Triggering stored DMX sequences from TTL input

[JonnyMac]

Sorry, been up to my neck in an EFX-TEK client (paid job) contract.  I'm at a point where I can take a break for a few hours.

I'm going to get some lunch an then hook up an HC-8+ with the standard program (set to DMX mode) to test.  I know that the file reading works because I have used it to play out to the PWM outputs of the board.  That was actually a new rewrite of the program so I'll add DMX output to that and try.  Fun: using one HC-8+ to verify the output of another!

Thanks for your patience -- been busy with EFX-TEK and my normal "Hollywood" life. :)

[JonnyMac]

Good news: Lunch was yummy and hit the spot. After that I connected a second HC-8+ to the one with your program and found that I was having DMX output issues. I loaded an older DMX driver (that violates some programming guidelines we choose to follow these days) and presto, it works!

It shouldn't take long to fix-up the "for public release" DMX TX driver now that I know the system works as desired.

[JonnyMac]

Well, it is taking me longer to get the "cool" version of the DMX driver working so we'll go with the old one; there's nothing wrong with it, other than its PASM code is not compatible with any language except Spin (we're now writing all of our assembly code to work with Spin and C).

Anyway, this works on my setup, and plays the first eight channels to the local LEDs.  You can remove that by removing the lines that have '***' in the comment.

Remember to change the channel count and then output your VSA binary data with 32 channels.  The code also has a setting for FPS; you need to match the program to what your VSA show is set to (I couldn't open your VSA code as my version is older).

[TomStrong]

Anyway, this works on my setup, and plays the first eight channels to the local LEDs.  You can remove that by removing the lines that have '***' in the comment.

Thank you very much!

I just downloaded the new code, changed 8 to 32, and it worked as-is.  Someday when the new version is ready let me know and we can test it out here too, but right now it's sending the DMX as we saved it.  I'm going to get back to trying to solve some of the hardware issues (we're blowing transistors in another part of it), once that's done I'l take a better look at the program to really learn what it's doing.

Thanks again.

Tom

[JonnyMac]

Excellent!

The new version won't work any differently or better, it will just have assembly code written so that it can be used with the new C compiler that Parallax is working on. 

Once you have some time with it you'll find the code isn't terribly complicated, it just took a little while to get organized and optimized so that the frame data could be played out.

Have fun!