Hi, looking to try and incorporate some DMX style stage lighting for use as up lights on some pillars at my house. I am currently using a He123 pixel board from Hansen Electronics running Fpp. What did board would I need to be able to run these style of lights if at all? The attached lights chain with a dmx in and dmx out with XLR. Any help is greatly appreciated
Controlling Dmx stage styling lighting
- Thread starter lmpearce
- Start date
There must be dozens of answers to this, making it hard to choose...
A lot of the BBB capes have support for DMX, but according to the manual the HE123 doesn't.
A lot of the other controllers (Falcon, for example) have direct support for DMX also.
If you have a Pi in your show, some caps have DMX on them (rPI-28D+ if you like Hanson)
You can get a dedicated Ethernet or E1.31 to DMX bridge (lots of sources). Or a USB DMX (lots of sources)
There are also a few niche products that turn pixel data into DMX data.
Depending on what you have handy and your personal preference, hopefully one of these works for you.
A lot of the BBB capes have support for DMX, but according to the manual the HE123 doesn't.
A lot of the other controllers (Falcon, for example) have direct support for DMX also.
If you have a Pi in your show, some caps have DMX on them (rPI-28D+ if you like Hanson)
You can get a dedicated Ethernet or E1.31 to DMX bridge (lots of sources). Or a USB DMX (lots of sources)
There are also a few niche products that turn pixel data into DMX data.
Depending on what you have handy and your personal preference, hopefully one of these works for you.
- Thread starter
- #3
So I'm thinking about using the 2811DC15 from Hansen which turns pixel data into dmx, however I'm slightly confused about the wiring when it comes to the dmx lights with xlr dmx inputs, the 2811dc15 has 5 outputs on the board each with a V+,1,2,3 terminal however the xlr dmx connection for the pictured lights above has only 3 wires, in this case would I just not use the v+ terminal out of the board?
Whoa there! The "2811DC15" does nothing at all with DMX! It's basically for driving really power-hungry pixels... the 4 pins per output are V+ and pulse width modulated DC for each color channel (RGB).
So it is decoding pixel data and outputting PWM, not DMX at all.
When I said "Pixel data to DMX" I was thinking of something like https://experiencelights.com/pixel2dmx-realtime-dmx-bridge/
So it is decoding pixel data and outputting PWM, not DMX at all.
When I said "Pixel data to DMX" I was thinking of something like https://experiencelights.com/pixel2dmx-realtime-dmx-bridge/
If your show is running entirely from the HE123 then you could put a usb dmx dongle into the beagle and that will give you dmx out. You can actually add a dongle to the Beagle running the HE123, a pc or a Raspberry Pi. The dongle just gets added as on open dmx device in xlights and/or FPP.
- Thread starter
- #6
Thanks for sharing this Allen, If i was to add one of these USB to DMX on to my beagle would i then need another board to plug the RJ45 side into? i'm looking to control some three pin XLR dmx stage lights.If your show is running entirely from the HE123 then you could put a usb dmx dongle into the beagle and that will give you dmx out. You can actually add a dongle to the Beagle running the HE123, a pc or a Raspberry Pi. The dongle just gets added as on open dmx device in xlights and/or FPP.
Changing from RJ45 to XLR is just a passive adapter. (Or, some people just hack up a cable, it's not too involved.)
This link is pretty good, it shows the premade unit, the wiring standard, and the "beware amazon" advice (which I can confirm, some of those are packaged in pairs and only work as a pair because of nonstandard pinout):
Can I throw ESPixelStick V3 HW with the V4 SW into the mix. The base card has the differential DMX output built in. You can send DDP, E1.31 data or use fseq files to play your effects.
I built a generic esp32 with pixelstick4 firmware, and an rs485 driver.
Built into a box with a dmx2-24 board.
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GWZ63vsKzT8
Did someone say ESP and DMX? Just started to get serious about getting this made up and tested. All the electronics are on the bottom of the pcb and the board uses a Raspberry Pi footprint.