DMX is almost here!

6' USB cable

USB-to-"DMX over Cat5" adapter

6' Cat5 cable (you can inexpensively substitute with a custom length)

"DMX-over-Cat5"-to-DMX adapter.

Aurora DMX Universe Plugin License

 

We've begun accepting pre-orders for the DMX adapter package on our web site for $54.99.  These orders will not ship until we are done with the software, but there is a price discount to offset the wait time.  http://www.aurorashow.com/order.asp

 

Note: To ensure a quality DMX experience, complete support of all effects on all 512 DMX channels, and continued hassle-free compatibility, we decided to support DMX with an Aurora-specific adapter package.  This conclusion was reached after much research into the options which are currently available.  We do not plan to support third party DMX adapters for 2009. 

 

Also, included with the upcoming DMX release, we've redone the playback engine in such a way that it will be possible for any computer on the LAN running Aurora to control the lights attached to any other PC as though the USB adapters are attached to the local PC.  For example, it will be possible to edit sequences on the sequencing computer and test them by sending the data out the "live" PC without moving the USB-485 adapters around.  You can even play multiple sequences simultaneously (although that could look rather strange).  Running multiple copies of Aurora no longer results in only one copy being able to access the COM at a time.  Linking across a Wi-Fi network should even be possible as long as your Wi-Fi router doesn't introduce latency.  Since Aurora is licensed for multiple copies allowed in a show, there are probably more possibilities than even we though up.

 

While Aurora doesn't directly support it in an elegant way in the upcoming release, this change to the COM system also means that it will be possible to (with a little effort) hack together one-shot sequences that respond to yard triggers even while the main sequence is already running (after it is out I'll have to write a howto on this).  We have plans to exploit this possibility in a more convenient way in the future.

 

For the next version, if you have a way to acquire your triggers that doesn't use the RS-485 line, then it will be possible to run any sequence on demand by shelling Borealis with the "run this sequence now" option (even if the COM is in use by another instance since that doesn't matter anymore).  You can see why I called this a hack.

 

Eventually we're going to make the COM 2-way so that triggers can be read off trigger boards on the network and then managed directly in Aurora, but since we just re-did the COM... I didn't want to make the plumbing that complicated yet until what we have is proven in the wild.