Example: Button board and Light board
Now let’s look at a momentary example, and how
not
to use it.
Consider the system described above. One may assume that, when
pressed, the flame effect would begin on strip 1 of the light board. And
that’s true, it will. However, since the flame effect is a continuous effect
(that we want to run indefinitely) and the button press is momentary (it only
issues a signal when the button is initially pressed), the effect will be brief
–probably so brief as to not even be visible to the user.
So what should we change to get what we want? We have a couple of
options, looking at the actions available to the button board:
Looking over our available choices, “Action while Holding” and “Latch
On/Latch Off” sound like they’ll produce a continuous output suitable for
triggering our continuous flame effect. Using one of them (depending on
whether you want to have to hold the button or just turn it on and off) will
get us the behavior we desire.
Troubleshooting
Sometimes things just don’t work out the way we envisioned them working
out. Here are some tips for troubleshooting a non-functioning (or
malfunctioning) Spectacle project.
Board order is wrong
A limitation of the Spectacle application and system is that the boards must
be attached to the Director Board in the same order in which they appear in
the application list. This means that a system with a Button Board as the
top item in the list and a Sound Board second is different to and
incompatible with a Spectacle script which has the Button Board at the
bottom. It also means that no Spectacle system can have unused boards in
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