Mitras questions

[BeanAnimal]

Hi everyone -

I had Radion XR30 (Gen 2 i think)
and have NooPsyche K7 Pro III
Both fixtures above have extremely smooth transitions as they ramp up daylight from 0 to max intensity and back down. No flicker or jumps in intensity... just smooth natural light.

I ordered (2x) Mitras 7206 and am getting them ready. I setup AB+ posted here. I created schedule to ramp light up and down instead of hard ON/OFF.
I have posted an image of the schedule below. Controlled by P4

The lights comes on at 10:00 AM. then at 10:01 there is a JUMP in intensity... then another JUMP at 10:02 - then 10:03 another JUMP and then 10:07or so... Very unnatural as the light is ramping up. Why is the transition in power as these ramp up not smooth? Is it the different channels coming on? Whatever it is, I def do not care for it and hope there is a way to make it smooth.

 

[Gaël]

Hello,
Didn't you activate the photo mode?

Gaël

 

[BeanAnimal]

No It is in standard mode.

 

[DFR]

Unfortunately, this is normal for the Mitras. There is more of a step-wise increase during ramp with the LX7s than other manufacturers.

 

[BeanAnimal]

That is extremely disappointing if that is the case.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Hi @Gaël

Can you offer some insight? Unless I have done something wrong - It feels like the "dimming" is not continuous but more like updated once every minute. So ramping from 0% - 100% over 3 period hours would cause ~.6% steps every minute - which at very low light levels are rather large very visible jumps. At much higher outputs they may be less noticeable.

Or have I programmed something wrong?

 

[BeanAnimal]

So this from GHL site regarding the Mitras:

If I set a ramp from 0 to 100% over 3 hours (180 minutes) the light dims in whole percentage steps (even if it was .6) , one time per minute increments. It creates EXTREMELY noticeable stair steps and beyond bothersome.

I found a post from 2014 over at RC that appears to confirm that this fixture does not appear to be capable of "smooth dimming" for extremely large ranges of outputs, depending on ramp times. I am not sure where the 4000:1 ratio comes in the sales literature or if it is linear or just theoretical- but there are 1440 minutes in a 24 hour period and the fixture appears to dim in 1 minutes steps. So the driver may be capable of 4000 different power levels, but a dimming loop that fires ones per minute over a 24 hour ramp could only hit 1440 discrete steps... 4 hours 240, 1 hour 60, etc.

Anybody?

 

[Vinny@GHLUSA]

We're looking into this. If we find room for improvement, it will be implemented.

 

[rtparty]

So this from GHL site regarding the Mitras:

If I set a ramp from 0 to 100% over 3 hours (180 minutes) the light dims in whole percentage steps (even if it was .6) , one time per minute increments. It creates EXTREMELY noticeable stair steps and beyond bothersome.

I found a post from 2014 over at RC that appears to confirm that this fixture does not appear to be capable of "smooth dimming" for extremely large ranges of outputs, depending on ramp times. I am not sure where the 4000:1 ratio comes in the sales literature or if it is linear or just theoretical- but there are 1440 minutes in a 24 hour period and the fixture appears to dim in 1 minutes steps. So the driver may be capable of 4000 different power levels, but a dimming loop that fires ones per minute over a 24 hour ramp could only hit 1440 discrete steps... 4 hours 240, 1 hour 60, etc.

Anybody?

Welcome to PWM and inferior tech?

 

[Matthias Gross]

Hi,

the brightness is updated for every channel any 0.1s and the internal resolution is 1 : 65536.
So I wonder why you see 1% steps.

I check that out and see if there is maybe a rounding problem in lower percentages and will provide an update if it can be fixed with an update.

 

[Matthias Gross]

Update: I was able to reproduce what Bill stated and already started with the new firmware 1.15 for the LX7. It seems we have a fix, but there needs still some thorough testing to be done before we can release this version for the public.
Our team - and Bill - is currently testing, we will update here once the new 1.15 is available.

In the same LX7 update we added a few other improvements, e.g. support for NTP timeserverver.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Can confirm that I am running the beta 1.15 release and things are now dimming as expected... super smooth dimming in both directions and from color to color so far. No more blink or flash or stair stepping is detectable for any ramp up/down time in any channel.

Thanks for getting this addressed so quickly.

 

[Matthias Gross]

Thanks Bill for helping us to test the new firmware.
The new firmware as well as the latest GHL Control Center are available for download here:

GHL Control Center 1.1.4.4 – GHL (International)

*** updated version from 5/31/2023, incl. IOND updates *** PC software (Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11), suitable for these devices: - Mitras LX6 up to firmware 1.21 - Mitras LX7 up to firmware 1.15 - GHL Doser 2.x (Maxi) SA/EXT up to firmware 1.46 - ProfiLux 3 & 3.1 with firmware 6.00 to 6.47 -...

www.aquariumcomputer.com

We also added NTP support in this version.

 

[Lucas815]

Thanks Bill for helping us to test the new firmware.
The new firmware as well as the latest GHL Control Center are available for download here:

GHL Control Center 1.1.4.4 – GHL (International)

*** updated version from 5/31/2023, incl. IOND updates *** PC software (Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10, 11), suitable for these devices: - Mitras LX6 up to firmware 1.21 - Mitras LX7 up to firmware 1.15 - GHL Doser 2.x (Maxi) SA/EXT up to firmware 1.46 - ProfiLux 3 & 3.1 with firmware 6.00 to 6.47 -...

www.aquariumcomputer.com

We also added NTP support in this version.

I simply want to say that I see a noticeable improvement with GHL's communication in the last few months, and is very appreciated.

I also received the update today regarding the IonD sensor.
While the delay is disapointing, it's understandable, and communicating bad news is still just as important and appreciated as communicating the good ones.

Please keep up the communication efforts. There cannot be too much of it.