27 Nov
2005
27 Nov
'05
6:51 p.m.
Hi,
I'm currently planning a live show using Jackbeat and modifying it for this
purpose. This is about music of course, but I'm also interested by controlling
lights, to warm the dancefloor up.
The technology in this area seems to be named DMX, and there seem to be some
Linux driver project called dmx4linux, by the Linux Lighting Group.
I'm not sure that this DMX technology is the solution to my problem.
Here's what I'd like to do :
- control 16 light sources
- control the luminosity level of each of these light sources (!= on/off)
- do this is in C from Linux
- for less than 400 € (including light sources)
- building simple diy hardware is ok
Any idea ?
--
og
27 Nov
27 Nov
7:15 p.m.
On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 11:51:37PM +0100, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:
Hi,
I'm currently planning a live show using Jackbeat and modifying it for this
purpose. This is about music of course, but I'm also interested by controlling
lights, to warm the dancefloor up.
The technology in this area seems to be named DMX, and there seem to be some
Linux driver project called dmx4linux, by the Linux Lighting Group.
I'm not sure that this DMX technology is the solution to my problem.
Here's what I'd like to do :
- control 16 light sources
- control the luminosity level of each of these light sources (!= on/off)
- do this is in C from Linux
- for less than 400 ? (including light sources)
- building simple diy hardware is ok
there's the behringer lc2412, it was about $150 USD and has 30 faders and 30 buttons
which all send MIDI and DMX, or recieve MIDI (unmotorized) and convert to DMX (512
channels, but i dont know exactly what that means...you still need dimmer packs etc) . had
to open it up and put some mineral oil on the faders to make them slide like a dj mixer,
they were kind of slow by default but otherwise a decent deal if you dont mind stuff made
in china and not totally "DIY"
Any idea ?
--
og
28 Nov
28 Nov
6:12 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
On 11/28/05, carmen <ix(a)replic.net> wrote:
On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 11:51:37PM +0100, Olivier
Guilyardi wrote:
The Behringer has one big disadvantage: You can only control it via
midi as you would using its controlsurface. That means that you have
to programm it right and than you can midi-input to control the faders
(which may or may not correspond to the dmx-channels). One can do very
cool things with the LC2412 but controlling via midi is not a primary
usage for it.
But there seem to be usb-dmx-boxes on thomann.de but I have never
heard (until now) wether they are usable under linux...
Arnold
--
visit http://dillenburg.dyndns.org/~arnold/
---
Wenn man mit Raubkopien Bands wie Brosis oder Britney Spears wirklich
verhindern könnte, würde ich mir noch heute einen Stapel Brenner und
einen Sack Rohlinge kaufen.
I'm currently planning a live show using
Jackbeat and modifying it for
this
purpose. This is about music of course, but
I'm also interested by
controlling
lights, to warm the dancefloor up.
The technology in this area seems to be named DMX, and there seem to be
some
Linux driver project called dmx4linux, by the
Linux Lighting Group.
there's the behringer lc2412, it was about $150 USD and
has 30 faders and 30
buttons which all send MIDI and DMX, or recieve MIDI (unmotorized) and
convert to DMX (512 channels, but i dont know exactly what that means...you
still need dimmer packs etc) .
8:07 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
Arnold Krille wrote:
>
>>The technology in this area seems to be named DMX, and there seem to be some
>>Linux driver project called dmx4linux, by the Linux Lighting Group.
>
>there's the behringer lc2412, it was about $150 USD and has 30 faders and 30
>buttons which all send MIDI and DMX, or recieve MIDI (unmotorized) and
>convert to DMX (512 channels, but i dont know exactly what that means...you
>still need dimmer packs etc) .
Midi is not needed here. The solution to my problem would be some so-called DMX
controller, which act as an interface between the PC and (DMX?) dimmers.
The idea would be to modify my application (Jackbeat) to control light in
addition to sound, using dmx4linux (see: http://llg.cubic.org/dmx4linux) and a
supported DMX controller.
Now, I really need to learn some more about what happen on the output of this
DMX controller thing... I'm very new to this lighting stuff.
The Behringer has one big disadvantage: You can only control it via
midi as you would using its controlsurface. That means that you have
to programm it right and than you can midi-input to control the faders
(which may or may not correspond to the dmx-channels). One can do very
cool things with the LC2412 but controlling via midi is not a primary
usage for it.
But there seem to be usb-dmx-boxes on thomann.de but I have never
heard (until now) wether they are usable under linux...
Here's the list of supported devices supported by dmx4linux:
http://llg.cubic.org/dmx4linux/interfaces.html
I just checked this 55 EUR Enttec USB controller :
http://www.enttec.com/opendmxusb.php
This firm seems to officially support Linux. Looks great...
--
og
8:40 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
The idea would be to modify my application (Jackbeat)
to control light in
addition to sound, using dmx4linux (see: http://llg.cubic.org/dmx4linux) and a
supported DMX controller.
Should be very easy, as it's essentially just an 8 bit value for each
"lamp" you'd like to control which directly drives the lamps intensity.
Now, I really need to learn some more about what
happen on the output of this
DMX controller thing... I'm very new to this lighting stuff.
As Jacob explained it's an 8bit serial protocol which modern lighting
equipment unterstands. However you need not know the details of this if
you're just going to drive some dimmerpacks via DMX. If you really want
to know the details look at:
http://llg.cubic.org/docs/evolution/
I just checked this 55 EUR Enttec USB controller :
http://www.enttec.com/opendmxusb.php
This firm seems to officially support Linux. Looks great...
I would suggest this one. It's cheap, supported and plug'n'play.
A Linux 2.6.x version of dmx4linux will be out in the next weeks.
--
---> Dirk Jagdmann ^ doj / cubic
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org
12:03 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
Hi Dirk,
Dirk Jagdmann wrote:
Just read http://llg.cubic.org/dmx4linux/coding.html, and some stuff at
http://www.dmx512-online.com
Say I plan lighting for a specific club : is it like each lamp, effect, motor
will be assigned a to given channel ? I'd then ask the club's technician :
"what
channel is this lamp assigned to ?" (or he'd give me specification)
For example : 4 lamps, on channels 1,2,11 and 12
I would then have to configure my app to issue something similar to :
dmx_t buffer[4] = {0x80, 0xFF, 0x80, 0xFF};
fd = open (DMXdev(&argc, argv), O_WRONLY);
lseek (fd, 0, SEEK_SET);
write (fd, buffer, 2 * sizeof (dmx_t));
lseek (fd, 10 SEEK_SET);
write (fd, buffer, 2 * sizeof (dmx_t));
That would set two lamps to half brightness, and the other two lamps to full
brightness... Is this right ?
All of this sounds great. But how stable is dmx4linux ? Already used it on real
live shows ? (I'm not talking about big/huge shows)
[The following is quoted from your previous answer in this thread]
The idea would
be to modify my application (Jackbeat) to control light in
addition to sound, using dmx4linux (see:
http://llg.cubic.org/dmx4linux) and a
supported DMX controller.
Should be very easy, as it's essentially just an 8 bit value for each
"lamp" you'd like to control which directly drives the lamps intensity.
I just checked
this 55 EUR Enttec USB controller :
http://www.enttec.com/opendmxusb.php
This firm seems to officially support Linux. Looks great...
I would suggest this one. It's cheap, supported and plug'n'play.
A Linux 2.6.x version of dmx4linux will be out in the next weeks. You should expect that lighting equipment should be
DMX controlled today. So
this technically solves to connecting your DMX controller (from laptop) to the
DMX cable of the lighting console at the location. However be prepared that they
might have more than 1 DMX universe/cable due to the local installation so to
use all lights you'll need more than 1 universe on your DMX interface. Or two
interfaces with 1 universe each. That's the reason why you should contact a
local technican beforehand.
Got it. If DMX is a such common standard, I can safely be dependent on it. I'll
forget about the few DMX-unfriendly places I find. And if I really want to play
in some of these non-equiped place, I'll try and rent dimmers and lamps.
For a second universe, is it simply a matter of plugging a second Enttec device
and accessing channels 513-1024 ?
If they don't own a DMX controlled lighting
evironment I won't make myself any
trouble trying to connect to "their" lighting equipment with my own dimmers,
unless you're prepared to spent several days ripping their whole installation
apart (which they probably would not allow anyway).
Okay, let's forget about that. All I need is a DMX controller and the club's
equipment spec.
Thanks a lot !
--
og
29 Nov
29 Nov
1:35 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
Say I plan lighting for a specific club : is it like
each lamp, effect, motor
will be assigned a to given channel ? I'd then ask the club's technician :
"what
channel is this lamp assigned to ?" (or he'd give me specification)
Yes, for simple lamps it's one channel (thus one byte). However modern
moving lights and scanners have multiple function and thus use multiple
channels. Normally each channel controls one function, but for example
position is sometimes a 16bit value, thus using 2 channels. The big
disadvantage is, that there is no standard for these modern equipment
and every manufacturer has it's own function->channel mapping. So you
have to write a custom "devicedriver" for each moving light type you'd
like to support. As long as you don't want to spent hundereds of hours
coding (which will be difficult unless you've got each of those moving
light for testing available) you have little chance to get anywhere (the
reason why there's no decent moving light support in any free lighting
software regardless which OS it runs on.)
However moving lights are generelly better controlled live from a
dedicated console. So if you are playing in a well equipped club you
could drive normals lamps with your own software and special effects
with the local lighting console. Then it's just a matter of merging the
two DMX streams if the club has all equipment on the same DMX universes.
This merging could either be accomplished with a small external box, an
DMX input interface for your laptop or perhaps via the lighting console.
dmx_t buffer[4] = {0x80, 0xFF, 0x80, 0xFF};
fd = open (DMXdev(&argc, argv), O_WRONLY);
lseek (fd, 0, SEEK_SET);
write (fd, &buffer[0], 2 * sizeof (dmx_t));
lseek (fd, 10 SEEK_SET);
write (fd, &buffer[2], 2 * sizeof (dmx_t));
This way it would work
All of this sounds great. But how stable is dmx4linux
? Already used it on real
live shows ? (I'm not talking about big/huge shows)
Yes we've used it here: (horrible german website)
http://forum-schenefeld.de/
And others have used it for their events. As far as I can tell there has
been no report of users having problems due to crashed drivers.
For a second universe, is it simply a matter of
plugging a second Enttec device
and accessing channels 513-1024 ?
yes. The first interface found is mapped to the first interface. A
second interface to the second universe etc. If you have two interfaces
connected when powering on they should be mapped equal with every
poweron, however that may be buggy. But you can always force a specific
mapping by hotplugging in the order you'd like.
--
---> Dirk Jagdmann ^ doj / cubic
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org
30 Nov
30 Nov
1:56 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
Dirk Jagdmann wrote:
Okay I'll focus on lamps.
Nice concert hall.
Okay... I've just had an idea for a new project :
<newProject>
* Name : Jacklight
* Purpose : act as a bridge between Jack audio streams and DMX lighting
* Basic features :
1 - set the brightness of a lamp according to the level of a given audio
stream
2 - a single stream can be connected to several DMX channels (= several
lamps), and several streams can be connected to a single DMX channel.
3 - each DMX channel is assigned a level control, to customize the
audio-to-brightness conversion ratio
* Advanced features :
4 - GUI : a gtk based interface that allows to easily add/remove DMX
channels. Additionally, it could try and represents lamps on the screen,
with some (customizable) color squares
5 - Midi : each channel level control could be assigned to a Midi
Continuous Controller. For Live operation, that would allow to use a
hardware controller, and turn a knob to decrease/increase every
channels' audio-to-brightness ratio,
* Mode of operation :
Basically, you choose a set of DMX channels. Each of these are then assigned a
given JACK input port. Thanks JACK, this design allows much freedom in audio
streams to DMX channels bindings (one to one, many to one, one to many, many to
many). Then it's a just a matter of reading the audio level on a Jack port and
setting the corresponding DMX channel value accordingly, taking the
audio-to-brightness conversion ratio into account.
</newProject>
Actually what I basically want is to assign a DMX channel to every Jackbeat
track (see http://samalyse.com/jackbeat), and set the brightness according to
the audio level. But coding a separate application as Jacklight would let
Jackbeat continue to do its simple job (= not getting bloated), and allow for
much more flexibility.
With a few tracks, this could produce very interesting light effects, that are
closely related to the music being played.
What do you think of this idea ? Does a such tool already exist ?
--
og
Say I plan
lighting for a specific club : is it like each lamp,
effect, motor
will be assigned a to given channel ? I'd then ask the club's
technician : "what
channel is this lamp assigned to ?" (or he'd give me specification)
Yes, for simple lamps it's one channel (thus one byte).
[...] As long as you don't want to spent hundereds of hours
coding (which will be difficult unless you've got each of those moving
light for testing available) you have little chance to get anywhere [...] However moving lights are generelly better controlled
live from a
dedicated console. So if you are playing in a well equipped club you
could drive normals lamps with your own software and special effects
with the local lighting console. Then it's just a matter of merging the
two DMX streams if the club has all equipment on the same DMX universes.
This merging could either be accomplished with a small external box, an
DMX input interface for your laptop or perhaps via the lighting console.
That's an important point. But if I understand correctly, I need to know how to
"merge" or "route" DMX streams, either at software or hardware level.
Needs some
investigation...
All of this
sounds great. But how stable is dmx4linux ? Already used
it on real
live shows ? (I'm not talking about big/huge shows)
Yes we've used it here: (horrible german website)
http://forum-schenefeld.de/
2 Dec
2 Dec
2:40 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: Linux Lighting
That's an important point. But if I understand
correctly, I need to know how to
"merge" or "route" DMX streams, either at software or hardware level.
Needs some
investigation...
When merging DMX data it only makes sense to choose the highest value
from two (or more) channels for the output value. In lighting speak this
is named HTP "highest takes place/precedence".
Routing of your DMX stream would be up to your software, but for your
setup would be easy. You would have one of the following setups:
YourComputer ---> LightingConsole ---> DMX equipment
In this case there's nothing for you todo, as the lighting console will
merge the DMX data coming from you. If the console does not have this
capability you would have to change this to:
LightingConsole ---> YourComputer ---> DMX equipment
So you'd need an DMX input interface, read it and merge it with your DMX
data.
<newProject>
* Name : Jacklight
* Purpose : act as a bridge between Jack audio streams and DMX lighting
* Basic features :
1 - set the brightness of a lamp according to the level of a given audio
stream
2 - a single stream can be connected to several DMX channels (= several
lamps), and several streams can be connected to a single DMX channel.
3 - each DMX channel is assigned a level control, to customize the
audio-to-brightness conversion ratio
Makes sense, and I think it should be doable by a weekend of hacking
some code together.
* Advanced features :
4 - GUI : a gtk based interface that allows to easily add/remove DMX
channels. Additionally, it could try and represents lamps on the screen,
with some (customizable) color squares
GUI is always nice, but this often takes much time when implementing,
because
1) a good GUI is not easy to design and implement
2) if you have a good GUI you often have much "expressive" capabilities
which then take some code to use.
5 - Midi : each channel level control could be
assigned to a Midi
Continuous Controller. For Live operation, that would allow to use a
hardware controller, and turn a knob to decrease/increase every
channels' audio-to-brightness ratio,
Depending on how sophisticated you want a midi<->dmx mapping this can be
really easy by noticing that: midi value range 0-127, dmx value range
0-255. So you can make a 1to1 mapping by multipling/dividing all values
by 2. Of course advanced features need more time to implement and it
quickly becomes complex.
I personally have not used JackBeat yet, so I can't comment on specific
issues with that software. My comments are just my general experience
with lighting software gained from 3 attempts by Michael and me to write
a medium sized lighting software (which all more or less failed, because
if you want to have something better than real basic [as my dmxconsole
ncurses program] it quickly becomes a *real* program, which takes a lot
of developers ressources.)
In the dmx4linux archive Michael has coded an xmms plugin which assign
each of the (fake) xmms spectrum bars to one DMX channel. If you want to
have a quick check if your light setup works by some not random blinking
it's a nice tool, however not usable for any serious lighting work.
--
---> Dirk Jagdmann ^ doj / cubic
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org
27 Nov
27 Nov
9:53 p.m.
Hello,
On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 11:51:37PM +0100, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:
I'm currently planning a live show using Jackbeat
and modifying it for this
purpose. This is about music of course, but I'm also interested by controlling
lights, to warm the dancefloor up.
The technology in this area seems to be named DMX, and there seem to be some
Linux driver project called dmx4linux, by the Linux Lighting Group.
I'm not sure that this DMX technology is the solution to my problem.
DMX512 is
just a serial protocol, where a vector of 512 8-bit values is
send periodically over the wire (this 512 block is AKA universe). At the
sender side you'll need a PC interface (an old ISA card would probably
be the cheapest ;) and at the receiver side you'll need your light
source (dimmer pack or scanner or ...).
The 400 EUR limit seems to be a problem. Either you are really lucky and
get a used set of lamps, dimmer packs, cables, ... or you'll have to do
some not-so-simple hardware/programming stuff on your own.
An important influence on the money you have to spent has the power
consumption of the light sources: e.g. if you want 16 PAR64 with 1kW
each you'll spent much more than if you used PAR56/300W.
The DMX approach is IMO the more professional way, you can extend your
equipment easily, you can rent or borrow some special equipment for an
event. You can connect your computer to any professional light
installation and you have less worries about the audience's security.
If I had a project like yours and able to get all of the above for
600 EUR, if would definitely take it.
On the other hand, if you really want to spent a lot of time with
soldering, hacking and (kernel) programming, you might use the following
approach for the electronics (no, I don't have schematics). This is
probably more fun but you won't be able to connect any light device to
it that ist more 'intelligent' than a simple light bulb. AFAICT this is
the cheapest approach if you look at the bill of material only:
- Try to get or build cheap (but sufficient) single dimmers (at least
consisting of an opto-coupler, a TRIAC, a damper coil and some
additional parts), semiconductor relais (without zero point detection)
with some damper circuitry might do it as well.
- You need 16 on/off (TTL, ...) outputs on your computer (printer
port) and connect them to the LEDs of the opto couplers (with Rs
please).
- You need 1-3 on/off inputs (on for each AC phase you intend to use),
best would be, if the inputs are able to raise interrupts. Connect
them to a zero point detector or a schmidt-trigger unit that
switches around 0V of each used phase. Don't forget the opto
coupler.
- Write an RTAI-Linux realtime task that is trigerred every time the
corresponding AC phase is zero (or changes from + to - or vice
versa, depends on your HW), wait between 0ms (100%) and <10ms (~0%)
before you switch on the output opto coupler for a short time and
fire the TRIAC (all times for 50Hz).
This is not trivial, especially if there are inductive loads around
and/or the AC frequency is not constant. If you switch off the
output to late (>=10ms), you get 100% instead of 0%.
The blinkenlight guys had done something like that for the arcade
project in Paris some years ago and it worked:
http://www.blinkenlights.de/arcade/backstage.en.html
Here's what I'd like to do :
- control 16 light sources
- control the luminosity level of each of these light sources (!= on/off)
- do this is in C from Linux
- for less than 400 ? (including light sources)
- building simple diy hardware is ok
Any idea ?
Jacob
28 Nov
28 Nov
7:43 a.m.
Jacob wrote:
DMX512 is just a serial protocol, where a vector of
512 8-bit values is
send periodically over the wire (this 512 block is AKA universe). At the
sender side you'll need a PC interface (an old ISA card would probably
be the cheapest ;) and at the receiver side you'll need your light
source (dimmer pack or scanner or ...).
I've seen some 100 € DMX controller on the parallel port (IMG Stageline DMX-60).
The 400 EUR limit seems to be a problem. Either you
are really lucky and
get a used set of lamps, dimmer packs, cables, ... or you'll have to do
some not-so-simple hardware/programming stuff on your own.
An important influence on the money you have to spent has the power
consumption of the light sources: e.g. if you want 16 PAR64 with 1kW
each you'll spent much more than if you used PAR56/300W.
Power consumption is not included in this price. I want to play in some Parisian
clubs: electric power is their problem, not mine.
The DMX approach is IMO the more professional way, you
can extend your
equipment easily, you can rent or borrow some special equipment for an
event. You can connect your computer to any professional light
installation and you have less worries about the audience's security.
If I had a project like yours and able to get all of the above for
600 EUR, if would definitely take it.
Audience security... I forgot that one. Okay, DMX is the way to go.
Renting is ok for me. But say that I simply use the lighting installation of the
club I play in : would I just bring my laptop and DMX controller ? If the club's
lighting installation isn't "DMX compatible", would a set of dimmers do the
trick ? Can I expect to find such "DMX compatible" lighting installations (like
dimmers I just plug my controller into) in most of clubs/discos/concert halls ?
(I suppose that I should just ask places I know...)
I'm very new to lighting, sorry if some of these are silly questions.
On the other hand, if you really want to spent a lot
of time with
soldering, hacking and (kernel) programming, you might use the following
approach for the electronics (no, I don't have schematics). This is
probably more fun but you won't be able to connect any light device to
it that ist more 'intelligent' than a simple light bulb. AFAICT this is
the cheapest approach if you look at the bill of material only:
<snip>
The blinkenlight guys had done something like that for the arcade
project in Paris some years ago and it worked:
http://www.blinkenlights.de/arcade/backstage.en.html
Wow.. Amazing. But well, these guys are real hackers I can't compare with. As I
said DIY is ok for me, but to a certain extent only. This is too complex, and
would take too long to build, not to mention audience security.
Thanks a lot !
--
og
8:36 a.m.
Renting is ok for me. But say that I simply use the
lighting installation of the
club I play in : would I just bring my laptop and DMX controller ? If the club's
lighting installation isn't "DMX compatible", would a set of dimmers do
the
trick ? Can I expect to find such "DMX compatible" lighting installations
(like
dimmers I just plug my controller into) in most of clubs/discos/concert halls ?
(I suppose that I should just ask places I know...)
You should expect that lighting equipment should be DMX controlled
today. So this technically solves to connecting your DMX controller
(from laptop) to the DMX cable of the lighting console at the location.
However be prepared that they might have more than 1 DMX universe/cable
due to the local installation so to use all lights you'll need more than
1 universe on your DMX interface. Or two interfaces with 1 universe
each. That's the reason why you should contact a local technican beforehand.
If they don't own a DMX controlled lighting evironment I won't make
myself any trouble trying to connect to "their" lighting equipment with
my own dimmers, unless you're prepared to spent several days ripping
their whole installation apart (which they probably would not allow anyway).
--
---> Dirk Jagdmann ^ doj / cubic
----> http://cubic.org/~doj
-----> http://llg.cubic.org
8:47 a.m.
On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 12:43:03PM +0100, Olivier Guilyardi wrote:
It was the price of dimmer packs and lamps I thought about. The power
consumption relates to the amount of light that comes out of the light
source (standard tungsten). If you have to illuminate a large area,
you'll be probably not happy with 300W light bulbs. Especially if you
would like to use dark intensive colors.
You're welcome,
Jacob
Jacob wrote:
I had access to a parallel port device made by soundlight, it was
controlled by sending ASCII sequences to /dev/lp? .
...
I've seen some 100 ? DMX controller on the parallel port (IMG Stageline DMX-60).
The 400 EUR limit seems to be a problem. Either
you are really lucky and
get a used set of lamps, dimmer packs, cables, ... or you'll have to do
some not-so-simple hardware/programming stuff on your own.
An important influence on the money you have to spent has the power
consumption of the light sources: e.g. if you want 16 PAR64 with 1kW
each you'll spent much more than if you used PAR56/300W.
Power consumption is not included in this price. I want to play in some Parisian
clubs: electric power is their problem, not mine.
Audience security... I forgot that one. Okay, DMX is the way to go.
Renting is ok for me. But say that I simply use the lighting
installation of the club I play in : would I just bring my laptop and
DMX controller ?
Yes (IIRC, there are to different pinouts/connectors being used for DMX ?),
given that the installation is DMX based which I would expect, if they
have 'intelligent' light gear.
If the club's lighting installation isn't
"DMX
compatible", would a set of dimmers do the trick ?
Even in non-DMX environments I would expect to find dimmer packs. Before
DMX was standard, voltage was used to control to packs (0..10V) which is
still supported by some current dimmer packs. Perhaps you try to get a
DMX-to-voltage converter in those cases.
Can I expect to
find such "DMX compatible" lighting installations (like dimmers I just
plug my controller into) in most of clubs/discos/concert halls ?
(I suppose that I should just ask places I know...)
Always ask in advance if you are not sure, sometimes clubs offer
technical specs e.g. via internet.
BTW: If you have special requirements concerning the colors, get a set
of filters on your own.
...
The blinkenlight guys had done something like that for the arcade
project in Paris some years ago and it worked:
http://www.blinkenlights.de/arcade/backstage.en.html
Wow.. Amazing. But well, these guys are real hackers I can't compare with. As I
said DIY is ok for me, but to a certain extent only. This is too complex, and
would take too long to build, not to mention audience security.
Thanks a lot !
12:15 p.m.
Jacob wrote:
I see.. Well, since DMX seems to be a common standard, I'll just look for places
with a proper DMX equipment and bring a controller in my backpack ;-)
Trouble is this may require lots of wiring and the like, which clubs owners
could dislike. This is an interesting point though.
This just sounds like asking "Do you have a drumset?", but still bringing my
own
cymbals.. I like it :-)
--
og
On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 12:43:03PM +0100, Olivier
Guilyardi wrote:
After investigation, I'll try and stick with hardware that's supported by
dmx4linux, as the Enttec USB controllers.
I've seen some 100 ? DMX controller on the
parallel port (IMG Stageline DMX-60).
I had access to a parallel port device made by soundlight, it was
controlled by sending ASCII sequences to /dev/lp? . Power
consumption is not included in this price. I want to play in some Parisian
clubs: electric power is their problem, not mine.
It was the price of dimmer packs and lamps I thought about. The power
consumption relates to the amount of light that comes out of the light
source (standard tungsten). If you have to illuminate a large area,
you'll be probably not happy with 300W light bulbs. Especially if you
would like to use dark intensive colors. If the
club's lighting installation isn't "DMX
compatible", would a set of dimmers do the trick ?
Even in non-DMX environments I would expect to find dimmer packs. Before
DMX was standard, voltage was used to control to packs (0..10V) which is
still supported by some current dimmer packs. Perhaps you try to get a
DMX-to-voltage converter in those cases. Can I expect
to
find such "DMX compatible" lighting installations (like dimmers I just
plug my controller into) in most of clubs/discos/concert halls ?
(I suppose that I should just ask places I know...)
Always ask in advance if you are not sure, sometimes clubs offer
technical specs e.g. via internet.
BTW: If you have special requirements concerning the colors, get a set
of filters on your own.
6932
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linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
13 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Arnold Krille -
carmen -
Dirk Jagdmann -
Jacob -
Olivier Guilyardi