IP, see the Dest IP row in Output universe and destination.

Fader problems

The faders are greyed out

• Check the Linked LED and the Status bar first. The whole strip is disabled while Faders is not linked to a controller, and the Status reason text names which failure it is. See Lamina Faders
• A single greyed fader whose channel label is blank is mapped past channel 512. See Fader Banks and Copy/Paste

A fader moves but the light does not

• If the controller is in an alarm lockdown it refuses channel writes, so the move never reaches the buffer. See Emergency and Fire Alarm
• If the controller's demo has expired the fader still moves and still writes - it is the controller's sACN output that has stopped. See Licensing
• A fader with no link or no channel does nothing with the value. See Binding Faders to a UCI

A paste landed on the wrong fixtures

Paste applies the copied look to the destination bank's own channels and never writes Bank Start. See Copy and paste a bank.

Preset backup problems

An import was rejected

Import Apply validates the whole blob before writing anything, so a rejection leaves every stored preset untouched. Status carries the reason until an import succeeds or the script restarts, and fieldcount is the one a tab-mangled blob produces. The full reason table is in Preset Backup.

The exported blob has an old preset name

Export rebuilds after a save and after a successful import, not when a name or fade is edited. Save or re-import before copying the blob. See Preset Backup.

Debug output

The plugin logs its startup banner, license state, and warnings to the Q-SYS debug console. Set Debug_Level to Verbose for deeper diagnostics. The on-block debug button is enabled on all Fresh AV Labs plugins for field troubleshooting - and on the input side it is the only place some failures are reported at all.

19.Known Issues

Before 1.2.5, Status could hide halted output

On versions before 1.2.5, Status could read OK after a successful Import Apply or an alarm release while output was still halted. During an alarm it could read EMERGENCY - egress active while no output was leaving.

Workaround: update to 1.2.5 or later. On an earlier version, press Refresh in the header. The fault returns if Dest IP or Out Interface is still wrong.

Before 1.2.0, the receiver could track the plugin's own output

On versions before 1.2.0, the receiver could acquire the plugin's own transmitted frames after a re-open, through multicast loopback. The plugin then held itself as the tracked source, and a console at the same priority was ignored until it claimed a higher one.

Workaround: update to 1.2.0 or later. The receiver now ignores packets that carry its own source identity.

20.Support

• Support tickets: freshavlabs.com/support
• Website: freshavlabs.com
• Email: [email protected]

Include with a request:

• Q-SYS Designer version
• Core model
• Plugin version, shown under the plugin name in the header
• Your configuration: Channel Count, Preset Count, Passthrough, and whether the fire-alarm path is enabled
• Your sACN setup: universes in and out, Join Multicast, the named interfaces, and priorities
• The Locking ID, for a license question
• Debug console output showing the issue