The DMX-Serial Interface

Background

One sunny Tuesday morning, we received a call from a gentleman in Florida. He was interested in purchasing a Flapper MKII for his Christie X10 touring projector.

Over the course of our discussion, we learned that the Christie projector contains an internal shutter, which can be controlled through an infrared remote or wired interface.

He asked if we could modify our DMX-IR Blaster to control the internal shutter. It's not a terribly difficult task; we just analyze the signal transmitted by an infrared remote, then program a microcontroller to output the proper signal in sync with a received DMX stream.

However...

He needed a working unit on Thursday, just two days later.

Some perusal of the X10's instruction manual showed that the shutter could also be controlled through the projector's serial port. Since serial communications are an order of magnitude easier to program, we decided that exploiting the projector's serial port would be faster and less labor-intensive.

Et Voila...

We modified an off-the-shelf Flapper MKII to output serial data commands instead of moving a paddle back and forth. The process was simple and efficient.

And two days after our initial phone call, the internal X10 shutter clear across the country was opening and closing under DMX control.

What this means...

is that if you have video switchers, projectors, DVD players or other equipment which can be automated by serial (RS-232 data), those cues can now be triggered by your existing DMX equipment.

For now, the serial commands must be programmed by us in the shop. However, we're working on a newer version of the product which can be field programmable. Using a simple text file, you can program our DMX-Serial interface to send out arbitrary serial data.

Contact us if you're interested. Pricing starts at only $300.