Open Lighting Project

The Open Lighting Project is a multi-faceted effort aimed at accelerating the adoption of new, standardized control protocols, while also providing high quality, reliable, open software for the lighting industry.

Contributions to date include:

• libartnet, An ArtNet implementation for Mac, Linux and Windows & iPhone.
• Open Lighting Architecture, a framework that enables protocol translation from legacy, closed protocols and abstracts control software from the underlying hardware / protocol. This includes support for E1.31 (Streaming ACN) and E1.20 (RDM).
• Automated RDM Responder Tests, which aims to increase the quality of devices as more manufacturers adopt RDM.
• Arduino RGB Mixer, open source firmware for Arduinos, so that they can be used as a simple RGB Color Mixer.
• The RDM Parameter ID Index, a searchable, royalty free index of manufacturer specific PIDs used in RDM.
• opendmx.net, this website.

The primary method of communication is via the Open Lighting Mailing List.

Software from the Open Lighting Project is used around the world daily. The Open Lighting Projects List documents some known uses. Feel free to add to it.

Project Supporters

Many thanks to the following people / organisations that have supported our efforts:

• 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.
• Lumen Radio who provided a TX2 RDM, RX RDM & FX Units
• Martin Professional A/S which loaned a Mac 700 for RDM 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.

Code Contributors

• 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
• Tobi Schäfer, for the MacPort files

How You Can Help

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.
• Monetary donations, cash helps buy more equipment to test with, you'll get your name listed and a warm fuzzy feeling inside :)