DMX Moving Heads In Xlights

[FriedFishFury]

Hey, for the purpose of having a permanent display for my house I grabbed some 2811 strips and a Dig-Octa, but now I've got 4x r17 moving heads, what are my options at the moment for incorporating them into xlights?

 

[chickda]

Unless you have a DMX port you won't be able to control them without it. I'm sure you would be able to buy a small DMX controller maybe from hanson electronics. Do you have any other controllers?

 

[merryoncherry]

A few options:
Cheapest may be usb dmx dongle, if your usb is near enough
A controller with DMX / A pi or bbb with cape with DMX
pixel2DMX

 

[Skymaster]

I believe ESPixelStick can also output DMX with a suitable RS422 driver circuit.

 

[FriedFishFury]

Thanks for the replies, very much appreciated.
I really like the simplicity of the usb to dmx dongle and ordered one for the sake of a few bucks to have a mess around, but does this method have usability limitations over using others?

 

[ejwind]

Hi there, I am also interested in the above, I'm new to DMX and have 3 dig quads connected to ethernet via a switch, which is connected to my laptop with Xlights. Can moving heads work with Laptop ethernet-->switch-->RJ45toXLR cable-->moving head. or is a dedicated controller necessary in order to get the moving heads working?

I saw the RJ45 to XLR/DMX cables and in my simple mind Ithought, could it be so easy as to connect them directly to the switch? Or has a dmx controller a seperate IP to which the Xlight info is send to? (By no means I want to highjack the topic... )

 

[Domestos]

Having played around alot with "cheap" options, I could never really get them to work properly. The Dig-Octa, and Dig controllers in general, last I checked does not support DMX. To controll DMX via xLights, you will need a dedicated DMX controller, or a combo DMX and Pixel controller. Depending on how you plan to run your show, this may vary from show to show. Some of your options are as follow:

1. ESPixelstick - This can be run wirelessly and a pretty good tutorial can be found here:
2. Raspberry Pi with Pi hat. Both can be bought in Australia from Hanson Electronics here and here. A good tutorial can be viewed here.
3. Any of the reputable controllers from Falcon, Kulp or Genius.

Setting up the Moving Heads in xLights may be a challenge, and a good resourse to get you started was done by Swyper Orozco. Watch his Youtube video here.

Other than that, good luck.