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Build a New Scene (F)

Building a New Scene

This command is useful but tricky. ANY CHANNEL not specifically called out in a control string is set to zero. If you're starting from scratch or writing your own driver, in general it's easier to use the A (add) command or G (group) command instead. However, there are legacy systems out there with programming based on F, so it's included here for reference.

A common tech support call has the gist of "I sent a command and it worked perfectly, then I sent a second command and all the first lights turned off. What's wrong?"  Don't use F unless you know exactly what you're doing.

                          FXXX@YYY:TTT[cr]
                  FXXX@YYY,AAA@BBB,CCC@DDD:TTT[cr]

  • F is a capital F

  • @ is the ASCII 'at' character, hex 0x40

  • XXX, AAA, CCC are three digit DMX channel numbers with range [001 512]. As only channels

    1-512 exist in a typical DMX universe, channel 000 can used to select all channels.

  • YYY, BBB, DDD are three digit channel values with range [000 255] (:) is the ASCII colon character,

    hex 0x3A


  • TTT is a three digit time value, in tenths of a second, range [000 999]

  • [cr] is the carriage return character, decimal 13 or hex 0x0D.

For example, following the completion of these (one with a zero fade time, one with 2.4 seconds and one with 1.0 second crossfades):

F001@100:000[cr]
F010@128,011@127,012@126:024[cr]
F007@010:010[cr]




... the DMX output buffer would have the following values:


CH1 - CH6: 0

CH7: 010

CH8-CH512: 0

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