Jack James

I've currently got some limited access to a theatre lighting rig to conduct some experience on automating theatre lighting control.

I'm planning on controlling the theatre's Jester 24 lighting desk with midi note messages sent via my audio interface.

If I can control the lighting this way it means I don't need to buy a DMX interface making everything very inexpensive.

As my time with the rig is limited I wondered if anyone had any advice they could give me following any experience doing something similar.

I'm practicing sending messages to control the lights on akai LPD8 using noteout which is working fine but 'M|IDI Tester' doesn't seem to notice that anything's happening.

I'm planning on controlling the theatre's Jester 24 lighting desk with midi note messages sent via my audio interface. 

I'm practicing sending messages to control the lights on akai LPD8 using noteout which is working fine but 'M|IDI Tester' doesn't seem to notice that anything's happening. 

midi-lighting-control

Can you get it to do anything just using basic noteout/midiout from a Max patch? Is there a connection you can make (USB maybe) to the lighting desk? You'd need to know what specific commands/MIDI messages it needs to do its thing.

Maybe you need to control the audio interface from Max, which then sends the MIDI, but you may be able to bypass that altogether.

If you are doing things like controlling fades or moving heads then might be better to use OSC instead of MIDI, if you have the option, as it is at the same resolution as DMX (0 - 255 instead of 0 - 127 for MIDI). Been doing this with TouchOSC on iOS/ Android via Max and a DMX interface. If you don't want to buy a DMX interface you could always use an Arduino with a DMX shield and a bit of simple-ish programming with the DMX library, but doesn't help with time constraints if you haven't done it before.

And here's my solution minus computer, minus DMX-interface and minus Wifi router: 

If you are doing things like controlling fades or moving heads then might be better to use OSC instead of MIDI, if you have the option, as it is at the same resolution as DMX (0 - 255 instead of 0 - 127 for MIDI). Been doing this with TouchOSC on iOS/ Android via Max and a DMX interface. If you don't want to buy a DMX interface you could always use an Arduino with a DMX shield and a bit of simple-ish programming with the DMX library, but doesn't help with time constraints if you haven't done it before. 

Here's a demo of my iPad-Max-DMX setup: http://vimeo.com/24677970

And here's my solution minus computer, minus DMX-interface and minus Wifi router: http://lukewoodbury.co.uk/dmx-hero.html


Thank you for sharing your videos really great work.

I hadn't considered the option of using a DMX shield with the Arduino, I think that will be my next step partly for cost and partly just to do it.

Thank you for sharing your videos really great work. 

SK Pang do one with an on board SD card holder so you can save chases on it and stuff, or look up Daniel Hirschman if you want to make your own!

Midi Lighting Control