pscandrett Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 Hi Has anyone had any luck with using the Arduino Diecimila (http://www.tinker.it/en/Products/ArduinoNG) in lighting applications? I've a friend who's bought a couple (and a network board) whose having some success in turning it into a mini webserver but it seems to me to be a versatile little unit. There's been a thread about it on here in relation to being an LED driver system but I've got another potential application for it. I'll explain more in a mo but having rummaged around on the web and community area there's many options for turning it into a DMX transmitter (compatible with some of the free software out there - it seems like an inexpensive way of making a USB DMX output device actually!) but none to allow it to RECEIVE DMX as a unit. Does anyone know if this is possible? Alternatively, are there any other devices that can receive DMX and act as an interface for things? Anyway, back to the idea... What we'd like to create is a wall of lights - a matrix effect much like the scrolling LED signs - but that can be controlled from an LX desk (probably) using presets to scroll patterns and words. The lights, however, we envisage as standard incandescent bulbs and so we can't really use the LED trick of scanning down the matrix and using the persistence of vision that the LED signs use. I know that what I'm talking about has sort of been done with LEDs (eg colourweb!) and media servers for a while now and that doign it with LEDs is relatively straightforward, but I'm hitting a bit of a brick wall with using 'real' lamps! My thought was to use an Arduino for the control of it as it seems suited to that - a transistor and relay for each lamp would be... soldertastic but straighforward. However, the whole DMX receive thing is a bit of a hinderance! I'm not amazingly experienced in electronics stuff though I'm not scared of experimenting - I'm not too bad at coding so could do the code bits I reckon but I don't know what to do otherwise. I do have other devices available such as a DMX switch pack (mains) or two but I'm not sure that interfacing that directly in would help much! Does this overall idea seem plausible? Have I missed a trick here somewhere? Has anyone done anything like this before please? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! I'm down at PLASA on Monday (hmm, I must remember to look up what the secret BR handshake is!) - I wonder if there might be similar products being exhibited there... Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimbo7744 Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 Have a look at Whitelight's digital festoon system, http://www.whitelight.ltd.uk/uploaded/imag...tal_Festoon.pdf They are the Uk distributor and the product is manufactured by http://www.glassonelectronics.co.uk/ It seems like it's along the same lines as what your trying to achieve. Jimbo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pscandrett Posted September 5, 2008 Author Share Posted September 5, 2008 Have a look at Whitelight's digital festoon system, http://www.whitelight.ltd.uk/uploaded/imag...tal_Festoon.pdfMarvellous, I seem to recall seeing it at PLASA at some point now you come to mention it; thanks. It's probably expensive though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martinw Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 The Atmel ATmega168 microcontoller on which Arduino is based is definitely capable of receiving DMX - you just need a UART set to run at 250Kbps, and some software to spot the break and then count the bytes in as they arrive. You might need to ditch the Arduino language and just use C to do this in conjunction with the WinAVR toolchain. There should be lots of code examples on how to do this. Martin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon T Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 I have done this a few times using par cans using a dimmer for every lamp, and use a desk like the vista or vector, that could map text, visuals, and effects quite easily over the wall...however, depending on how large the wall is could reuslt in quite a large pull on power, compared to something like the digital festoon, or a wall of LED cans! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JDP Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 For desk, the GrandMA will easily do bitmap effects and text scrolls... Pixel Lines and Pixel Art can do similar things. Or as Jon suggests LED cans or a wall of parcans. Theres also the Mitrix stuff and other items like that, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 You can achieve this using LightFactory - the Matrix Effects engine will apply to the Dimmer attribute of non-CMY fixtures, so simply patching the dimmers, setting up the matrix, and creating the effect you require (which could be a video effect, a static bitmap image or a motion path based effect) and away you go. Licences are available from 1 universe upwards, so this would prove a far more cost effective solution than a media server - 1 universe including USB output dongle is £299! Let me know if you need any help, or pop along to our stand at PLASA (Stand A80) where you can see it in action. Regards, Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted September 5, 2008 Share Posted September 5, 2008 I'd recommend you have a look at the Propeller chip that Parallax produce; it can do DMX512 reception, and has a fair bit of I/O. More than that its easy to program in a high level language that is fast enough for most applications, and has hundreds of ready built "objects" available for download, many from an active community. One of these is a DMX512 receiver, coded in assembler, but ready to go out of the box. There is also a prototype board for $20 USD including processor, EEPROM, voltage regulators, everything needed for a running system, which can form the basis of many a project. The starter kit has a VGA output and stereo audio, and it really is quite funky to hear the thing singing a four part harmony, even if its vocabulary (as the demo program comes) is a little limited... Despite having only a few hours playing with this chip, I'm convinced its wonderful, and a cheap board that is the core of many projects increases the fab factor even more. You can matrix incandescent lamps quite happily, however, you should use steering diodes, and the lamp voltage needs to be much lower than the supply voltage, as each lamp only gets a portion of the overall voltage due to the multiplexing effect. It works even better than LEDs as the filaments have thermal inertia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbanzi Posted September 6, 2008 Share Posted September 6, 2008 Hello Arduino can work as DMX receiver, actually our DMX products are based on the Arduino parts. Tinker.it is about to launch a DMX "shield" for Arduino that lets you also receive but in general what you need is something like a MAX485 in receive mode connected to the RX pin on arduino. use Serial.begin(250000); in your code and you're good to go... there is only a little trick used to figure out when the DMX frame begins. There is quite a few people (even professionals) who use Arduino and DMX for their work. massimoArduino.cc & Tinker.it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomo Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 use Serial.begin(250000); in your code and you're good to go... there is only a little trick used to figure out when the DMX frame begins.Please tell me you're being more clever than detecting a framing error and calling that the break!DMX breaks are >88uS (at receiver) for a reason - you need to do a proper bit of timing on it, as otherwise any 'lost bits' instantly cause flicker.(I recently spent ages debugging a site where this method was an contributory factor to the problems) I've not used Arduino in particular, but there's probably an 'interrupt on rising/falling edge' and a timer that you can use to properly detect the break. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted September 7, 2008 Share Posted September 7, 2008 Almost everyone uses the old UART framing error trick. Mostly because folks dont want to dedicate more resources to the problem, like pins or counters. And its not easy to program. And yep, my hand is up there too! With my change of processor (goodbye PICs) I can do it right at last.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmills Posted September 8, 2008 Share Posted September 8, 2008 For the lamp driving, why not get 120V lamps and put series diodes at each lamp base, then it degenerates into a matrix with hard fired thyristor drive. You could even do ETC 'dimmer doubler' style tricks with a pair of lamps per crosspoint with back to back diodes..... Note: 120V is actually wrong for powering with one half of a 240V ac supply, as the voltage should be 1/sqrt(2) lower then that, due to the fact that P=V^2/R, but you can probably trim that by playing phase angle games with one of the sets of drivers. Power consumption could get really silly really fast!Note that this sort of deliberate introduction of DC current onto the mains supply is heavily frowned upon in Europe, so some care is advised. Regards, Dan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pscandrett Posted September 14, 2008 Author Share Posted September 14, 2008 Just a quick note to thank all those who have contributed to this thread. I hope it was a useful discussion for others, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick512 Posted September 14, 2008 Share Posted September 14, 2008 Is this what you are aiming to produce? http://www.chromlech.fr/pages/en/products/...rag.php?lang=FR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aminorking Posted September 14, 2008 Share Posted September 14, 2008 Just wondering why you wont to use lamps rather than LED,s. Are you trying to do it for a large area? Umm, you might be interested in this product however, not exactly what you are looking for, but maybe.Peggy 2.0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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