DMX Lighting control

[randy]

I am thinking about sequencing lighting for holidays next year, but I want to start some year round lighting projects, that also would be incorporated into a holiday show. I have some driveway path lights and exterior floodlights that I would like to convert to DMX control. I am using several E6804 controllers. These are Ethernert sACN E1.31 controllers which support either Multicast or Unicast DMX control. I was planning on fitting the driveway path lights with some WS2812 pixels and the RGB LED floodlights with DMX controllers.

I am getting up to speed with Vixen 3 software and will be using it next year for sequenced lighting for holiday shows. I would like to be able to control my driveway path lights (WS2812 pixels) and a number of RGB LED floodlights that will be in place year round. I will separately incorporate them in any holiday lighting sequences. What I am looking for is to be pointed in a direction for simple static control of these devices. Just the ability to set the color and brightness and turn them on and off for night lighting. No sequencing at all. I could use a called script that sends the commands to the correct universe and channel or a Windows executable. Ideally I would really like a plug-in. Maybe there is something already posted on this forum, but I have been unable to find it.

The lights generally would come on as night lighting and for most of the year they likely would be warm white and a set brightness. We might occasionally change the colors or brightness. Then when it was time for a holiday light control, Vixen would take over control of these same lights along with seasonally installed lights.

Any ideas?

[randy]

I thought I would bump this thread to see if there is any potential interest in this or any programmers that have knowledge of the sACN communication protocol. I would very much like to be able to send specific sACN Universe and Channel controls from within HS.

For those who are unfamiliar, DMX lighting controls are a proprietary serial communication to control stage lighting effects. The original standards call for 512 channels, with each RGB device requiring a minimum of 3 channels. That would allow 170 devices to be controlled on a single DMX network. Each channel would have 8-bit resolution allowing for 255 different levels on each of the three channels. Gamma curves can be applied to allow LED lighting to color match to our eyes.

A new Streaming Architecture for Control Networks (sACN E1.31) was developed to allow DMX control over standard Ethernet networks. It is built upon DMX but now allows each 512 (510) element DMX network to be a single Universe and the standard can accommodate 63999 universes for a potential of more than 10,800,000 individual devices. sACN is designed to stream data via Multicast (broadcast to every controller on the network) or Unicast (send to a specific IP addressed controller). Multicast is easier as you can address a Universe and channel without regard to the actual controller. In practice Multicast and Unicast have the same impact on a network in terms of traffic. For holiday light controls these commands can be streamed out continuously where every device on the network can be updated in milliseconds. For architectural control these commands can be sent out on a much less frequent basis, to reduce network load.

Why am I interested in this for HomeSeer? I would like to control a number of lighting devices by color as well as intensity both indoors and out. The potential of having a number of RGB controlled floodlights for landscape lighting, “wall washers” to flood a wall or a fence with light, pixel strips on the house fascia boards or for indoor accents – all controllable for brightness and color, is a very appealing idea to me. Having this control year round, then incorporating special control for holiday lighting would be very nice. A pixel strip along the fascia board, could be a warm white glow year round and turned into a chase or nutcracker for holidays. Put up your holiday lighting and have your driveway tier lights participate in the “show”. sACN is a mature and reliable control protocol and there are many control boards and devices that utilize sACN and DMX controls. I have three San Devices interface boards that can output four discreet DMX Universes or control thousands of WS2811 (or other) pixel based devices.

There are many free and reasonably priced software control packages that are used for holiday light sequencing, when you want to put lights to music or just to control the patterns. These are great for shows, but not well suited to year round control.

For those who have not seen some of these “shows” here is a simple Light-o-Rama display
http://youtu.be/J9hz9_8HlVA

Or a much more complex pixel addressed display.
http://youtu.be/S2fVRedQVR0

While I have no interest in that busy of a display, I would like to have year round control of some permanent lighting and be able to leverage it into a holiday lighting sequence if desired.

[NicolaiL]

I've been interested in DMX for a while, but have just never gotten round to do anything about it (other than buy kit which is sitting on a shelf).

It also fits in nicely with another venture I have so I might just get myself round to doing something about it over the holidays.

Do you have a good document describing the protocol anywhere? I had a quick google bu t couldn't come up with anything useful.

[spud]

I have been curious about DMX as well.
I currently use Hyperion to control my RGB LED strips, and I wonder what I could do with DMX that I can't with Hyperion?

[randy]

I have been curious about DMX as well.
I currently use Hyperion to control my RGB LED strips, and I wonder what I could do with DMX that I can't with Hyperion?

DMX and especially sACN will do more and better than Hyperion. The controllers like the SanDevices E6804 can directly control pixels of many types - with the proper timing. Each board can control 7 Multicast or 12 Unicast universes of 510 channels each. Any of the four outputs can be configured as a single DMX output for standard DMX devices. The E682 has the same capabilities, but has 16 output connectors.

I built three of the E6804 boards and have been able to control over 30 meters of pixel strips with 60 pixels per meter.

[travisdh]

Out of interest, does the channel change based on the device that is being used. That is does channel 1 always represent brightness for a specific address, or may it also represent other things depending on the device?

Looks like there is a library which may help with a plugin as well:

https://edmx.codeplex.com/documentation

[randy]

Out of interest, does the channel change based on the device that is being used. That is does channel 1 always represent brightness for a specific address, or may it also represent other things depending on the device?

Looks like there is a library which may help with a plugin as well:

https://edmx.codeplex.com/documentation

It depends on the design of the device. Generally RGB devices use 3 channels with 8-bit resolution - one for each of the three colors. A normal address would be:

Universe 1 channel 1 = Red brightness (0-255)
Universe 1 channel 2 = Green brightness (0-255)
Universe 1 channel 3 = Blue brightness (0-255)

Set R G B all to 255 you have bright white
Set R and B to 255 and G to 0 you have bright purple

Some devices use additional channels - stage floods frequently have a strobe channel, movable stage floods have positioning channels. DMX devices are easy, you set the base address as the starting point, then the device uses that address and the next X sequential addresses, dependent on its needs. If it is a 5-channel device and you set it to address 256 then it would use 256-260.

Pixel strips are a little different. Each pixel uses 3 channels. if you have a 100 pixel strip beginning at universe 1 channel 1, it will utilize 3 channels for each pixel ending at Universe 1 channel 301. With sACN pixel devices will seamlessly traverse universes. If you have 200 pixels beginning at Universe 1 channel 1 it will use all 510 channels (170 pixels) of universe 1, then 90 channels (30 pixels) of universe 2 ending at channel 91. Most pixel strips use chips similar to WS2801, where addressing is daisy chained from chip to chip data going into the first chip will grab channels 1-3. That chip passes the data to the next which will grab 4-6 and so on. The most common device today is the WS2811b which is a 5050 RGB chip with a WS2811 control IC built in. The WS2811 is a constant current device with 18.5ma per channel. The LED brightness is controlled by PWM duty cycle. it can drive 1-3 LEDs per chip as long as the LEDs are wired in series.

[Aelx]

I started a similar thread a little while ago (it died quickly):
http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?p=1140053
The OLA - Raspberry Pi can also control sACN. This pretty much opens up all options for control. I use Homeseer with some simple scripts (HTTP GET/POST), as well as "ART-Net Controller LITE" on Android.

[randy]

I started a similar thread a little while ago (it died quickly):
http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?p=1140053
The OLA - Raspberry Pi can also control sACN. This pretty much opens up all options for control. I use Homeseer with some simple scripts (HTTP GET/POST), as well as "ART-Net Controller LITE" on Android.

I missed your thread when you first started it. I will read through it and comment there.

Dying quickly... It is a shame, because DMX is a very powerful lighting control protocol and sACN gives it real power and flexibility. Although I haven't looked at Artnet in depth, like sACN I think it also provides for Ethernet control. I have had a lot of people coment that DMX "sounds interesting" but little activity on implementation. I think either of the protocols would be a good addition for architectural lighting control through HomeSeer.

[usLEDsupply]

I use DMX throughout my house but i am using a STICK and ESA Pro to design and run all the scenes (some rooms have 80+ channels) and i have patterns that vary based on the time of year. i figured it would be tough to make the programs in home seer so i figured i would just send ip packets from home seer to the stick to change the programs or for speed/brightness adjustment but i haven't had a chance to set it up that part yet so it is untested? it isn't a cheap way to do it but i haven't found much else yet that can handle more than a few channels eaisly but i am excited there are others interested as well and hope we can get something cool out of this:-)

[Aelx]

Randy,
The OLA app/server acts as a protocol "bridge" Pretty much any protocol in can be translated to something else out. There's also a built in web server you can use, it uses JSON; something not native to HS2 (or me). You can parse it with some scripting though, just not as elegant. I recently upgraded to HS3 which I believe does have native JSON support. I haven't even began to look at that script yet, but believe it will make it more scalable and easier in the long run. The Android ARTnet app is for "playing", you can create a light show or run tests from your handheld.

-Alex

[randy]

Randy,
The OLA app/server acts as a protocol "bridge" Pretty much any protocol in can be translated to something else out. There's also a built in web server you can use, it uses JSON; something not native to HS2 (or me). You can parse it with some scripting though, just not as elegant. I recently upgraded to HS3 which I believe does have native JSON support. I haven't even began to look at that script yet, but believe it will make it more scalable and easier in the long run. The Android ARTnet app is for "playing", you can create a light show or run tests from your handheld.

-Alex

Thanks for the info. I will look into it further. OLA may be a great starting point. I have a few Raspberry Pi units sitting around. I have settled on sACN E1.31 as the ideal for the networking of DMX controls.

The problem is I am long on ideas and desire, but short on scripting skills. I may at some point in the not too distant future I will have a eureka moment where it all begins to come together, or maybe someone with the skills will begin development of a plug-in that can be the bridge between HS devices and DMX devices. If I had my choice, the first baby step would be an interface that could be configured to have a HomeSeer device that could be set at a level and a color, and create 3 sACN channels of output that could be configured for universe and channel. That simple step would then allow control of 90% of the devices I would like to control. The next logical extension would then be to assign a group of sACN channels to a device for pixel control or multiple DMX device control.

The secondary usage could be to include these devices for sequencing at holidays by Vixen, FPP, LightJams, etc.