DMX Doctor
Why is that light not doing what I asked?
One place to look when something is wrong, checking the whole chain from your fixture setup to what is genuinely going out on the wire. Most of what it finds, it can fix for you.
A fixture doing the wrong thing is rarely one problem. It might be patched on the wrong channel, or typed as the wrong kind of channel. It might be fine and sitting under a live override you forgot about. The master dimmer might be at zero. The interface might have dropped out an hour ago and come back. Working out which of those it is, on a dark stage, with an audience in, is the part nobody enjoys.
DMX Doctor sits in the main header and asks all of those questions at once. It replaces the old Health tab, and it goes a good deal further: it reads your patch, watches what the desk is doing right now, shows the real values on the wire, and reports problems that already happened rather than only what is wrong at this instant. Every finding is written in ordinary language, and most carry a one-click fix you can apply across many fixtures and undo if you change your mind.
It is included on every plan, free ones as well.
It checks the whole chain, not one link
Four questions, asked in the order a problem actually travels.
Is the fixture described correctly?
Mis-typed colour channels, broken lamp grouping, addressing clashes, missing ranges on the channels that need them, and laser-specific checks. A fixture that is patched wrong cannot be driven right, however good the cue is.
Is the desk trying to drive it?
Whether output is reaching the lights at all, whether the master dimmer is at zero, and whether a live override, a colour override or Dark On Silence is the reason a fixture looks wrong. Plenty of faults are the desk doing exactly what it was told.
What is really on the wire?
A channel table showing the values genuinely going out, not the values that should be going out. When the two disagree, that gap is the fault.
What already went wrong?
An interface that dropped out an hour ago, a show that failed to load, an engine that crashed and restarted: all of it invisible to a check that only looks at this moment. Recent problems reads the logs and reports what happened, when it was last seen and how often, in plain language.
It does not just tell you. It fixes it.
Most findings carry a fix. Apply it to one fixture or to every fixture with the same problem, and undo the whole thing if the result is not what you wanted. A rig imported from a manufacturer file with forty fixtures typed wrongly is forty clicks in most software. Here it is one.
Where a fix would be a judgement call rather than a correction, DMX Doctor says so and leaves it to you. It is deliberately quiet about findings that are not worth acting on: a plain slow-to-fast strobe on a single channel is how a great many fixtures ship, and reporting it as a problem every time trains people to ignore the list.
See everything acting on the rig at once
The Output window gains a Sources view: every source currently driving the rig down one side, in the order they take precedence, the groups they are acting on down the other, and lines between them saying what each one is actually achieving. Where something is being blocked, the line is broken and names what is blocking it.
There is nothing to select and nothing to drill into. It is the whole picture on one screen. It exists because a group stayed dark through a live show while an unrelated Live Edit quietly held its colours at zero, and working that out took hours. The map reads it as one row.
A finding you can trust is a finding you will read
A diagnostic tool that cries wolf is worse than none at all, because you stop reading it. Two changes in this release were about exactly that: laser profiles that work perfectly well were being flagged for a mode the engine drives through its own fallback, and a cold spark or CO2 machine whose entire fixture is a heater toggle and an effect toggle was raised as an error to fix before the show. Both now pass, and a laser mode channel with no options at all still errors, correctly.
The same applies to the guided checks. Where they used to run out of ideas and offer you a support ticket, they now look at what has already gone wrong on this machine first, and can usually give you an answer instead.
And when it genuinely is us
Get help raises a support ticket with the diagnostics already attached, so you do not have to explain the problem twice or describe a screen you are looking at over email. It is deliberately the last thing DMX Doctor offers rather than the first.
Who this is for
Anyone who has ever pointed at a light and said: why is that one wrong?
Anyone patching a new rig
Import a fixture library or build a patch by hand and DMX Doctor tells you what is mis-typed before you find out on stage.
Anyone under time pressure
Doors in twenty minutes and one fixture is white when it should be blue. Check the chain in one place rather than four.
Installers handing over a system
A clean bill of health before you leave site, and something the venue can run themselves when they ring you six months later.
Anyone raising a support ticket
Get help attaches the diagnostics automatically, so the first reply can be an answer rather than a request for more information.
Included on every plan
DMX Doctor is part of DMXDesktop on Free, Standard and Pro alike. Diagnosing your own rig is not something we think you should have to pay for.
See pricingQuestions
What DMX Doctor does, and what it does not.
Where did the Health tab go? +
DMX Doctor replaces it. It lives in the main header rather than inside a tab, and it checks a good deal more: the live state of the desk, the real values on the wire, and problems that have already happened, none of which the Health tab could see.
Do I need a Pro licence? +
No. DMX Doctor is included on every plan, including the free one.
Will it change my show without asking? +
No. Nothing is applied until you apply it, you choose whether a fix goes to one fixture or all of them, and anything applied can be undone.
What does Recent problems actually read? +
The application's own logs. It reports what happened, when it was last seen and how often, in ordinary language. None of the raw log text is shown to you, and clearing an entry dismisses it from the list rather than deleting anything, so the logs still reach support intact if you send them.
It says my fixture is fine, but it is still wrong. +
Then look at the live checks and the Sources view rather than the fixture checks. A correctly patched fixture doing the wrong thing is usually something holding it: a live override, a colour override, a Live Edit, Dark On Silence, or the master dimmer. The Sources view shows all of them at once and names whatever is winning.
Does it need to be connected to the internet? +
No. Every check runs locally against your own patch and your own output. Only Get help, which raises a support ticket, needs a connection.
Related
Other places worth looking when a rig misbehaves.
Stop guessing which link in the chain broke
DMX Doctor is in the main header of every DMXDesktop install, on every plan.
