I never comment on anything, but need to do a linux based light project at work and this video was a live saver. You explain these concepts really well and make it really easy to follow, thanks a lot for this.
If you wanted, you could also add serial ports to the Pi with cheap usb UART boards (FTDI etc). Maybe put a USB hub in between, that'll get you quite a few ports.
Wow that's cool! I wish they'd had that back in the eighties when I was in a band.:-) we were doing things manually with homemade footswitches because the sun lighting boards were really expensive! :-)
You don't really get 512 channels, but only 511 per universe. Channel 0 is reserved for future expansion (but never used that I have seen). I learned this a few years ago when I was doing a project at church. We had installed 2 moving head spotlights (PTZ and dim), and I wanted to link then to both track a person walking anywhere in the sanctuary. A little math for the code, but I did my own DMX coding. The hardest part was getting the burst code before transmitting the DMX code at 250kHz. I ended up doing this by putting the baud rate at 25k instead of 250k and sending 1 byte of all zeros. Works well. Feel free to contact me if you want more info on my project (I have since included a PTZ camera so you can see where the movers are pointed even if you can't see the area).
WLED supports DMX (over wifi).. you could make it wireless and you'd need just an ESP32 controlling a light and a computer with light control (plus) in the same network, nothing more.. :) 🙈 I set this up a couple month ago but didn't really wrap my head around the DMX software, qlcplus in my case.. there was also ledfx-git or ledfx-cc-bin to tinker around with.
Very cool. Would it be much work to somehow save a show (lights synchronised to a music track), saved onto some sort of memory with the PI in your box? And could that show be updated over your wifi? And the show could be on a schedule (i.e. a yearly calender with start/stop times on set days etc.?)
Not sure. There are some command line controls built in, so you might be able to script it in python or bash on the PI, but I haven't explored that stuff.
QLC+ is pretty much unlimited universes - you can add more than the 4. It's also a good idea to add some isolation between the lighting and the device to prevent faulty lights frying your controller, or worse, your controller frying some expensive lights.
I never comment on anything, but need to do a linux based light project at work and this video was a live saver.
You explain these concepts really well and make it really easy to follow, thanks a lot for this.
A nice project, something I will never use but good information.
If you wanted, you could also add serial ports to the Pi with cheap usb UART boards (FTDI etc). Maybe put a USB hub in between, that'll get you quite a few ports.
Wow that's cool! I wish they'd had that back in the eighties when I was in a band.:-) we were doing things manually with homemade footswitches because the sun lighting boards were really expensive! :-)
Memories of doing that had been a lot of my motivation for this kind of tinkering.
Cool little lighting project.
Excellent project! Great work. 👍😀
Thank you for sharing
You don't really get 512 channels, but only 511 per universe. Channel 0 is reserved for future expansion (but never used that I have seen). I learned this a few years ago when I was doing a project at church. We had installed 2 moving head spotlights (PTZ and dim), and I wanted to link then to both track a person walking anywhere in the sanctuary. A little math for the code, but I did my own DMX coding. The hardest part was getting the burst code before transmitting the DMX code at 250kHz. I ended up doing this by putting the baud rate at 25k instead of 250k and sending 1 byte of all zeros. Works well. Feel free to contact me if you want more info on my project (I have since included a PTZ camera so you can see where the movers are pointed even if you can't see the area).
I use all 512 channels within a universe all the time....
WLED supports DMX (over wifi).. you could make it wireless and you'd need just an ESP32 controlling a light and a computer with light control (plus) in the same network, nothing more.. :) 🙈
I set this up a couple month ago but didn't really wrap my head around the DMX software, qlcplus in my case.. there was also ledfx-git or ledfx-cc-bin to tinker around with.
There's plenty of different ways to get to the same place.
nice demo, could even have the zero/max in the dmx led case. no dmx connector.
Very cool. Would it be much work to somehow save a show (lights synchronised to a music track), saved onto some sort of memory with the PI in your box? And could that show be updated over your wifi? And the show could be on a schedule (i.e. a yearly calender with start/stop times on set days etc.?)
Not sure. There are some command line controls built in, so you might be able to script it in python or bash on the PI, but I haven't explored that stuff.
QLC+ is pretty much unlimited universes - you can add more than the 4. It's also a good idea to add some isolation between the lighting and the device to prevent faulty lights frying your controller, or worse, your controller frying some expensive lights.
True, an opto-coupler stage would be a good addition.