Specifications

Controlling LED Lighting 13
A DMX universe consists of 512 addresses. The majority
of intelligent LED fixtures use three addresses, one for
each LED channel used in the fixture — red, green, and
blue in a color-changing fixture, or 2700 K, 4000 K, and
6500 K in an intelligent white fixture, for example. In
practice, a single-universe DMX controller, such as iColor
Player, can manage a maximum of 170 uniquely addressed
three-channel fixtures (512 divided by 3 = 170, with two
channels left over), while a two-universe DMX controller,
such as iPlayer 3 or Pharos LPC 2, can manage up to 340.
LED lighting fixtures can consume more than three
addresses each. Five-channel RGBAW (red / green / blue
/ amber / white) fixtures, such as ColorBlaze TRX and
ColorBlast TRX, consume five DMX addresses. Fixtures
that operate in 16-bit mode for smoother dimming
and more precise color control require two DMX
addresses per channel, doubling the number of addresses
consumed. Fixtures with multiple nodes, such as iColor
Flex LMX, iColor Accent MX Powercore, and iW Graze
Powercore, can consume multiples of three or six DMX
channels depending on configuration. For example, a
4 ft iColor Accent MX Powercore fixture set to the
maximum resolution of 40 1.2 in nodes consumes 120
DMX addresses, while an iColor Flex LMX strand with 50
individually controllable RGB nodes consumes 150 DMX
addresses.
For light shows in which multiple light nodes act in unison,
you can limit the number of DMX addresses required
by assigning the same
set of addresses to
multiple nodes. If your
lighting installation
requires more than a
few hundred individually
controllable nodes,
however — and lighting
designs with video or
expansive and intricate
dynamic effects almost
certainly will — you
should consider using
an Ethernet control
solution.
Sands Resort Casino, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. Because many of its 350 color-changing ColorReach Powercore and ColorBlast Powercore xtures
are programmed with the same DMX addresses to operate in unison, the Sands Resort Casino can control the nightly lighting display at the historic Bethlehem
Steel plant with a single iPlayer 3 DMX controller.
Photography: Alyssha Csük
Remote Data Management (RDM) is an
enhancement to the DMX protocol that
allows two-way communication between
controllers and RDM-enabled devices in your
lighting network. With RDM, you can perform
automated discovery, conguration, and
addressing of RDM-enabled lighting xtures
and power / data supplies, much as you do
over Ethernet. Pharos LPC 1 / 2 / 4 and both
iColor Player and SmartJack Pro from Philips
Color Kinetics offer RDM. Pharos also offers
an RDM-compatible DMX repeater.
RDM: Two-Way DMX