DVDdoug:
I will use a retail Arduino with a DMX master circuit run into the computer with usb.
I'm not really sure if you can do that... Of course you can upload your DMX sketch from USB and run a pre-programmed sequence, but I'm not sure if you can "run the show" from the computer that way. You might need a "retail" USB-DMX controller...
Thanks for all the responses. I have it working so far in that it goes from the vixen software, through an entec driver, and into the Arduino Uno as per the playground tutorials. The receive light on the Arduino lights up when I test the channels or put commands in any channel so it definitely works to setup shows and use the Arduino as a DMX master.
Before I buy the Texas Instruments chips to actually encode and decode between Arduinos, I wanted to be sure because all the tutorials on the playground show the boards as a shield on a full retail Arduino, not a microcontroller only model. I suppose the microcontroller only model that you build yourself is only useful if it is going to be a standalone device and won't need external communication? Is this right?