In the past, scripting software including our own Finale Business required that you download your script to the Pyrodigital controller using the software application itself.  That was at times inconvenient for people when they needed to download a script from a computer that didn’t have the software program installed on it or didn’t have a software license.  Finale 3D attempts to solve this problem by splitting the download process into two steps: 1) export the file to be downloaded, and 2) download the file.

The two steps can occur at different times, by different people, on different computers.  A show designer can make a last minute change to a script, export the file, and email it to the show operator on site to download from his own PC using the free Pyrodigital downloader (available in Table 5 at the bottom of this page) or a terminal program that doesn’t require a software license.  The file to download to the controller is a simple text file, with the file extension PDM.

This section provides basic instructions to create a PDM file, and for those who are interested this section also provides the technical specifications of the file format.  To create and export a script to a Pyrodigital controller, please follow these steps:

1. Choose module type. (Show > Set show information…). After you select Pyrodigital as the “Fining System” in Finale 3D, you have the option of selecting the “Module Type“. The default module type option is a 16-pin module starting with module number 01. Other options are provided if you prefer to only use 15 pins on each module or if you prefer to use 00 as your first module number. You can select any of the module types for the full show in “Show > Set show information…” or in “Addressing > Address show…”, or you can choose different module types per-position by right clicking positions and selecting “Edit position properties”.
2. Address show. (“Addressing > Address show…“).  Finale 3D provides a variety of addressing methods, including all-at-once, or blueprints, or fill-down.  The easiest method is the function, “Addressing > Address show…” which asks the order of assignment and presents some other options and then addresses the show all at one.  For explanation of the other options, see Addressing basic instructions.
3. Export script. (“File > Export > Export firing system script…“).  Having addressed the show, use the export function to create a PDM file to transfer to your Pyrodigital controller.  The export function is separate from the download function in Finale 3D to allow you export and download at different times, or by different people.  For example, a show designer can export the PDM file and give the file to an operator to load onto the controller at a later time. Upon export, you will be provided with a set of export options. The options include your firing system controller version, script type, and time base. There are also options to “Disable FC-3 macro zipper fix feature” and “Disable collapse individual cue macro prefire feature”. For more information on these options, see Table 2 below.
4. Download to controller (“File > Download > Download firing system script file to Pyrodigital…“).  Having created the PDM file and saved it on your computer, you can download the PDM file to your Pyrodigital controller at any time using Finale 3D. Or, you can download the PDM file using the free Pyrodigital downloader program, shown in Figure 1 below and available for download in Table 5 at the bottom of this page. The PDM file is just a text file, so if you don’t have access to Finale 3D or the Pyrodigital downloader, any terminal program that can transfer files with a standard serial protocol will suffice.

Figure 1 – Pyrodigital PDM Downloader (developed and supported by Pyrodigital)

Step 3 creates the PDM file.   Although this file is just a text file, the format of the file is not at all easy for a human to read.  To give you the ability to look over the actual file contents before downloading to the controller, if you feel so inclined, Finale 3D provides the function “File > Tools > Open firing system script as generic table…” to view the contents of the PDM file in a table window.  You can select all in the table window (control-A), then copy (control-C), then paste into an Excel file if you prefer viewing it in Excel.  This function doesn’t provide editing capabilities, but it does enable you to see exactly what the file contains.  If you really just want to do a quick check to make sure the file is valid, and don’t want to look over its rows, you can do the function, “File > Tools > Verify PDM file…”, which verifies the file is in the proper format and shows a quick summary of its contents.

Figure 2 – Pyrodigital FC-A controller

Table 1 – PDM file format and encoding

The PDM script is a text file that you can inspect and edit in a text editor, but it is in a format that is difficult to read.  The format consists of a list of rows, followed by a file checksum.  Each row is a list of fields formatted as hexadecimal, with a “start of message” indicator at the beginning of the row and a checksum and end-of-line (CR LF) sequence at the end.  The fields are all fixed width numbers of characters, with no delimiter in between them.  There are 11 fields in the row comprising 28 characters, making the output look like this:

N30000000005001E0010000100CB

As you can see, these rows are a little difficult to read.  The function “File > Tools > Open firing system script as generic table…” splits out the fields and converts them from hexadecimal to decimal format to make them more readable (except leaving the address field in hexadecimal).

Figure 3 – The PDM file shown in a table window.

You will notice even in the table window, there aren’t any notes or effect names.  No angles, or any of the other properties of the script as you see it in the scripting software.  That’s because those extra properties are not downloaded to the Pyrodigital controller.  The only fields that are ever downloaded to the Pyrodigital controller are the fields in the PDM file, as shown in Figure 3.

If you are familiar with the field names at the top of Figure 3, and if you have no need for the technical specifications of this file format, then you can stop reading at this juncture.  If you have a need for an example file, the downloads are at the bottom of the section.

Table 2 – Special characteristics of the PDM file

Start with variable SUM = 0.
Loop over the ASCII characters of the data being checksummed, in pairs.
   Read each pair of characters as a hexadecimal number ("00" - "FF"), producing an integer in the range 0-255. 
   Add the integer to SUM.
Return 255 - ( SUM & 255 ).

COM port = whatever port connects to the controller.
Data rate = 9600 baud.
Hardware control flow = CTS control flow.
Parity = none.
Bits per byte = 8.
Stop bits = 1.

The script rows consist of the 11 fields described in Table 4.  All fields except the SOM field at the beginning are formatted as hexadecimal numbers with two or four digits.  The total number of ASCII characters per row is 28.

Table 4 – Specifications of script fields

An example script is shown below as Figure 4.  This is the same script as shown in the table of Figure 3, and included in the downloads in Table 5.

N30000000005001E0010000100CB
N30001000005001E0020000100BA
N30002000005001E0030000100A9
N30003000005001E004000010098
N30004000005001E005000010087
N30005000005001E006000010076
N30006000005001E007000010362
N3000700000C071E0011000204B0
N300080000110B1E0012000304A4
N300090000110B1E0013000304A2
N3000A00001D1A16001400040090
N3000B00002C1A1600150005007E
N900FF

Figure 4 – Example PDM file

Zipper fire “fix” for macros

As described above, Finale 3D works around the macro limitation in early Pyrodigital controllers including the FC-3 by introducing a dummy cue at the beginning of any macro that begins with two or more shots at the same time and also contains other shots at a later time.  The circumstances requiring this workaround are not hard to construct.  Imagine a center-to-outside chase of simultaneous mine/shell combinations across nine positions, with the center position (call it position 5) triggering first, followed by the pair of positions immediately before and after (position 4 and 6) together, followed by positions 3 and 7 together, then 2 and 8 together, and finally 1 and 9 together.  Except for the center position shots, all the other shots of this sequence are in pairs of positions.  If you want to shoot this sequence with a manual fire script, advancing the cues step-by-step, you will run into the circumstance requiring the zipper fire fix.

Figure 5 shows the PDM file generated from this example.  There are nine positions, each with a pair of shots (one mine and one shell) at the same effect time, 18 shots total.  The center position yields a macro with one shot at prefire = 0 and a second shot at prefire = the lift time of the shell.  The other positions, firing in pairs, yield four more macros, each beginning with two shots at prefire = 0, and two shots at prefire = the lift time of the shells.

Without the zipper fire fix these macros will not fire correctly on FC-3 controllers.  The zipper fire fix adds four dummy cues to correct the problem, which you can see circled in Figure 5.    Notice that the dummy cues have prefire = 0, and they are each followed by the pair of shots that would otherwise have begun the macro with zipper fire.  The fixed script file contains 22 rows total, comprising the original 18 shots and 4 dummy cues.

Figure 5 – “Dummy cues” fixing macros that would otherwise begin with zipper fire

To avoid any confusion about dummy cues, Finale 3D displays a warning during the export operation whenever it detects a macro requiring the dummy cue fix.  If you see the warning shown in Figure 6, that means dummy cues were added to make the script fire correctly.

Figure 6 – Finale 3D displays a warning whenever “dummy cues” are required.

Table 5 – Example files & tools