Hardware · Discipline
Lighting
Getting DMX out of a network and onto a truss without a cable per box.
Lighting data is the easiest protocol problem on this site and one of the more annoying physical ones. Art-Net and sACN are well documented, RDM is well documented, and none of that helps when the node on the truss needs its own power drop and its own home run to the switch, times fourteen.
So the interesting decisions in a DMX node are not about the protocol at all. They are about how many cables it takes to add one, what happens when somebody stands on an XLR, and whether discovery blocks the web interface while it runs.
1 board · none fabricated yet
Lighting · Art-Net / sACN to DMX512
nanODE
Board v0.4.1 · routing in progress
A PoE-powered, daisy-chainable Art-Net / sACN to 4x DMX512 node. One Cat5 in, one loop out - power and data - so a run of nodes needs a single cable from the switch, not one per box.
- 4 universes out5-pin XLR, from Art-Net 4 (including ArtSync) or sACN / E1.31.
- Real RDM discoveryRuns as a background task, so the web console never blocks on it.
- Daisy-chain built inInternal 3-port switch: Cat5 in, loop out, plus the ESP32 itself.
- Field-replaceable portsEvery external connector is a daughter-card. Smash an XLR on site, swap it without a soldering iron.
- Browser consoleOver WiFi or Ethernet - patch, address, and see RDM devices live.
Honest status
Firmware builds clean against real ESP-IDF 5.5 tooling, and the REST API and RDM discovery are verified against a mock node - but this has never run on real silicon. The board render predates the current layout.
- MCU
- ESP32
- Network
- Internal 3-port switch, PoE
- Outputs
- 4 x DMX512 on 5-pin XLR
- Protocols
- Art-Net 4, sACN / E1.31, RDM
- Enclosure
- Aluminium extrusion, laser-cut acrylic ends
- Repo
- Private
One cable per run, not per node
A node with an internal three-port switch — in, loop out, and the processor itself — turns a row of boxes into a single cable from the switch, carrying both power and data. That is the whole reason the board exists, and it is why the connectors are treated as consumables: every external connector is a daughter-card, so an XLR smashed on site is swapped without a soldering iron.
RDM discovery runs as a background task for a related reason. A discovery sweep is slow and it is exactly the moment somebody is standing at a laptop wanting to re-patch, so it must not block the console it is running behind.
Honest status
The firmware builds clean against real ESP-IDF tooling and the REST API and RDM discovery are verified against a mock node — but this has never run on real silicon, and the render on the page predates the current layout. Treat every performance claim as a design intent rather than a measurement.
The lighting design tooling that does exist, and has been used, is software: coverage and pixel-map calculators, and the MVR/GDTF plumbing behind them.
Related, elsewhere on the site
The whole bench
This is one discipline of several
The hardware index carries every board at once, filterable by discipline — lighting nodes, audio boxes, video processing, the physical layer under all of it, and the RF work above it.