Sunlite Suite
Keyboard triggering (hotkeys)
Buttons on the screen can be triggered using your computer’s keyboard, along with your mouse. You can assign any button on the screen to any key on your keyboard. To do this, you need to go into:
- Button - Settings
Select the "Trigger" option on the left, then tick the "Trigger key" box on the top, and assign whatever letter you want. "Flash mode" creates keys which are only active while the keys are physically being pressed; the moment you release your finger from the keyboard, they will automatically become inactive (only works with Switches, not Scenes). Try this FLASH key option with the Strobe effect, for example.
A useful shortcut to assign keyboard triggering:
1. Activate the button by clicking on it with your mouse
2. Simultaneously press the [CTRL] key and the [letter] key that you want to use
Note: A “key” is defined as any character on your keyboard; i.e. [q] and [Q] are different, so are [3] and [#], etc. This allows you to have around 90 hotkeys from your keyboard.
You will see that a small blue letter (the one you pressed on your keyboard) will appear inside the button. Every time you press this key, that button will be activated (and inactivated, if it is a Switch).
If you assign the same letter on the same button twice, the shortcut letter inside the button will turn green, which represents FLASH keys (explained above).
You can only use a key once within each page, but you can use the same key on multiple pages. This allows you to trigger effects simultaneously across all your lighting fixtures (i.e. try the red color, or the closed shutter, etc, across multiple pages). The Master page makes this simultaneous control much easier, and will be explained in the following chapter.
Note: Touchscreens, MIDI devices, DMX wings, and IO keypads can also trigger any button within the Sunlite software, as you can see inside the Button Settings window. These will be explained further in Chapter 4 “Advanced Programming”.