Programming zencontrol to control a DMX line (Send)

This article assumes that the DMX line has been addressed, and that the DMX send licence has been enabled for your application controller/s.

This provides you with the user interface to begin creating your mapping.

Note: Only the send or the recieve functionality can be enabled at one time.

Start by selecting the Control System that the DMX line is connected to, selecting the send behaviour, the colour type of the channel and then filling in the location details.

Repeat this for as many DMX lights that you wish to integrate to.

To assist with adding multiple DMX lights at once, during the Control System selection, you can change the Creation Type to multiple

This will let you create mass entries at once, following the channel range specified in the Start channel number and End channel number.

The zencontrol application controller needs to know how to convert its own DALI dimming methods over to DMX, this is configured within the Send mapping tab. Here we can specify the minimum and maximum brightness that we can operate the DMX light between, as well as its power on level. Additionally we can configure the fade rate and fade time used by DALI input devices to control the DMX light

In this example, the minimum and maximum brightness are configured to 1 and 255 respectively with a power on level of 255 (100%)

The Fade Rate and Fade Time though are configured to 127 and 1. This means that every 1 second of dimming time translates to 127 steps through the 0-255 dimming range of the DMX light. As this is how DALI manages dimming at an ECG level, we now have a translatable method between DALI and DMX.

In the same way that DALI declares groups, it is implemented the same way for DMX within zencontrol. Up to 16 DMX "groups" can be created to make targeting mass DMX lights simpler from a commissioning standpoint.

Note: DMX does not natively have support for groups, and instead focuses on mass individual channel control through sheer speed of communication. When a zencontrol application controller speaks to a DMX line via a group, in reality, it is speaking to each channel individually. The group concept is only there as a convenience for programming.

To configure a DMX "group", enable the group via the check box and enter in a group name.

Like DALI, the final step is to assign the DMX lights into the DMX groups, this process is identical to group assignment for DALI ECGs

As the DMX light that was created in the Channel tab was declared as red, and the red DMX group is group 1, group 1 has been selected.

Now that the DMX line is configured, the last step is to configure a switch or sensor to control the DMX line. This is done under the instances tab where normal DALI input programming is managed. The only configuration difference is the target.

In the Target Type option, select either DMX channel or DMX group, this will then provide you access to either the channels you created back in step 2 or the groups created in step 4

Note: There is a subtle difference in the presented name after selecting your desired DMX group, as denoted in the screenshot below, any DALI group is prefixed with a G, where as any DMX group is prefixed with DG 

From this point, all remaining programming (profile management, button behaviour, sequences etc) are all programmed the same way as any other DALI control.

This concludes how to configure a switch to control a DMX group or fitting, to learn how to control DALI via DMX through a DALI application controller, see the following article