DMXIS to control a lighting console with midi controller

swingrays
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2015 8:24 pm

DMXIS to control a lighting console with midi controller

Post by swingrays »

I have a club I play that has some nice led lights but no fixture list. They all are plugged into a small lighting console. I’m the drummer. Could I use DMXIS with a midi controller to control the light console from my kit? Would I need a laptop for sequences that I’d use with Ableton for extra control? Please answer. This board is very slow.

Trent
cgrafx
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat May 28, 2016 8:52 pm

Re: DMXIS to control a lighting console with midi controller

Post by cgrafx »

swingrays wrote: Sat Nov 24, 2018 9:00 pm I have a club I play that has some nice led lights but no fixture list. They all are plugged into a small lighting console. I’m the drummer. Could I use DMXIS with a midi controller to control the light console from my kit? Would I need a laptop for sequences that I’d use with Ableton for extra control? Please answer. This board is very slow.

Trent
Hi Trent,

Yes you could, but you really need to know what fixtures your controlling, otherwise you would just be running up random faders and hoping it turns something on.

It would take a bit of detective work, but if you could get into the club and spend some time you could easily reverse engineer what is connected on what DMX channels. You'd still need to determine what the DMX layout of each fixture was, but most of that should be determinable by playing with faders until while monitoring each fixtures output.

If the fixtures are mostly RGB, RGBA, or RGBAW small layout configurations that would make it pretty simple to figure out. It gets more complicated if the fixtures are set to higher order DMX layouts where internal features of the lights are being used (Flash, Chase, preprogrammed functions, etc).
swingrays
Posts: 12
Joined: Sat Jan 17, 2015 8:24 pm

Re: DMXIS to control a lighting console with midi controller

Post by swingrays »

The midi controller turns out to be an opt 1216 monster dmx. There’s no “midi in” so I doubt I can control it that way like I thought. Luckily on further inspection, it’s all the same leds which would make using a DMXIS box work easily from the cable coming out of the light console.
cgrafx
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat May 28, 2016 8:52 pm

Re: DMXIS to control a lighting console with midi controller

Post by cgrafx »

swingrays wrote: Wed Nov 28, 2018 2:13 am The midi controller turns out to be an opt 1216 monster dmx. There’s no “midi in” so I doubt I can control it that way like I thought. Luckily on further inspection, it’s all the same leds which would make using a DMXIS box work easily from the cable coming out of the light console.
The OPT1216 does have MIDI in and you can control it via external MIDI control, but my original response was assuming you were going to bypass the console and just use the DMXIS to control the lights directly.
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