Position Scale

When a piece of scenery moves, an encoder connected to that scenery spins. As the encoder spins, it generates a stream of electrical pulses at a specific interval. The Stagehand connected to the encoder counts those pulses to determine where the scenery actually is.

The Stagehand relays the position back to Spikemark, which then displays the position information on screen. By default, Spikemark displays the information as raw encoder counts.

Viewing the position of the scenery as raw encoder counts is almost never ideal. Usually, you’ll want to see the motor’s position displayed in something more meaningful, such as inches or degrees.

Motor scaling allows you to specify a ratio between raw encoder counts and physical units.

For example: 1,245,012 encoder counts / 125.5 inches = 9,920.41 encoder counts per inch for your position scale.

With a position scale defined, you can view the motor’s current position and write cues in a more user-friendly manner. Spikemark can display position as inches, feet, millimeters, meters or degrees. Therefore, rather than having to type 1,245,120,295 encoder counts, you would simply enter 123.5 inches or 360 degrees.

We suggest you set your position scale by using the Position Scale Wizard, but you can also set your Position Scale Manually.

If you know your position scale, simply just type it into the input field (tab to confirm!), and you're good to go!