What are dimming curves?
The g3 firmware supports lighting curves. These are used to allow different types of lights to behave similarly when dimming. LEDs tend to go from off to full brightness over a much narrower range of voltages than incandescent lights. This means that a fade going from 0 to 100% voltage with an incandescent light will not produce the same results with LED lights. The LED lights will come on later and reach full brightness sooner than incandescent lights.
There is a built-in Standard curve for incandescent lights which behaves as a simple, linear 0 to 100% voltage provider. This is the behavior seen with previous versions of the firmware and most DMX dimmer packs. There is a built-in On/Off curve. This on/off ‘curve’ is used on a channel where the connected devices do not tolerate dimming, for example, the air blower motors in inflatables. Setting a channel configured for on/off operation to any intensity 50% or greater results in 100% intensity or ‘on’. Intensities below 50% result in the channel being off.
Finally, a LED curve is provided which is the average for various LED colors and dimmable power supply configurations. This curve is provided with the software, so if you choose to change it you can recover the original. It is custom curve 1. The g3 firmware accepts up to eight downloaded, custom curves. Each channel is configured with its own curve from the ten possible curves the controller may have available.
The default location for curve files is …Light-O-Rama\DimmingCurves
The curve file names are LOR-Curve01.ldc through LOR-Curve08.ldc.
A curve file is a list of comma delimited numbers with as many numbers per line as you like. Text on a line preceded by a ‘#’ is treated as a comment.
There are 1024 numbers in a curve file. The first number represents off and the last full brightness. A number in the curve file is a value between 0 and 1023. The curve files map into the LOR brightness world for which LOR will provide a conversion utility.