Watch a fixture over time

A report is one look at a fixture. Monitoring keeps asking and writes down what changes, which catches the faults that need time or handling to show. This topic watches one fixture. To find the unit on a line that drops out, see Watch the whole line; to chase a fault that comes and goes, see Chase an intermittent fault.

Starting a session

Select the fixture and choose Fixture → Start Monitoring (⌘M) (macOS), or open the Monitor tab and click Start. Before you start, the tab offers two choices:

• This fixture or Whole line: watch the selected fixture closely, or every fixture on the line for the one that drops out (see Watch the whole line).
• Every: how often to ask, from 1 to 15 seconds. 2 seconds suits most work. A longer interval suits a long soak test, where a change of a few seconds matters less.

Starting takes a fresh report first. That report is the baseline each later reading is compared with, and it replaces the one on the Report tab. Each round after that reads the sensors, the status messages, the DMX start address and personality, and, where the fixture keeps them, its counts of bad DMX and RDM frames. It does not read the fixture’s identity again.

Starting a session ends any other session that is running. Stop (or Fixture → Stop Monitoring) ends it.

Sensors

The left side lists every sensor: Now is the latest reading, Baseline what it read at the start, and Normal the range the fixture declares for it. The dot beside each turns orange or red when the reading leaves its normal range.

Every sensor the fixture reports is read each round, so a slow climb shows here before the fixture complains about it. To see how a unit behaves warm, click Put Under Load… while it is monitored: the fixture is lit for as long as you choose, the stretch is shaded on the chart, and output ends by itself (see Load test a fixture).

Trends

Trend draws each sensor’s readings since the start as a small line, with its normal range shaded behind it. It shows the shape: a temperature still climbing, or a fan that never speeds up as the unit warms.

Under the table, the worst sensor right now is drawn large. Click another row to draw that one instead. Time since the start runs along the bottom, and each event is a line at the moment it happened: solid when it is this sensor changing rating, dashed for anything else. A status message that appears just as a curve bends shows up here as a line at the bend. Where the fixture stopped answering, the curve has a gap.

Events

The right side is the list of what changed, newest at the bottom, each with its time since the start (+95s) and a dot for how serious it is:

• A sensor changing rating: Head temperature: OK → WARNING, with the reading that did it.
• A status message appearing or clearing, in the fixture’s own words. A message that appears and clears again on its own is an intermittent fault, and the time beside each is the evidence.
• The start address or personality changed: someone changed it at the fixture’s front panel during the session.
• Device reported…: a change the fixture announced on its own. Information only: when it is an address or personality edit, that change has its own event too.
• Corrupt frames on DMX input and DMX512 packets with errors: the fixture’s own count of bad data rose since the last round. Only fixtures that keep these counts can show them.
• Device stopped responding and device responding again, and replies that came late or only when asked twice (see Answered late or asked twice).

The list says No changes yet. until something changes. On a healthy fixture on a quiet bench, that can be the whole session.

The summary

Stopping opens the Session summary: how many rounds over how long, how many went unanswered, and, when there were any, how many came back late or were asked twice. Then each sensor’s lowest, average, highest and last reading with its trend, every event, and under Still active any status message that had not cleared when you stopped. Summary… opens it again until the next session starts.

Every session is kept in the bench’s captures folder, one file per fixture, written as it runs. A session cut short still has every round up to that point.

When an assistant is watching

An AI assistant connected to the bench can watch a fixture too, using this same session. The Monitor tab says An assistant is watching this fixture while it does, and the fixture’s sidebar row gets a sparkles badge. Click Start to take the session over and follow it here. The assistant’s watch ends where it stood.

From the command line

rdmbench-cli monitor watches the first fixture found, or the one whose UID you give it. It prints each event as it happens and the summary when you press Ctrl-C. --interval sets the seconds between rounds, and --duration stops it after that many seconds. --json prints each round’s events as a line of JSON, then the summary. The session is saved to the same captures folder the app uses.