Comments on: Receive DMX-512 with an Arduino

By: Erick Nava Aldana

Erick Nava Aldana — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:13:55 +0000

New to Arduino and DMX, but recently buyed shield parts from CuteDigi, three questions:

I have 3 pin led bars, its compatible?
How to connect 3 to 5 and viceversa?
Need to make any change on code(for 3 pin compatibility and/or atmega 328 Duemilanove)?

Mani thanks, nice project!!!

By: Max

Max — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:38:12 +0000

Hi Seb,
If your power needs are pretty minimal, you could just drive the LEDs directly via the PWM outputs. Otherwise, you’ll need the Arduino to output whatever the control protocol is for your LED drivers– probably 0-10V. Although, it doesn’t seem to me that you save any time/money here by building your own strip– there are RGB strips available at dirt cheap prices, e.g.:
http://www.enttec.com/?main_menu=Products&pn=72001&show=description
(or even Ikea!)

The very best and highest performing RGB strips will run you in the $250/ft range, e.g.:
http://www.lumenpulse.com/en/products.php?model=324
But you won’t match the performance/durability of these commercial products unless you have the tooling and engineering skills to make good optical components (miniature lenses and reflectors) and thermally manage the diodes so they don’t overheat and burn out.

I don’t want to sound discouraging because it sounds like a really fun project, but it’s a way to go if you decide you’d like to outsource some of it.

By: Seb

Seb — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 21:40:15 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for posting all this so beautifully. I am a LD from NY and have been using Arduino for some small scale embedded systems projects / mock ups. My next quest is to try and make a small, maybe 1′, LED strip light that is driven by an arduino and controlled by a dmx console. I am also new to code writing and my question is… once you get the Arduino to receive DMX what is the best way to map the dmx channel to a digital output?

-seb

By: Siliconsoul

Siliconsoul — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:31:59 +0000

Hi,

I came across this the other day and would like to ask you if you still have a copy of the code lying around somewhere although it shouldn’t be too difficult to implement an LCD and a rotary encoder.

Would be great if you can share the code with us.

Thanks.

Sincerely,
Siliconsoul.

By: Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:57:01 +0000

Success!

In recent weeks I hadn’t bothered to read the text of the blog, just the comments and so I didn’t notice that Rev14 was out. That has solved all my problems.

I am successfully processing a DMX signal (which is from a USB converter designed by a friend of mine that is still in beta).

In my first few minutes of fiddling with the action loop, I found the need to make the output of the serial monitor more meaningful and neater. You can see my rewritten action loop and its output at

http://www.dmcole.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Arduino-DMX-receiver-Action.png

Thanks so much Max. Now, on to the not insignificant process of making the serial chips work …

\dmc

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 04:15:31 +0000

I’ve got an interesting anomaly someone may have encountered — the outputted DMX values don’t map correctly from my input values. Here’s how they map:
0 –> 254
…
64 –> 2
65 –> 254
…
128 –> 2
129 –> 254
…
191 –> 2
192 –> 254
…
255 –> 2

I’m sure it has something to do with my home-made el cheapo FTDI-based DMX transmitter, but my professional DMX lights don’t seem to mind. Any ideas where I should look to see if I can adapt the code? I’m running Arduino 0018, using the standard action() loop.

Great software! Thanks!

By: aususer

aususer — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 23:12:09 +0000

Gregory Haley: I say the suggested “feeding video” into that 2000 nodes will be “interesting” (say the least).
But you might want to look at ARTNET or E1.31 for your driving protocols (rather than basic DMX512).
Your backend/desk will need to support it of course, but it will get over you 512/universe limitations.
There are examples you can have a look at where they are using > 3000 lights in an awesome christmastree driven by madrix: http://www.response-box.com/rgblights/ (be prepared to sell your kids to get one, and own a nuclear powerstation to light it of course ;).
good luck!

By: Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:27:47 +0000

Grody: Just ran across your theory … tried it out and got this:

>>error: no matching function for call to ‘HardwareSerial::HardwareSerial(ring_buffer*, volatile uint8_t*, volatile uint8_t*, volatile uint8_t*, volatile uint8_t*, volatile uint8_t*, int, int, int, int)’

Thanks for your thoughts, though.

\dmc

By: Grody

Grody — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 12:59:31 +0000

I think I might’ve figured out this whole 0018 issue. All I did was comment out the section of code in the IDE-native HardwareSerial.cpp that was commented out in the version provided here, and now it at least appears able to compile. I haven’t tried getting it to run on an Arduino yet.

By: Dave Cole

Dave Cole — Sun, 30 May 2010 17:20:17 +0000

Max: Thanks for your thoughts.

In my application I won’t be needing to do RDM, so I won’t need the timer on Pin 3 … it’s just the Pin 11 timer I’ll need to move (and the guy who wrote the tlc5490 library isn’t interested in telling me how to move his pins around).

I’m still learning about the 5940, so I can’t say yet whether it’s asynch or synch … when I get more eddiecated on the topic, I’ll be back.

Also, I tried downloading IDE 0017 and moving in the new HardwareSerial.cpp with Bluefusion’s mods and the sketch still won’t compile …

Thanks again.

\dmc