Building the DMX43 Interface

The (first version) of the DMX43 Interface was developed from October 2001 to January 2002. On Monday 2002-01-21 a final presentation of the project was to be held at the University of Applied Sciences. So we gathered at Michael's home on Sunday to assemble all needed parts for the project and the presentation.

First action was to set up our working place for final coding of the driver software for the DMX4Linux driver package and the firmware for the DMX43 Interface.

While Dirk was did some coding Michael started on the hardware. Because his model theater was resting unused in his parents house for some years he first fixed some wooden pieces on his couch table. After he finished on this task we decided that we should fix the rest of the theater before proceeding with the interface, because if the theater would not work on monday, we would have nothing to present.

So we went into Michael's basement and had a closer look at the theater. Because years ago the cables for the lights were installed in a hurry (and since never touched again) we repatched the complete theater.

Before patching we had to make a plan what to patch. Michael looked which light went on, while Dirk was driving the lights from an old DMX interface.

Michael had to strip all wires so we could connect them in the connecters.

With the new connection scheme (which you can not really see on the picture) the lights are now logically arranged on the DMX slots, which makes it easy to program cues for the theater.

However we made some error and short-wired one of the internal connectors without noticing it. As a consequence one of the triacs in the dimmer pack burned itself to death.

By the way, the theater and the dimmerpack were build by Michael in 1995 for his diploma at the Fachhochschule Wedel along with some long lost MS-DOS lighting software.

Apart from the triac maleur the theater was working perfectly, so we could return to Michael's living room and finish the interface. The photo shows our working place. In the middle you can see the interface together with it power supply and an oscilloscope. Michael's PC was used for the DMX4Linux driver development, while his laptop was used for firmware development. After many hours of coding we finally had a version ready, which worked somehow and left for the presentation at 9:00 on Monday morning.

At the University we reinstalled our working place and continued coding. As firmware and driver were already running Michael improved his Qlight software to make some lightshow, while Dirk continued on improving the firmware. However during the presentation something bugged, and all slots had the value of DMX slot 1.

But who cares. Michael is totally exhausted, and the bug is fixed by the time you read this text.

Now go back to the DMX43 Project Page.