Creating a Custom DMX Device

It is also possible to create a custom DMX device mapping to cover any type of DMX device you may have.  To create a custom device, start on the System tab.  Clicking the "DMX Devices" button will bring up the Create DMX Devices dialog.  This Dialog allows the user to Name and map some of the Show Director column data onto channels of a DMX device.

First you need to name your device in the name dropdown.  This dropdown will show you any previously created DMX devices.  You can delete a previous DMX device by selecting its name in the dropdown and pressing the 'Delete' key.  The name of your device must not be one of the previously defined or internally defined names.  See the Show Director Control User Guide for a list of these names.

Figure 25- DMX create custom mapping

Now you need to specify what column of data in Show Director reflects the turning this device on or off.  That is, when the value of this column is zero, the device will turn off.  It is used in conjunction with the DUR column to turn a device on and turn the device off by setting this channel to zero.  In the example above, we use the PIN column to be the on/off and have mapped PIN to channel 1.  Thus channel one is the channel that will be turning this device off when set to zero.

We support up to 15 channel devices and 15 different Show Director columns.  For each channel you wish to map data to, click the "Show Director Column" area next to it to open the dropdown for columns.  In our example, we see that channel 1 is mapped to Show Director column PIN.  Channel 2 is mapped to the RED component of a hex color value in the EffectDescription column.  See CRGBLight chapter listed above to a detailed description of how to use the EffectDescription column for colors.

If you do not wish to use a channel, just leave it blank or set it to NONE.  To remember that the user is responsible for the format of the data in Show Director matching the expected values of the DMX Device.  Generally, that format is a number between 0 and 255 so if you want to map PAN angle you need to convert that angle to the DMX value in your PAN column in Show Director.  If you expect a PAN from 0 to 180 you need to create values from 0 to 255.

When you are finished with a new device, press the "Save" button.  This device will not get reloaded at startup each time you run Show Director Control.  The file that saves this data is in your AppData/Roaming/ShowDirector folder and is called "dmx_devices.dmxd".  You can now put this devices name in the TYPE column in Show Director and use it like any of the other build-in device types.