Controlling DMX lighting too

[Papa John]

Ok gang... here i go, pushing BandHelper to it's limit once again.  (Or at least hoping to.) 

Does anyone have any experience or suggestions on how to control my DMX stage lighting through BandHelper?  I just bought some lights and a footswitch for those lights that accepts a MIDI input.  The manual for the footswitch does have a mapping of midi program changes to activate the different scenes, so I'm assuming I can create some midi presets to match up and then have them triggered throughout the playback of the backing tracks.

BUT, the footswitch is very limited in what it can do and I was hoping there was some software for my iPad out there that could offer more sophisticated control of the lights but work on MIDI signals internally (so BandHelper could talk to it) and also set out MIDI to a MIDI to DMX converter box externally.

Yup, this is way out of the 'box' but I'd love to get there.. Anyone else experimenting with this type of stuff?

[arlo]

There are some other posts on this forum about using Luminair. I assume there are other options, but I don't know what they are...

[Slowhand]

That's exactly how I use it, and here is the signal flow:

I'm using the Luminair App ob the iPad, BandHelper sends Midi PC-Messages to Luminair to activate Scenes. Luminair sends then DMX via Wifi to a Router (Airport Express, but I think every other router will work. At the router there is Ethernet-DMX Controller connected and from there it goes the usual way via DMX to the lights.
All that stuff is mounted in a small rack so the only thing I have to setup on stage is the DMX Cable.

As I play guitar and manage all the sound and light on stage for my band I needed a solution without many switching on stage. And the functions of bandhelper can do that for me.

Feel free if you have any questions.

Cheers, Christian

[Bibo69]

sounds interesting - can you share the ethernet-to DMX device you are using? thanks a lot!

[Slowhand]

I am using an Enttec Open DMX Ethernet interface. This one might not be in production today, but maybe replaced by a new version.
Any DMX interface that supports ArtNet via Ethernet or Wi-Fi might work.

[Slowhand]

One thing to know: DMX over Wi-Fi has some downsides: There is a (often) changing latency and also sometimes DMX messages are lost. So the Wi-Fi connection only works for slow changing or static scenes. For moving lights requiring exact timing it is adviseable to use a wired Ethernet connection (for iPad there is a adapter available).