Q Light Controller+

Hi there! New to the forums and QLC+, however can't say enough about QLC+ and how much I like the program!

I am considering replacing a dedicated light board (Elation Show Designer 2) with a Raspberry Pi running QLC+. Why you ask? The board is 5 years old, needs to be serviced, and I need a solution in place prior to sending the board in for service. I intend to run Raspberry Pi, QLC+ with a dedicated touchscreen.

With that said, I stumbled upon this Raspberry Pi DMX USB Pro (http://www.bitwizard.nl/shop/index.php? ... uct_id=154). Rather than purchasing the Entecc USB to DMX converter, I was wondering whether QLC+ would work with this hardware, or if anyone has had any experience with the hardware?

Thanks in advance!

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

I beleve the rpi image is build on the rasbian-OLA image, so it is possible.

I have build the image myself starting with downloading the rasbian-OLA image and compile qlc myself. But you do need to have some linux skills!
Configure the OLAd to use the serial interface as an dmx interface. Now you can connect via artnet or whatever you configured. Again you need some linux skills!

Rob

Hello Kevin,
so finally someone built some dedicated DMX hardware for the RPi ! Thanks for sharing the link.
I think I will purchase one of those to officially support it.

As far as I can read online (especially here: https://sites.google.com/site/rpidmx512 ... controller), the board is based on a FT245RL micro (FTDI), which is good for QLC+.
It also says: "Fully compatible with software suitable for ENTTEC USB Pro"

I don't quite understand how they emulate a USB device through the RPi IO, but if what they say is true, then in theory QLC+ could work with that board.
However, you'll probably need to build their custom driver, which is not easy at all from these instructions:
http://www.raspberrypi-dmx.com/raspberr ... nvironment

Side notes:
- watch out for 5 PIN DMX plugs. If your fixtures all have 3 PIN plugs, then you'll need a DMX 5-to-3 PIN adapter
- as far as I can tell from the pictures, the DMX board is suspended over the RPi and plugged on just one side over the RPi IO strip. This means that when you plug some DMX cables (which are quite heavy), all the mechanical stress will happen on the RPI strip and on the DMX connectors soldering (below the board).
In a long term, plugging/unplugging/moving cables will break something on your RPi, unless you have a case that gives strenght to the whole thing.
- there's also this one: http://www.bitwizard.nl/shop/index.php? ... uct_id=153
Less expensive, but even more difficult to get to work since it doesn't mount a FTDI micro.

@Rob:

I beleve the rpi image is build on the rasbian-OLA image, so it is possible.

Not true. I started from a stripped version of a vanilla Raspbian image. In my image, OLA is just an additional package like any other.

Massimo - Thanks for the info! I will stand by and wait to purchase until you support it. I like how clean of a solution it is, and, quite frankly, inexpensive as compared against a $100-$200 USD USB adapter. However, the concerns of cable weight, etc...are an issue, and we would have to go from a five to a three pin.

Thanks for the info!

Hey, I contacted the makers of those boards and they're kindly sending me a couple of samples.
Once I receive them I will start the integration.

For all the UART lovers: to support the non-FTDI version of those boards, I will have to write a UART plugin for QLC+, which should make other hardware solutions happy

Don't mean to dig up an old thread (there might be more info out there but when I search for "DMX" the search gives me 0 results?? ) but this is exactly what I'm looking to setup. Has there been any progress in supporting these boards? I think I've seen a couple of them now as I've been searching around google..

This thread was talking about UART devices...so you should have searched "UART" instead.

Probably you would have find these
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=8894
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8856
and UART is also mentioned here
http://www.qlcplus.org/features.html
and here
http://www.qlcplus.org/release-4.10.0.html

Awesome! Thank you so much for the reply! I'll check those out ASAP. Still don't understand why the search didn't bring anything up but I'll figure that out later.
Thanks again!

Thanks again for all the info so far.
After doing some reading, I'm thinking that the cheapest simplest setup would be to just use a FTDI USBCOM 485+ to build an interface like this one:
http://stevenbreuls.com/2013/05/diy-usb ... -under-10/

I just need to do some simple shows with a sound track and some LED lights.

Does it sound like I'm on the right track?

Edit: Ugh..I realize I'm kinda hijacking this post. Sorry about that

Hi conradcliff..
That was my first interface. Had no issue to install it ( but it was on win 10).
Cannot tell you a lot for Raspberry but I would like to let you know a small issue I had running that DIY interface.

I am a big knob in DMX and tried this interface to play around, understand and get some practice.
I was using 8 stairville flood 150.
It was pretty much OK but one PAR was always flickering randomly.
Same issue on freestyler and QLC+.

I didnt go deeper to understand the reason of the flickering but when I installed an enttec USB (yesterday) everything was fine.
So I opened the enttec to check the component and compare then to the FTDI USBCOM.

There is more component on the Enttec. Some filter for example, that are not present on the FTDI USBCOM.
That could explain the flickering I had...
Maybe also that one of my PAR had weaknesses to deal with slightly altered (not well filtered) DMX messages... I don't' know

So be careful ( but for the price there is no pb to check of course).

Ok, great! Thanks so much for the info

An FTDI USBCOM is equivalent to Open DMX USB, with only 256 byte transmit buffer;
for full DMX512 frame without flicker requires sending less than 1/2 frame, then
after about 1/120 second transferring another 1/4 frame, then the rest after another 1/120 second.

A DMX USB Pro implements double-buffering with a microcontroller,
accepting full DMX512 frames in single transfers.

This is excellent information, admittedly it's currently above my knowledge level. Not sure what a frame is right now but I'll research it.

At the moment I'm just wanting to run a 3 channel controller to fade 3 5050smd strips in and out.

Will this be enough to do that reliably?

A frame is how many (up to 512) channels are sent to DMX devices, always starting with the first.
For 3 dimmer channels starting at address 1, a short DMX frame could be only 4 bytes
(DMX requires a zero byte before controlled channels).
I don't yet have a Raspberry Pi and don't know whether that QLC+ implementation can be configured to send short frames,
but sending short frames @ 30 Hz via FTDi should work flicker-free.