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PC based DMX controller supporting scripts or API?


Kelvin Xu

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Hi cinematography,



We are testing and grading large number of CMOS sensors for our microscope applications.


The basic idea is to have a PC to automatically control a 3-lights LED system to illuminate a sensor at various color temperature, brightness, hues etc, and take a large number of pictures for post processing.



We understand the DMX manufacturers tend to have their own GUI and App, but manual operation is not efficient.



Are there any DMX manufacturers supporting API or scripts to automate it? Besides here, where else online can I go to look for such information?



Thank you!




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Hi cinematography,

We are testing and grading large number of CMOS sensors for our microscope applications.

The basic idea is to have a PC to automatically control a 3-lights LED system to illuminate a sensor at various color temperature, brightness, hues etc, and take a large number of pictures for post processing.

We understand the DMX manufacturers tend to have their own GUI and App, but manual operation is not efficient.

Are there any DMX manufacturers supporting API or scripts to automate it? Besides here, where else online can I go to look for such information?

Thank you!

 

 

If you are into actually programming as in 'writing code'... perhaps this site will give you some good references.

 

https://wiki.openlighting.org/index.php/Open_Lighting_Project

 

While this is not in my 'day job' space, I've been using 'open software' for about 35 years to create software that is used in the products I have produced.

 

It's not 'free' in the sense that the software just walks up to the problem and it's solved, but a lot of the components are out there for some one to collect together for a solution application.

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  • 2 weeks later...

First time poster here. :)



Anyway, Kelvin, the easiest way to do this without having to learn to interface with DMX directly, is to use any generic DMX software and setup all your desired lighting presets, then assign hotkey/shortcuts for those presets within the DMX software. Then in whatever language you're programming your own software, simply use API to pass hotkeys to the DMX software, thus triggering your lighting sequences. I use this for my own projects, specifcally live sporting scenarios, allowing me to trigger lighting commands automatically based on predefined scoring and possesion scenarios within the live stats software. It's about 5-6 lines of code, and allows me the benifit of using the adveanced feature set of the DMX software without having to recreate it all myself.



Hope this helps.



- Nathan


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First time poster here. :)

Anyway, Kelvin, the easiest way to do this without having to learn to interface with DMX directly, is to use any generic DMX software and setup all your desired lighting presets, then assign hotkey/shortcuts for those presets within the DMX software. Then in whatever language you're programming your own software, simply use API to pass hotkeys to the DMX software, thus triggering your lighting sequences. I use this for my own projects, specifcally live sporting scenarios, allowing me to trigger lighting commands automatically based on predefined scoring and possesion scenarios within the live stats software. It's about 5-6 lines of code, and allows me the benifit of using the adveanced feature set of the DMX software without having to recreate it all myself.

Hope this helps.

- Nathan

 

 

Thank you Nathan.

I understand that the DMX interface well however we faced issues with USB camera modules, even though different manufacturers of USB camera modules use the same USB interface from PC perspective, but we did get different DLL from manufacturers. Do DMX have the similar issues?

 

Does a user expect a DMX software out there to work with any DMX controller boxes in the market? If so, I could get a DMX software which allows API or command line modes.

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It depends on the software. Some DMX applications are limited to their priprietary USB dongle/interfaces, while others offer support for a variety. For instance, in terms of free software, American DJ has DMX software that is limited to it's own dongle, while Freestyler offers support for a large number of dongles.

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