Safe Zones™

A Safe Zone™ is a limit you set on a DMX channel (a floor, a ceiling, or both) that the controller enforces against everything. Shows, Logic Rules, manual-control sliders: no matter what asks, the value that leaves the box stays inside the zone.

Why you'd want this

Some DMX devices move. A servo-driven animatronic, a moving head beside a wall, a prop with real mechanical stops: for these, a DMX value isn't just a brightness, it's a position, and an out-of-range position can grind a servo, hit scenery, or damage the prop.

Set a Safe Zone™ once, on the controller, and the mechanical limits are enforced at the last possible moment. They hold even if someone later edits the show wrong, drags a slider too far, or a rule misfires. The prop physically can't be asked to hurt itself.

With Safe Zones™ set, the editor won't let you draw a show outside the range, so keyframe data stays within limits. A value can still slip through in other ways (a Channel Discovery™ probe, for example, can ask for a value outside a known good limit). In those cases the hardware still enforces the zone. If a servo's Safe Zone™ is 50 to 128 and a show frame, manual control, or a discovery request asks for 0, the controller sends 50, the lowest value the zone allows. This safeguard lives in the hardware to protect your valuable moving props.

What it covers

• Values from shows, Logic Rules, and manual control are all clamped to the zone.
• Fixtures that use two paired channels for extra-fine movement (common for pan/tilt on moving heads and for servo props) are handled as a single value. The pair is clamped together, so the fine channel can't sneak a position past the limit.

Buffer Mode Bypasses Safe Zones™

When in buffer mode and the IgorBox DMX is not actively controlling the channel, it will not enforce safe zones. It is passing your upstream data untouched.

Setting them up

Safe Zones™ are set per channel in a fixture's channel layout: a Safe min / Safe max pair on any dimmer, pan, or tilt channel. Proportional channels (the kind used for DMX servo props) get theirs automatically: the movement band you configure is the zone. See Fixture Channels for where to edit them, and note that fixture-library profiles can ship with zones already filled in.

Set limits before you program

Dial in Safe Zones™ right after you patch a mechanical fixture, before building shows for it. Then program fearlessly. The rails are already up.