Difference between revisions of "Open Lighting Project"

The Open Lighting Architecture provides a framework for distributing lighting control information. It supports many protocols such as E1.31 (sACN), ArtNet, ShowNet, Pathport & RDM and over a dozen USB devices. It can run as a standalone service, which is useful for converting signals between protocols, or alternatively it can be used as the backend for Controller Applications. OLA runs on a many different platforms including ARM, which makes it a perfect fit for low cost Ethernet to DMX gateways.

Testing RDM Responder used to involve manually sending commands and verifying the responses. Not any longer! The RDM Responder Tests automate all of this and provide a detailed breakdown of how well a responder complies with the E1.20 (RDM) standard. This saves time during the product development process and raises the quality of RDM implementations across the industry.

For questions about the RDM Responder tests, email the RDM Testing List.

The Raspberry Pi is one of the most popular platforms for running OLA. With the addition of a USB to DMX device, one can build a low cost, but fully functional Ethernet gateway. The OLA on Raspberry Pi tutorial has a step by step guide to installing OLA on the Pi.

The http://rdm.openlighting.org site contains an index of RDM-enabled products as well as the specifications for many of the manufacturer specific PIDs. The site has recently been expanded to display the results of the RDM Responder Tests. The data on the site is available free of charge through APIs.

Since this is an Open Source project, there is no commercial support for our products at this time. There are a number of ways of reaching the community though:

• Primary User & Developer Discussion Open Lighting Discuss (typically a few messages per day).
• Announcements are posted to Open Lighting Announce (low volume, typically 1-2 per month)
• RDM Testing Discussion RDM Testing.
• IRC #openlighting on freenode.net

There is also an Open Lighting Community on Google+. This is less OLA centric and more about sharing cool lighting projects people are working on.

• libartnet. The library that started it all, libartnet is an ArtNet implementation for Mac, Linux and Windows & iPhone.
• Arduino RGB Mixer, open source firmware for Arduinos, so that they can be used as a simple RGB Color Mixer. Now with RDM support!
• DMX Trigger, this can execute command line programs based on DMX values. It's useful for building DMX controlled media players.
• E1.33 SLP SA Tests, similar to the RDM Responder Tests, this performs tests against a RDMNet Device's SLP implementation.

Many individuals & organizations have supported the project over the years. We're grateful to all of them.

• Anyma, provided a uDMX
• Artistic Licence, provided a Net-Lynx & Down-Lynx for Art-Net / RDM testing and a Rail-Tran to test RDM support
• Andrew Frazer, who sponsored the development of ola_trigger with a RDM USB Pro
• Creative Lighting, provided a SLAMMO XC-1 & ADDICT for RDM testing.
• Enttec, provided a DMX USB Pro
• Eric Johnson, for hosting the server used to test & debug much of the RDM code.
• Florian from eventa.ag who donated a StageProfi and a USBDMX2
• Goddard Design, who made available a MiniDMXter
• Jason Kyle from DMXKing.com provided a DMXking USB DMX512-A
• JESE, provided a DMX-TRI & RDM-TRI & Tempest Enclosure to test the RDM implementation.
• LjusDesign AB who donated 7 RDM splitters.
• LumenRadio who provided a Nova TX2 RDM, Nova RX RDM and Nova FX units and a Raspberry Pi.
• Martin Professional A/S which loaned a Mac 700 for RDM testing
• Milford Instruments who sent 3 RDMChips for testing.
• Peter Kirkup, from Zero 88 who donated a Betapack 3
• Petr from ROBE Lighting who loaned a Robe Universal Interface and Robin 600
• Sandsys, donated a SandBox
• Shaun Jackman, answered questions about the Pathport Protocol
• SoundLight who loaned a 3604PWM-H device
• West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) for access to a Strand Lighting console.

There is plenty of opportunity to get involved. If you would like to help with any of the following (or have your own ideas) then please get in touch with us on the Open Lighting Group

• Technical Writers, the documentation could do with some cleanup.
• Packagers, we need people to build binary packages for Mac, Debian/Ubuntu and RPM-based distros
• Windows programmers, are you interested in helping port OLA to Windows?
• Java programmers, we need someone to write the Java client API [1]
• Equipment donation, do you own or know of a USB interface or RDM device we don't support yet? Consider lending it to us.
• Web designers, the web UI could do with a facelift.

The programming team behind OLA consists of:

• Bastien Andrès, contributed to the dmx4linux plugin
• Harry F, for the Eurolite USB Pro code
• Heikki Junnila, bug fixes for the debian packaging files
• Laurent (Renzo), Debian packages, FreeBSD & RDM testing.
• Masaki Muranaka, various patches
• Nicolas, for the win32 port of libartnet
• Ravindra Nath Kakarla, RDM Test Server (Part of Google Summer of Code 2012 ).
• Rowan Maclachlan (hippy) for various changes
• Rui Barreiros for the FTDI plugin
• Tobi Schäfer, for the MacPort files