What the heck is DMX?

[philnuffer]

Thanks, guys, keeping the smoke inside of the units is a great idea.

[Jeffnewc]

Not to hijack this thread but it has been dead awhile. I am trying to decide as well if I need to go the DMX route. I will need wash lights, control a fog machine as well as numerous flood lights and if possible led lights as well. Can the LEDs be controlled by the same controller as the DMX lights?

[zman]

Jeff, sort of.

 

If by LEDs you are referring to M5/6 etc... that plug into your LOR Controllers?

 

DMX, if you output it, you can drive it via the USB485 as the DMX dongle. In that case if you have just the one network, then all the LOR controllers will be in DMX mode and all you have to do is covert the Cat5 to your XLR cables which is most likely what is interfacing on your fog and maybe floods.

 

I believe in this set up, you will need a cross over cable from the USB484 to your first controller. Someone will correct me if that is not the case.

[Steven]

I will need wash lights...

That's not very specific. There are many ways to do "wash lights." If you are using 120v single-color flood lights, then it's easy to just plug them into a LOR controller. You could even create a 120v RGB flood light by combining 3 (or 4, for RGBW) lights into a box, and using 3 (or 4) ordinary channels.

 

If you have 12v LED RGB flood lights, then you can drive them with a LOR DC controller, with no need to use DMX. In my first year using RGB flood (wash) lights, I used a CMB16 (LOR 16-channel DC controller) to drive 5 RGB flood lights. I connected each light to the controller with a (long) cat5 cable, because that's what I had available.

 

In a subsequent year, I bought a couple of Rainbow Flood Extreme lights from Seasonal Entertainment, which require DMX. At this point I decided to move my 5 other floods to another house, and simply the wiring by building 3 new RGB flood lights that each have a 3-channel DMX controller build in. This allows me to run a single cable, with DMX+12v, to all the flood lights, rather than a separate cable for each light.

 

...control a fog machine...

That depends on the fog machine. I have a $40 Gemmy fog machine I use at Halloween. It came with a remote switch that I connected to a relay, and then to a small wall wart plugged into a channel on an ordinary LOR controller. No DMX required. If you have a fog machine that is controlled with DMX, it's going to be much more expensive.

 

...as well as numerous flood lights and if possible led lights as well.

If they are 120v lights, then I recommend using a regular LOR controller for several reasons: It works better with the LOR software, especially the hardware utility. A controller on the LOR network may fade smoother, and shimmer better. The LOR network is more reliable with lower quality network cable, because it runs at a lower speed.

 

Can the LEDs be controlled by the same controller as the DMX lights?

We would need some specific examples to properly answer that question.