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dmcc: question: where does light specific information go?
dmcc: it could go in a dimmer along with the dimmer info, but that is almost definitely the Wrong Way
dmcc: i think the right way is to have a Light object, which is stored inside the info dict for a Dimmer
dmcc: that way, when we move a light, we take the Light out of that Dimmer and move it to the right thing

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Drew (Jabber): interesting questions about light [instrument] information
Drew (Jabber): i thought about actually building instrument nodes that do pretty much nothing, but they keep track of what light is where
Drew (Jabber): but it didnt sound like that cool of an idea
Drew (Jabber): howewver, the simulator wants to know exactly what light is where and what it's plugged into
Drew (Jabber): so perhaps there should be (functionless) nodes for lihgts that connect to the (output) nodes for dimmers
dmcc: how about a group which contains a Dimmer and Light?
Drew (Jabber): what's that group?
Drew (Jabber): "complete dimmer"?
dmcc: we have Dimmers, Lights, and a loose-group linking the two
dmcc: sure
Drew (Jabber): sounds fine
dmcc: except for the loose-group part...i'm not sure how that works
dmcc: maybe it's a real group
Drew (Jabber): the dimmer will tell its level to the lightnode, and the lightnode will tell the simulator how bright it currently is
Drew (Jabber): the user may wish to group the lights in a different way
Drew (Jabber): like, the four dimmers in a portable dimmer pack plus their lights would make for a good group
Drew (Jabber): in that you'd put in a switch node to disable/enable the whole group depending on whether that dimmer pack was plugged in
dmcc: where does light info fit in here?
Drew (Jabber): the light node knows the wattage, instrument type, etc
dmcc: oops nm
Drew (Jabber): the dimmer node connects to the light node much like the RL dimmer connects to the RL light-- a single varying-power wire
dmcc: dimmer's output connects to light input?
Drew (Jabber): just like LR
Drew (Jabber): RL
dmcc: that's cool -- so things that want Dimmers can still request them easily, and the Simulator can request the Lights as well
Drew (Jabber): the simulator would work primarily with the lights
dmcc: probably almost totally
Drew (Jabber): although it would have to know how to make each light brighter and idmmer