Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre.stagecraft
Subject: Re: DIY DMX?
References: <01c5086e$1856be90$7551b80a@david-lee>
"David Lee"  writes:
> A recent thread has drawn my attention to the Enttec USB->DMX widget. 
> Looks to be pretty cheap at $60 even if you buy it fully built so I'm
> tempted to buy one to play with.  Has anyone here had any experience with
> them?  I'm initially a little dubious because AFAIK all the timing is left
> to the computer and I'm a bit wary of putting a Gates-Ware product in
> charge a show!   As a follow up - is any of the compatible freeware
> lighting desk software any good or would I need to get stuck in again with
> Visual Basic?  

The DXMControl software at http://www.dmxcontrol.de/ has seemed to be quite nice. 
I have not played much with it, but seems to be quite OK. 
I tested the interface with "kristof Nys" parallel port to DMX-512 interface. 
Other interresting software is FreeStyler at http://users.telenet.be/freestylerdmx/

> A related question - anyone know of a source of DMX-> analogue demux
> projects?  A friend has a neat little 6 channel demux module that he bought
> as a kit some years ago but unfortunately he can't remember where it came
> from.  :-( 

You can find one DMX-analogue demux circuit at http://www.qsl.net/n5tle/

I have collected a lot of DMX-512 releted links, both technogy details 
and DIY links at http://www.epanorama.net/links/lights.html#dmx512
This can be a helpful extra resource. You can find also many 
control software links here. 


-- 
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at 
http://www.epanorama.net/