DMX scanning? Or DMX receiving?

[tomjo...@gmail.com]

Hello

Question: what is the quickest/easiest way to scan/map the DMX512 address range, to work out what lights are on what addresses?    I am using a USB-to-DMX adapter (DMX King) and QLab 4.  I need to do this so I can control 10 or so lights at a theatre, in place of their ancient Zero88 manual fader lighting console.  They have no documentation indicating what lights are on what DMX addresses.

My current plan is that I'll open the QLAb DMX Status window and just start typing numbers into the boxes, one by one, making a note of what lights fade up as I do so.  Is that the best way, or are there any other options I should consider? Or any useful apps for this?

Or, does anyone know how I can monitor the DMX signal received by my USB-to-DMX DMX King?  It says it's both a DMX transmitter and receiver, so rather than scanning the whole range, another option would be to connect the DMX King direct to the existing lighting console, then move the faders and see what data it's sending.  But I don't know how I can do that - I've only ever used the DMX King as a transmitter before, never for receiving?

Background:

Tomorrow I'm taking my low-budget theatre production to a theatre I've not been to before.  We're hiring the theatre, so we're in charge of all tech. The theatre I'm going to tomorrow is rather low budget, and for lighting they're using some ancient Zero88 manual fader lighting rig to control their 10 or so stage lights.  It supports programming, but it's so old they've recommended I don't attempt to programme it - and it looks like some of the buttons don't work properly anyway!

Regardless, I'd much rather run the whole show from QLab as I've done at other venues.

They're happy for me to disconnect the Zero88 from the DMX cable and use QLAb in its place, but they have no lighting plan or technical documentation, so they have no idea what DMX addresses are in use for which lights. So I will need to figure that all out manually, and fairly quickly.

All the lights look to be simple lamps, no LEDs, so it's likely one address per lamp. And I think they're all on DMX-to-AC dimmer boxes, rather than directly DMX connected.

[Sam Kusnetz]

Question: what is the quickest/easiest way to scan/map the DMX512 address range, to work out what lights are on what addresses?    I am using a USB-to-DMX adapter (DMX King) and QLab 4.  I need to do this so I can control 10 or so lights at a theatre, in place of their ancient Zero88 manual fader lighting console.  They have no documentation indicating what lights are on what DMX addresses.

DMX does not actually facilitate this sort of action. Your best bet, if there truly is no documentation, is to read the patch out of the the Zero88 and manually re-create it in QLab. If that’s not an option, bringing channels up one at a time as you said is unfortunately the last resort.

Best

Sam

—

Sam Kusnetz (he/him) | Figure 53

s...@figure53.com

[Kinetic Screen]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the input on devices like a DMX King or Entecc USB Pro can indeed be used to 'read' the current values being sent in a DMX universe. You would need to use different software than Qlab to do it - if you want something cheap and nasty I would look into https://www.qlcplus.org/ and check out the forums if there is a post of someone doing what you're trying to do.

You might need to set the device to be in receiving mode rather than transmitting, as they often can only do one at a time (I'm not familiar with DMX King stuff)

[Sam Kusnetz]

On Oct 12, 2022 at 11:31:44 PM, Matt Weber <mattg...@gmail.com> wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the input on devices like a DMX King or Entecc USB Pro can indeed be used to 'read' the current values being sent in a DMX universe. You would need to use different software than Qlab to do it - if you want something cheap and nasty I would look into https://www.qlcplus.org/ and check out the forums if there is a post of someone doing what you're trying to do.

That’s not wrong, but doing this won’t inherently tell you anything about a lighting setup.

If the installed system has any kind of DMX distribution (i.e. optosplitter) and there’s an available port, you could:

• Leave the Zero88 hooked up
• Connect the free DMX port in the distributor/opto to the input on your DMX device
• Use software on the Mac that monitors incoming DMX
• Bring lights up using the Zero88
• Note which channels on the Zero88 bring up which addresses

-sk 

[tomjo...@gmail.com]

Thanks both for the ideas.

It turned out to be pretty straightforward, and I was overthinking it.  I looked up how to read the patch details on the console (a Zero88 Alcora).  The console requires you to scroll through the 512 addresses, then lights an LED on any fader(s) assigned to that address.  Eights lamps were within the first 16 DMX addresses, so I found those quickly.

After that the addresses became much more spread out, and trying to spot whether any of the 24 dim fader LEDs were lighting up was getting tedious, so instead I added 50 x Dimmer instruments in QLab, patching them to 17 - 66. Bringing them all up lit all the remaining fixtures, so then it was just a matter of renaming or deleting QLab instruments according to whether each did anything useful or not.

Whole process only took about 15 minutes.

Thanks again.