As promised, I threw a MAX485 on a bread board and hooked it up to my Arduino. You can use the USB driver on the Arduino board and hook the TX pin into the Arduino, combined with the Entec Open USB DMX driver, you can easily and cheaply spit out DMX. Anyhoo, I hooked that circuit up to my Grinch DMX Dimmer and fired up Vixen and started spitting out some dimming channels. Indeed I had some dimming Christmas lights, but it was very jumpy and there was some random flashing going on. It surely wasn’t smooth, but at least it proved that my DMX Dimmer was getting a signal. I’ve been reading that the Open DMX (which has no “brains”) has a hard time keeping up with the timing for the DMX signal (like .4us) because the computer is doing all the work. I’m hoping that when my DMX Dongle PCB gets here and I get it built up, I will have much better results. It will have a dedicated controller for keeping the timing just right and the computer will just have to say “hey you, turn on channel 1 at 50%”, and it’ll politely do so.
I put together another SSR, and had much better success this time, maybe I’m actually getting the hang of this soldering thing. I had two of the triac joints bridged, but that was easy enough to fix and at least I didn’t fry anything this time. I still have 14 more to build, but I’m not in a huge hurry. The Grinch and SSRs will probably end up at the store anyhow, as I should have enough channels (for this year) with my Ren24′s. Speaking of which, the PCB’s are supposed to be arriving Friday, so hopefully I’ll have mine next week. The heat sinks are due in March 2nd, so by mid march I would imagine I would have at least one running and in its enclosure that I can post some pics. I found a bigger enclosure than the 9×9 ones I was going to use, it should let me have more room to play with for putting a grounding bar in and some strain reliefs in.
Most of this week so far I’ve been trying to teach myself Assembler on the PIC so I can use one as a standalone show controller, (and perhaps for other projects… cough… cough… wireless barcode scanner). I have been able to send data to my ShiftBrites for now, but am trying to figure out the best way to put a “show” on there. At least it’s progress I suppose. I’ve also been trying to find music that I like and that will be appropriate for my show. I’m also trying to get a feel for the beats and what would look good with it. I probably won’t start sequencing until I nail down the layout of everything, and that won’t happen until it warms up enough to measure out parts of the house. I hope to get going on sequencing soon though, because from what I have read, it takes most people 4 to 5 hours+ per song, and that’s if you know what you’re doing.
Posted in DMX, Grinch |
