Pattern glossary

• An instrument is a single device or part of a device that's being controlled from a program.

  • Think "a lighting instrument" - but I'm trying to avoid being too lighting specific.

• An instrument control value is a control input to an instrument.

  • A control value has a type (full name: control value type). Possible types include:
    • brightness
    • color
    • pan
    • tilt
    • speed control
    • or some sort of control value special to that light.
  • Wherever possible control values should be in "real world" numbers like RGB , lumens, angles, or hertz - but in some cases this might be difficult or impossible.

• A bank is a list of instruments, numbered continuously from 1(*).

  • This means that each instrument in a bank has an instrument number.
  • Each bank also has a combiner that describes what happens if an instrument in the bank gets multiple control values of the same type.

• A subbank is a bank that's entirely contained in another bank.

  • By default, banks run from left to right and from top to bottom.

• An output bank maps the instruments in a bank to "real world" hardware that actually does things.

  • Right now for lights we have the following possible output banks:
    • SPI: LED lights we control through a serial port.
    • visualizer: simulated lights we display on the computer screen.
    • OpenDMX: hardware lights controlled through the DMX protocol.
      • OpenDMX is not yet implemented in software in echomesh.

• A scene is a list of instrument control values and instrument numbers.

  • Think of a scene as a "static setting for your devices."

• A scene transform creates a new, transformed scene from an original scene.

  • Examples might be rotate, mirror, transpose.
  • Scene transforms do not take into account time.

• A pattern point is just a pattern (defined below) and a time.

• A pattern sequence is a list of pattern points, together with an interpolator.

  • An interpolator says how to interpolate between pattern points.
  • The two types of interpolator are:
    • jump, where the devices just jump to the new pattern point, and
    • smooth, where the devices smoothly transition between the patterns
      • there might be all sorts of optional information attached to a smooth interpolation.

• A pattern is a set of scenes and pattern sequences.

  • This means that when you break everything down to the bottom, it's all just scenes.

• A pattern transform creates a new pattern sequence, transformed from an original pattern sequence.

  • Examples might be "feedback", "delay".
  • Pattern sequence transforms do take into account time.