VenueAdvance

For working bands, DJs, and small-venue techs who walk into house rigs they have never seen and lose soundcheck time to patching — built first for the founder's own band and his QLC+ desk. VenueAdvance takes a venue's rig (fixtures, modes, DMX addresses, universes) as one patch JSON file and produces a ready-to-load QLC+ show file, plus matching fixture definitions and a paper patch sheet. At soundcheck it diffs a discovery scan of the real rig against that show file and lists only what actually differs. It is fixture- and controller-agnostic by design — data-driven fixture JSON, with QLC+ as the v1 output target because it is the founder's desk, not because the model is QLC+-shaped. There is no design or visualization layer.

How it works

1. Advance the venue: describe its rig — fixtures, modes, DMX addresses, universes — in one patch JSON file (addresses 1-based, the way they appear on the fixture; an entry may omit its address and be auto-packed)
2. Generate at home: the patched QLC+ show file, the matching fixture definitions from the same source, and the Markdown patch sheet
3. Load it in QLC+ on site: copy the fixture definitions into QLC+'s user fixture folder, open the show file, and map each universe to its physical output once on that machine
4. Run the Line Check chaser from the Functions tab — it solos every fixture in patch order against the patch sheet
5. Discovery-scan the real rig and run verify against the show file: it lists only what actually differs — missing, moved, wrong footprint, unexpected — with its counts reconciled
6. Fix only what differs, then re-scan

What the generator makes

One patch file in, a complete show out. The patch engine expands the patch entries into individual fixtures, auto-packs any entry without an explicit address after the previous entry in its universe, and fails loudly on address overlaps or anything past channel 512 — a bad patch never silently becomes a show file.

Every generated show carries a Blackout scene and a Full On scene (Full On uses each channel's safe value — colors and dimmers up, pan and tilt centred, strobes, programs and reset at rest), one solo check scene per fixture, and a Line Check chaser that steps through the solo scenes in patch order — the soundcheck walk-the-rig tool.

Fixture definitions are exported from the same JSON source as the patch, so the definition and the patch can never drift apart. Adding a fixture to the library is adding one JSON file — no code changes.

• The QLC+ show file (.qxw) — universes and fixtures patched, addresses stored in QLC+'s format
• A fixture definition (.qxf) for every non-built-in fixture used, generated from the same source
• A Markdown patch sheet — universe, 1-based address range, fixture name, mode, channel count: the piece of paper taped to the desk
• A fixture library of 6 definitions spanning the main fixture classes a small-venue rig contains, including two QLC+ built-ins that need no definition file
• Python 3, standard library only — no install step; it runs locally, with no server and nothing talking to a network

The soundcheck check — the scan is the source of truth

The doctrine stands: the discovery scan is the source of truth on the day. Stored venue rig details are a last-known cache for prep, and they are never trusted over the scan.

The verify command parses the generated show file — the planned side is exactly the file loaded on the desk — loads a discovery scan in the reserved device shape, and matches by universe and address. Its report reconciles its own counts (planned fixtures account for every matched, wrong-footprint, moved, and missing fixture; discovered devices account for every matched, wrong-footprint, moved, and unexpected device), and the counts are asserted in code before any report is written — no silent numbers. Exit 0 means the rig matches the patch; exit 1 lists the mismatches; exit 2 refuses malformed input, including overlapping discovered devices, loudly.

• Missing — planned, but not discovered
• Moved — a discovered device whose reported label matches a planned fixture's name at a different address (no label match means no guessed match)
• Wrong footprint — the right address, but a different channel count than patched, usually a fixture left in the wrong mode
• Unexpected — discovered, but not in the patch

Where it stands — the honest state

VenueAdvance is built and structurally verified. Its one-command check suite regenerates all three sample shows (a small bar: 8 fixtures, 1 universe; a theatre: 25 fixtures, 1 universe; a club: 28 fixtures, 2 universes), validates them, exercises clean, four-fault, and one-fault scans and every loud-failure path, and passes every check — re-run fresh for this page, with the same result.

What that validation proves is structural: the generated files parse, their channel counts reconcile against the fixture definitions, the validator's format checks pass, and the verify workflow sorts clean scans from faulty ones with the right exit codes. What it does not prove is a load test: the generated files have never been opened in a real QLC+ binary. QLC+ is not installed on the machine that built this, so structural validation against the documented format and real QLC+ 4.12–4.14 files is the evidence — not a load test, and this page does not call it one.

No live RDM scan has ever run. Every scan input in the build is simulated, and each one labels itself simulated in the file, in the command output, and in every report — the scan-template command exists to generate exactly-matching simulated scans as test and demo input. Nothing in this build talks to hardware.

Fixture channel charts remain the manufacturers' published charts as commonly documented. By the product's own doctrine they are prep, not truth — the Line Check and the verify pass at soundcheck are where a wrong chart gets caught.

No price exists for VenueAdvance. Pricing is undecided — figures on file are unvalidated hypotheses, and none is quoted here as decided. There is nothing to buy on this page; today this door does one honest thing: it takes an interest list.

What a first real-world use still needs

Three steps stand between this build and a first real-world use, named plainly:

First, the real QLC+ load test: open a generated show file in the founder's actual QLC+ install, with the generated fixture definitions in QLC+'s user fixture folder, and fix any complaint as a v1.1 item. That is the one load test still outstanding.

Second, a live RDM hardware run: a physical DMX/RDM interface at a venue — an RDM-capable USB-DMX interface or an Art-Net/sACN node — plus a small live reader that emits the same scan file shape with its source marked live. The verify side already accepts that file unchanged.

Third, mapping each universe to its physical output, once, on the desk laptop. That mapping is deliberately per-machine QLC+ setup; it is not carried in the show file.

Not built yet, in the order the records set: a live RDM reader behind the scan-file interface, then venue cache files (the last-known rig per venue, diffed against scans over time), then Virtual Console layout generation.

Join the VenueAdvance interest list

This is an interest list — interest only. Leave your name and email, and we will write to this list when there is news about VenueAdvance. Joining does not create an account, and it is not a purchase — no price has been set for VenueAdvance, and nothing is for sale on this page.