C-Bus to DMX Interface

[tuppetsdad]

Our house runs on a Clipsal C-Bus network. We would like to control some of our outdoor RGB floodlights during the year via the usual light switches and then to make them part of our sequence at Christmas time. For this reason we have connected our RGB floods to DMX dimmer modules and connect these to C-Bus with the Clipsal 5500DMX One Way Gateway.

This is a picture of our test set up



Today we managed to get this to work and can even see the output data from the gateway using the ENTTEC Pro utility software which is nice.

 

[David_AVD]

Nice. Can you leave the Clipsal DMX module connected all year round, or would you need to swap the DMX plugs from it to the Enttec box at Christmas time?

 

[tuppetsdad]

Two choices David. Probably we will move the connection for the DMX modules to our ENTTEC Pro at Christmas but as shown in the test set up we can also run the output from the DMX Gateway to the Input connector on the ENTTEC Pro and this also works so could be we control from both. Connecting the the input on the Enttec Pro also means we can see the status of the output from the Gateway as a DMX input with the EnTTEC Pro utility (V2).

Have also tested just running direct from the Gateway to the DMX dimmer and works well.

 

[David_AVD]

I wonder if you can tell the Clipsal DMX unit to shut off its output over the C-BUS network? Otherwise if you have two active DMX streams (Clipsal module and Enttec unit's output), they will clash as they will have different data and timing.

Actually, what would be cool is a little DMX changeover device (relay) that you can toggle via the C-BUS system. Then you wouldn't have to do any plug swapping (between DMX outputs) at all.