can send DMX packets of arbitrary size from 1 to 512 channels. Only got 12 dimmers ? Don’t waste time sending 500 additional zeros 200 times a second…
command line tool
dedicated external for Max/MSP and PureData (8 bit resolution)
USB-MIDI device – send DMX from any MIDI application without any driver needed (7 bit resolution)
open source
Downloads
udmx external for MacOS Catalina. Version 20201111, compiled for macOS Catalina. Needs latest Max8 in order to remove quarantine restrictions, afterwards it also works in Max7. Needs libusb for macOS Catalina. Install libusb via homebrew:
If you haven’t, get homebrew from: https://brew.sh, then in a terminal, type:
udmx_1_2.tar.gz (315kB) – the official release. Includes the original Eagle-Light files for schematics and board layout, the firmware and bootloader, and a handy external for MAX/MSP (Mac only, see below for Windows software…)
uDMX_1.2_UB.zip (6kB) – universal binary version of the Max/MSP external object for both PowerPC and Intel Macs.
uDMX-MAXMSP-win.zip (38kB) – Windows version of the external object for Max/MSP. Includes Christian Raschkos windows driver (see below)
Contributions
Below are contributions by some uDMX makers/users. We couldn’t test everything – your feedback is welcome.
LXNet2USBDMX by Claude Heintz Design is a small utility that allows you to connect one universe of Art-Net or sACN (e1.31) with an uDMX or OpenDMX USB interface.
uDMX_raschko_01.zip (38kB) by Christian Raschko. Alternate design and windows driver: “Our design runs at 5V because we think that two Z-diodes are enough to stabilize D+ and D- to 3.3V and we can save the space of the voltage regulator. Also we connected the RXD line and the direction line of the RS-485 driver to the microcontroller for future extensions.”
a simple command line utility to set dimmer levels
an external object for MAX/MSP that communicates directly with the uDMX interface
The command line utility is tested under MacOS X 10.4 and Linux, it should compile under Windows as well
Max/MSP binaries are MacOS X only
See the downloadable archive for the commented source code and binaries
To compile the firmware you’ll need avr-libc (see here how to do this on a macintosh)
To compile the Max external you’ll need the MAX/MSP Software Development Kit
and both the Max external and the commandline tool depend on libusb – open source usb library. For MacOS X, the guys over at www.ellert.se have made handy installer packages for libusb, browse their downloads for the most recent package: http://www.ellert.se/PKGS/
uDMX comes with a handy external object for Max/MSP to control dimmers or other DMX equipment directly from Max/MSP:
uDMX is built around a ATMEL ATMega8 microcontroller, very few external parts are used, thanks to Objective Developments firmware only usb driver.
We went for the surface mounted version to keep it as small as possible. It’s a bit a pain to solder by hand, but feasible with lots of patience and not too many drinks the night before.
Very few pins are needed, but unfortunately smaller AVRs don’t have enough SRAM (we need 512 bytes already to buffer the DMX channels) so we have to use at least a Mega8…
The Mega8 is overclocked at 12Mhz, as needed by the usb driver. We power the RS485 transciever directly from the usb bus – it might be a better idea to put in a dc/dc converter and there should be some overvoltage protection.
Ben Suffolk shows how it could be done with his bus powered USB-DMX Interface
There is a 5pin XLR connector for the DMX and the cable of a dead mouse wired directly to the board for USB. D+ is connected to INT0 and is used by the usb-driver, D- on INT1 permits to check regularly if the usb bus is still alive, put the processor into powersave mode when its not, and wake it up again on any bus activity.
uDMX 1.2 | 2007-01-07 includes bootloader for easy future firmware upgrades. You can build one from scratch, or order a fully assembled unit online.
uDMX 1.0 | 2006-06-10 probably the smallest USB-DMX Interface in the world. Pretty tough to build…
0.9.1 beta | 2006-02-16 is our first release. It is a lot easier to build but has some shortcomings…
Warning
Building and using uDMX is AT YOUR OWN RISK.
uDMX draws all its power from the host computer’s USB bus and the DMX and USB lines aren’t galvanically isolated. It may destroy your computer, or worse…
Use at your own risk or don’t use it at all!
And read the license…
Schematics and software are licensed under GNU GPL 2.0;
you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the
GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
uDMX is released in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this document; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
http://www.gnu.org
