Signal Snakes & Pagination

Site: QSC
Course: Q-SYS Level 1 Training
Book: Signal Snakes & Pagination
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Thursday, 21 November 2024, 3:52 AM

Description

Video Transcript

0:08
Welcome back! Let’s continue from where we left off.
0:11
So the last way to wire components together is with something called the Signal Snake.
0:17
The Signal Snake will take a bunch of inputs and collapse them into one graphical wire,
0:22
for you to expand somewhere else. Now you can make a Signal Snake in a few ways,
0:27
first let’s get rid of our old ones. Now the one way you could make a Signal Snake
0:31
is you could go over to your Schematic Library under Layout,
0:35
you can grab a Signal Snake and pull it into your Schematic.
0:39
Now then you’d have to go over to your Channel Count
0:41
and you’d have to change it to the number of pins that you want, but there’s an easier way to do this
0:45
let’s get rid of this guy. An easier way is to simply select all of your desired pins,
0:50
pull them aside as if you’re going to be doing traditional wiring,
0:53
and hit the space bar and now we’ve created our Signal Snake.
0:58
So you can wire all of your pins to one Signal Snake on one side,
1:01
and you can see it’s already got the right number of pins,
1:03
you can wire all of the other side to another Signal Snake,
1:08
and then all you have to do now is wire these two signal snakes together
1:12
now you’ll notice that the signal snake have this unique little icon for their pin,
1:16
this little sideways hour-glass figure
1:18
and that’s to prevent you from wiring anything to a signal snake other than another signal snake.
1:23
So you can wire these two signal snakes together however you’d like
1:26
you could use traditional wiring, you could make a signal name, and then connect it over here, select Snake.
1:34
One of the major advantages of using both the Signal Names
1:37
and the Signal Snake is that you can wire components together that are on different pages.
1:42
You see, when you’ve got a really large design you’re
1:45
able to make multiple pages in your Schematic to keep things organized.
1:48
And you can add pages in a few different ways.
1:51
You can go up here and hit the little Plus button that says “Add Schematic Page"
1:55
and you’ll see we now have a new tab. You can also go to your Schematic Pages section of your Left-Side Pane
2:01
and you can hit the Plus icon here and that will also create a new page.
2:05
And you can rename these pages however you want, this is going to be my,
2:08
let’s rename this my DSP page for instance, and you can reorganize them,
2:14
reorder them however you like as well.
2:17
You can also close them by clicking the X icon in the tab – you’ll notice that doesn’t delete them,
2:23
they’re still over here and they live in your Schematic Pages – that just cleans things up.
2:27
Look I got it back, here they are, they're alive,
2:29
the only way to delete a page is to actually click on it over here and hit the delete key.
2:35
So let’s put all this into action in a real-world example. Let’s grab some amplifiers into our design.
2:42
We’ll go to the Inventory, we’ll hit our plus icon, and then we’ll add some amplifiers.
2:47
Let’s add a PowerLight 340 and a PL380,
2:52
and you’ll notice that we can see these being added here in our Inventory.
2:55
And let’s also add a loudspeaker, we’ll add, let’s say a Wideline-8.
2:59
Now we’re going to drag the components for all of our new Inventory items into our Schematic
3:05
the two PowerLights and the Wideline-8, and now we’re going to wire them together.
3:09
So we’ll use the DataPort to send our audio to the 340,
3:14
and then we’ll use that 340 to power the high frequency of the Wideline,
3:19
you can see that the pin tells us what it is – it’s the high frequency – HF.
3:23
Then we’ll use the other DataPort outs to power our 380,
3:27
and we’ll use these to power the medium frequency and the low frequency here.
3:32
And there you have it - a fully-functional wired system.
3:36
Now there’s obviously no EQ or DSP going on in this design
3:39
we were only wiring components together so you could learn about wiring.
3:43
In the next few tutorials you’ll learn more about the DSP components
3:46
that the Q-SYS Designer software has to offer. Thanks a lot, and we’ll see you next time.

Lesson Description

This lesson demonstrates the use of Signal Snakes, and also shows how to paginate across multiple schematic pages.

Tips and Definitions

Signal Snakes: Provide a way to reduce a set of signals to a single graphical wire.

To create a Signal Snake: Select a number of pins on a single component Drag them away from the component into the Schematic While continuing to hold the mouse button, press the Space Bar.

Adding a Schematic Page: The easiest way is to click the “+” sign in the upper right-hand corner of the center Schematic pane.

Pagination: Use Signal Names or Signal Snakes to create designs that span multiple pages.