I want to control a small amount of DMX lights. Probably enough for just one universe. I can do it with straight DMX cables, art-net wired or art-net wireless. I’m thinking a wired route is the fastest and most reliable way to go. Realistically I don’t need Art-net, but I bought the damn Ethernet shield already, so I want to get it working.
I haven’t found any good tutorials on how to do this. The ones I’ve found use really old versions of arduino and full of errors. So I think I’ll have to start from scratch.
I believe I can do it with basically the following:
Uno
Max485 IC
Ethernet shield
I’ll use the most recent DMX and Ethernet libraries.
Am I on the right path here? Is there anything else I need?
As for the code...I’m not that great with coding. I’m sure there are plenty of examples online for DMX and Ethernet shields. If you have any specific recommendations, it would be appreciated.
I have done some pojects with DMX and Arduino in the past, but only on a small scale basis, with not more than about 30 devices (channels) and pretty basic tasks.
I used an UNO and a DMX shield (based on the MAX485) and wired DMX. It worked pretty well.
red913:
I want to control a small amount of DMX lights. Probably enough for just one universe.
One universe is 512 devices ("channels"). So this is already 512 bytes of RAM needed on the Arduino.
Consider the fact that UNO only has 2 kilobyte of RAM. Ethernet library does need some RAM too, so you might run out of RAM pretty soon.
I would recommend some kind of "Arduino" with more RAM.
For example:
MEGA, which has 8 kilobyte of RAM and is compatible with standard Arduino shields
ESP8266 / NodeMCU (which is not a "real" Arduino but...) with much more RAM and Flash.