I’m preparing for a gig and hoping to drive DMX lighting but surprised at how unresponsive my lights are in my mockup. Can anyone tell me if this means my setup is not configured correctly, or if this is normal? I am somewhat new to ArtNet.
Even driving a single DMX color channel from a simple LFO is choppy, and seems to miss steps once in a while. This is using gigabit CAT6 wired ethernet. If I use WiFi updates drop to about 3 per second.
Thanks
It can depend on the type of fixtures to some extent – if you are using things that rely on bulbs (vs LEDs), they may have awkward response times, particularly when going from totally off to on.
That said, if you think there is something wrong, please send us a Bug Report from the Help menu. Along with your project file, try to describe your setup in as much detail as possible so we can try to recreate the situation on our end. If possible, perhaps compare against the response time from any other software that you might have access to that can send DMX.
Typically it is recommended to use a wired ethernet connection for DMX / ArtNet whenever possible. If you are going to use WiFi, it helps to have a wireless router that isn’t handling any other significant network bandwidth (I suspect DMX / ArtNet pros would tell you to use a dedicated network switch / router or direct crossover connection so that other network traffic doesn’t get in the way even with wired connections?)
Thanks. I’ve determined the problem is definitely on the ArtNet/networking side and not the fixture. I may experiment with subnet masks and clock options. The best test would be with the real hardware but I don’t have access until next month.
Hm, if you happen to have an extra Mac hanging around, you can use this tutorial (maybe with a bit of QC customization?) to simulate the fixtures on the other end?
Or some other similar piece of software that just receives some DMX and shows the values on screen.
(eg https://artnetview.com/)