Looking for a new dmx controller

[Lithium]

Hi every one,

After using the velleman kit for a few years i want to buy something better. The velleman kit works good but if you look good at your moving mac you can see it is making little steps.
It also has problems when you add many fixtures because the microcontroller (pic) is very slow (20mhz).

I am looking for an new controller but don't know what is the best option.
What i am looking for:

1) Cheap
2) Fast
3) DMX out at least 512
4) DMX in
5) It would be a good thing if it works whit martin lj (not official)

I now have the velleman kit, it works good but is slow.
I already looked at dmx4all but ready people had problems whit the controller.
I also have seen a dmx input at dmx4all but don't know what to take.

Hope you can give me some advise.

[Lithium]

Hi,
Thanks for your post.

I hope other people will also post there advice
125 Euro is an nice price for an dmx usb interface.

[Shannon D]

I also use the Enttec Pro. The only issue I had was my LED colorstrips would flicker due to the refresh rate. Not to worry because the Enttec Pro has a Utility program to change the refresh rate. Once I changed the refresh rate from 40 to 24, no more flickering. I recommend the Enttec Pro as well. I don't use the "DMX IN" on this device.

[LJ_krede.dk]

there is some comments in this topic:

What Interface Do you Use / Recomend?

People can also vote on which interface they are using.

[remco_k]

The Enttec USB DMX Pro is a very good unit, but it is either OUT or IN. Does have an onboard processor so that frees up the computer some what. I have 2 of these and have had no problems with them in any program that I use that supports the interface.
I am pretty sure the majority of people who will reply will recommend this interface.

^^ What he says.
If you buy the enttec USB DMX Pro, you'll know for sure you have bought yourself a good interface. I use it to.
In fact, I used to have the Velleman VM-116/K8062. Had exacly the same problems with it (search for my posts about it. You'll even see me rewriting its driver - which ofcourse had almost no effect because the VM116 is just to slow and gets slower the more channels are sent out).
A simple workaround I used to do is to try to keep the max channel number as low as possible.
Where I usually put strobe(s) from ch 1, pars from ch 50, moving heads and other moveable stuff from 100 with 20 channels in between, and other units above 300 or 400, that was killing for the Velleman interface. As I would always need to run the number of DMX channels with 512. And the more channels where not a 0 value, the slower it gets.
Then I found out why the interface gets so slow and tried a setup with max number of DMX channels with 96. I needed to reconfigure everything to start from channel 1 to a max of 96 with no gaps in between... Then the Velleman interface was much much faster. Still not at the speed of what it should be.
So yes, I of all people know what you are experiencing. Then I bought the Enttec USB DMX Pro, even drove a few hours for it to get it (as I did'nt want to wait for it to arrive by post). Its my 2nd USB to DMX interface, but its a damn good one.

[Lithium]

Thanks for your post, i think i will buy that dmx controller.

Little question about the dmx in.
If you look in freestyler you can use dmx in, is it possible to link the input to an dmx adres like the midi control?
Now it's possible to use it for gobo's colors etc but did not found to link it to an dmx adres.

When i do not use the dmx in into freestyler but add an light table to dmx in does it compare the 2 dmx signals to 1 signal?
Hope someone has some more information about it.

[Lithium]

Hi,

My questions are in case of the Enttec USB DMX Pro.

When i use an light table for dmx in i will not use that channels in freestyler...
The manual say i can use an external dmx source but i do not know it it fuses the dmx in and dmx from the computer to one dmx signal. Hope it will. Can someone confirm this?

A priority line is not any problem at all, i want to control things whit my table an do not use freestyler for that.

[Lithium]

Do not understand everything of your post sorry

[remco_k]

Hi,

My questions are in case of the Enttec USB DMX Pro.

When i use an light table for dmx in i will not use that channels in freestyler...
The manual say i can use an external dmx source but i do not know it it fuses the dmx in and dmx from the computer to one dmx signal. Hope it will. Can someone confirm this?

I'm pretty sure it won't work that way. Just looking at the External control settings in FreeStyler tells me that you maybe can use the Enttec USB PRO as input interface to control certain FreeStyler controls, but FreeStyler does not fuse/merge the external DMX input to its own DMX output.
I have the Enttec USB Pro, but don't have any DMX table here so I can't test for you what it is you can control.

Keep in mind that the Enttec USB Pro can only be used as DMX input OR ouput interface. Not both at the same time.
So if you want to use DMX in and out at the same time, you will need 2 DMX interfaces. One for input and one for output.
Still the DMX interface is not merged then. For that, you'll need an external DMX merge unit.

[Lithium]

Thanks Onge for you post and link! It's not that much money i thought it was.

I thought the enttec could merge the 2 signals to one... now i understand