Before you start
Four things decide whether a schedule will actually run:
- A Pro subscription. Schedules save on any tier, but they will not run without Pro. If you save one on Standard the app tells you so.
- The Scheduler switched on. The toggle is at the top right of the Scheduler tab. While it is off nothing runs, which is deliberate: you can build every schedule first and switch on when you are happy.
- A site location, if you want sunrise or sunset anchors. Set it on the General tab. Without it, sun-anchored schedules do not run. Every other kind is unaffected.
- DMXDesktop running. No window has to be open, but the application has to be up. Launch at login and Start minimised to tray, both in General settings, turn that into something a venue never has to think about.
The clock shown on the tab is the controller clock, meaning this computer's own clock. If that is wrong, every schedule is wrong with it.
Switching the Scheduler on
Open Settings and go to the Scheduler tab. The master toggle sits at the top right, next to Refresh and Add Schedule. While it reads Off, the panel tells you plainly that nothing will run until you switch it on.
The switch is per stage. It belongs to the stage it was set on, at the same scope as the schedules themselves, so a site with a scheduled facade stage and a hand-driven event stage does not have to run the feature on both. Switching stage starts or stops the matching schedule.
Refresh re-reads the schedules and redraws the week. Use it after editing schedules in another window.
Adding a schedule
Press Add Schedule. The editor has three parts.
Identity. A name, a priority number, and an Enabled switch. The name is what appears in the table and on the bar in the week view, so make it something a stranger would understand.
When. Pick one repeat rule:
- Weekly, then tick the days.
- Date range, from and to. Both dates are included.
- Specific dates, added one at a time.
Then set Runs from. Start and End each have an anchor of At a time, At sunrise or At sunset. A clock anchor shows a time field; a sun anchor shows an offset in minutes. Start and End must not be identical: that would run the schedule for a whole day rather than for no time at all, and the app blocks it.
What it does. Under Play, choose an effect cue, an effect stack, a cue stack, a macro fader or Blackout, or Nothing if you only want the settings underneath. Then, optionally:
- Master level as a percentage, with a Fade in seconds. The fade is used for the master level and, where the thing being played has a level of its own, for that too. Leave the master level empty to leave the master dimmer where it is.
- Colour override, chosen from your colour palettes.
- Position override, a coarse aim such as Centre, Left or Top Right.
A master level on its own does nothing, because the master dimmer scales whatever is already running and a schedule set to play nothing is not running anything. Choose something under Play, or set a macro fader position, and the master level applies to it.
Put everything back when this schedule ends is on by default. Whatever the schedule started is stopped, a macro fader fades back to zero, any colour or position override is withdrawn, and the master level returns to 100%, all over the fade time above. Switch it off for a look that should simply stay until something else changes it. Either way, if another schedule takes over, that schedule's settings win.
Anchoring to sunrise or sunset
This is the reason most installations want a scheduler at all. A facade set to come on at 17:00 is correct for about three weeks a year. Set the Start anchor to At sunset instead and the window moves with the season on its own.
- Set the site location on the General tab. DMXDesktop works a position out from this computer's timezone. Turn on Manual Override and enter latitude and longitude in decimal degrees for a venue a long way from the city its timezone is named after, or if the sunset time shown looks wrong. North and east are positive, south and west negative.
- Check the line underneath, which shows today's sunrise and sunset for that position. If those times are not close to what you see out of the window, one of the two numbers is wrong. A misplaced decimal point or a missing minus sign are the usual causes.
- In the schedule editor, set Start or End to At sunrise or At sunset and give it an offset in minutes if you want to be on before it is properly dark. Negative is before, positive is after.
The location only decides what time the sun rises and sets, so the nearest town is close enough. Being a mile out moves sunset by a couple of seconds. It is entered by hand rather than looked up, so it keeps working on a machine with no network connection.
If no location is set, or the saved one is not valid, sun-anchored schedules do not run and the tab says so. Everything else carries on as normal.
Priority: what wins when two schedules overlap
Where two schedules overlap, the higher priority wins. Give a one-off override a higher number than the daily look it replaces.
A worked example. A daily House Lights schedule at priority 10 runs sunset to 01:00 every day. A Private Hire schedule at priority 50 runs 19:00 to 23:00 on one date only. On that date the private hire look takes the rig for its four hours and the daily look picks it back up afterwards. Nothing has to be disabled and nothing has to be put back by hand.
The week view colours bars by priority band, so you can see the shape of the layering at a glance.
Reading the This week view
The week view draws each day as a 24 hour row with a bar for every schedule that falls on it, coloured by priority band.
Each bar is one schedule's own window, so an override sitting on top of a daily look shows as two bars rather than one. The thin strip under each day is what will actually run once priority has been applied. If you only read one thing on the panel, read the strip.
A vertical line marks the current time on today's row.
Default look and Startup look
These two are configured in their own panels rather than in the schedules table, because neither has a repeat rule. There can only be one of each: if you add a second, the app tells you to edit the first, because only the first is ever used.
Default look. What runs whenever no schedule applies. Without one the Scheduler asserts nothing between windows and the rig keeps whatever it had. On a permanent install that is usually not what you want, so set one.
Startup look. Asserted the moment the application has finished starting, so the rig comes up on something known rather than on whatever it was left on. It hands over to the Default look, or to a schedule if one is already due. Combined with Launch at login and Start minimised to tray, that is a venue that comes back on its own after a power cut.
In v1.0.52 the Startup look was fixed: it could previously lose a race with the lighting engine and never appear at all.
Closure dates
Add the calendar days the venue is closed, with a reason if you want one so the next person knows why the lights are behaving differently. On a closure date no schedule runs and the Default look takes over. A window that started the evening before stops at midnight rather than running out its tail.
Remove a closure date and schedules run normally on that day again.
Simulate: checking a schedule without waiting
Pick any date and time in the Simulate panel and press Preview. It tells you what would run at that moment. Nothing is sent to the lights.
The test worth doing on any sun-anchored schedule is a date in midwinter and one in midsummer. The same schedule should move by hours between the two without any edit. If it does not, the site location is the first thing to check.
Simulate also tells you when the answer is nothing at all: no window applies and no Default look is set, so the rig would keep whatever it already had.
When the Scheduler stands down
The moment anyone takes the rig by hand, from a fader, a controller pad or the mobile remote, the Scheduler stops changing the lights. It does not fight the operator and it does not wait for a timeout.
A banner then appears in every window: Scheduler suspended, it will not change the lights until you resume it. The banner carries a Resume button, and there is a Resume button on the Scheduler tab as well. Until you press one of them the Scheduler leaves the rig alone.
This is the behaviour to point at when a venue worries that a schedule will override staff mid-shift. It will not.
Common messages and what they mean
- Saved, but the scheduler is not running. It needs a Pro licence. The schedule is stored and will run as soon as the subscription allows it.
- No location set. Schedules anchored to sunrise or sunset will not run. Set the site location on the General tab. Clock-based schedules are unaffected.
- There is already a Default look (or Startup look). Only the first is ever used. Edit that one instead of adding a second, and delete any extras.
- These schedules point at an effect cue that no longer exists. The cue was deleted after the schedule was made. Edit the schedule and pick a cue that still exists, or the window will do nothing when its time comes. The same warning appears for macro faders.
- The start and the end are the same. That would run the schedule for a whole day rather than for no time at all, so change one of them.
- That is not something the scheduler can play unattended. Pick a different target under Play.
- Scheduler switched off. Nothing was changed on the lights. Switching the feature off never moves the rig. It stops asserting, and the lights stay where they are.
Scheduling is per stage
Schedules belong to the stage they were created on, and from v1.0.52 so does the Scheduler's on/off switch. This matters on any site with more than one stage: a scheduled facade stage and a hand-driven event stage can sit in the same show, each with its own answer to whether scheduling is on. Switching stage starts or stops the schedule to match.
If a schedule you expected is not running, check which stage is active before checking anything else.
