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Convetiing DMX to Analogue


sam.henderson

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Hi guys,

 

Right what I need to know is If I have a desk that only has DMX capabilites and I have 2 28ch. dimmers what do I need to convert the DMX to analouge signle and how much.

 

I know zero 88 do a product called the demux but its quite expensive.

 

I know this is a probably very stupid question so appologies for that!

 

Thanks in advance guys,

 

Sam

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There is a demux out made by Botex which is the same as the Strand S72 model. Not sure who sells it, but I think Thomann would be a good start.

 

Anyway it's a 72ch demux and has all sorts of settings you can apply such as +/- 10v etc. You'd need to make up some adaptors from the back of the unit (which are like old style parallel printer connections) to whatever sort of control your dimmers ue.

 

Have a search on this forum, the S72 / Botex equiv. has been covered before.

 

Cheers

Stu

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28 is an odd multiple of dimmers , 56 ways of analogue connection is longer than a `ten minute` job.

 

Soldering isn`t hard to learn, its a knack that once learnt isn`t forgotten.

If you have never soldered before, get someone who has to help. Multi cable into D connectors is not what would recommend to start laerning on. XLRs are easier to start with.

 

Do multiway connectors witha lay on joint, tin the wire and the solder bucket on the connector spererately, then hold the tinned wire on to the tinned pin and apply heat from iron to re-flow solder from both parts together.

 

You need to make up leads with a 25 way multicore connected to every pin on sub minature D connector, D `cos thats what it looks like, serial port and joystick port on your PC are sub D connectors

 

http://www.rapidelectronics.co.uk/rkmain.a..._CAT_CODE=30208

 

these need to go to whatever connector your dimmers have.

 

Its usual to put the demux (de multiplexer) near the dimmers keeping the analogue cables length down.

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  • 1 month later...

Sorry to dig this topic up again guys, but I was wondering if you could help me...

 

I have a production coming up in 2 weeks time, and I'm going to get the school to buy one of the botex demux units. Seeing as thomann will take quite a long time to deliver the unit (and manual), I was just wondering how you wire the D-sub connector into the normal z88 alphapack DINs? As in, what pin goes to what.

 

Thanks,

 

Jon

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as the starter of a similar topic some months ago I ended up buying an old arri (etc) demux from a mate for £50 and getting Service Company to make up two sets of leads (converting to 25pin d connectors for strand) for me at £60 a pop so £170.00 in all. I notice that Iain Dennis has some identical units for sale on www.usedlighting.co.uk so it might be worth a look...
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Thanks for the plug, Tom (no pun intended)

 

Unfortunately, I don't have the pinout for this demux on my website at the moment, but here's a link to the manual for the same demux (albeit badged by Strand), which should allow you to get started.

 

There's a thread somewhere on the BR about this very issue (pinning of these demuxes) but I can't find it at the moment...

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I used these 25 pin D plugs for my analogue control of a 24 way system as the zero88 sirus 24 desk used this. Also I could get plenty of made up 25 pin cables!

 

When I needed to replace the desk with a DMX desk and a demux, I choose the Strand s72 demux as it used these plugs and I thought it would be a straight swap.....

 

Unfortunately, the Strand demux box (which I think is a rebadged one from other supplier) uses an unusual pinout. Where the Zero88 box uses pin 1 = channel 1, pin 2 = channel 2 ...and pin 25 is common, the Strand uses pin 1 = channel 1, but pin 14 = channel 2, pin 2 = channel 3 etc! What were they thinking of? Basically they have just followed the pins from left to right and ignored the pin numbers.

 

However, if you go for a Strand one, they have included a set of 25-25 pin adaptors which straighten this back to 1-1, 2-2 etc.

 

Well Done Strand!

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