DMX Derby Controller

This was built because I didn't want to buy a massive lighting controller just to run one DMX derby/laser fixture. This is a lightweight UI that runs over a USB-DMX adapter so you can bypass confusing remote control auto-modes and actually control the lights yourself. I also added experimental live music analysis -- though obviously it's not the same experience as a real human preparing before a show starts.

Features

• One slider per DMX channel (9-channel mode), each showing a description of the current value
• Three selectable color themes via COLOR_SCHEME in src/config.py
• Music Mode: analyzes your system's audio in real time and drives the fixture from it
  • Live spectrum ring (Sub / Bass / Mids / Highs) + waveform display
  • Hit detection per band, tempo tracking (BPM, beat clock, bars)
  • Rules: "when this happens -> do this" (band hit / level / every N beats -> LED, Derby, Laser)
  • Ready-made looks as starting points, adjustable sensitivity
  • Shows the currently playing track's title, artist, and cover art

Requirements

• Cross-platform:

  • Python 3.10+
  • pyserial 3.5+
  • numpy 1.26+
  • pillow 10.0+

• Windows only:

  • PyAudioWPatch>=0.2.12
  • pywin32>=306

• Linux only (not tested yet):

  • PyAudio>=0.2.14
  • jeepney>=0.8.0

• A USB-DMX adapter that is recognized as a serial (COM) port

• See requirements.txt for Python packages -- installation differs slightly by platform, see below

Usage

Windows:

pip install -r requirements.txt

And thats basically it, just run main:

python main.py

and you can go on to Instructions.

Linux:

Well, of course, we (fortunately) have far more options and possibilities available to us for solving all these problems. I recommend setting up a development environment first:

# 1. System packages
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-venv python3-dev python3-tk build-essential portaudio19-dev

# 2. Virtual environment + Python packages
cd <.../DMX-RDC-root>
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

USB-DMX adapter permission (udev rule)

By default only root may open /dev/ttyUSB* ("Permission denied"). Install a udev rule once. The example is for FTDI adapters (0403:6001) -- check your adapter's IDs with lsusb.

sudo tee /etc/udev/rules.d/99-dmx.rules <<'EOF'
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6001", MODE="0666"
EOF
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

Unplug and replug the adapter. ls -l /dev/ttyUSB0 should now show crw-rw-rw-.

Use the tee form instead of echo '...' | sudo tee: quotes inside echo easily get mangled when pasted, which leaves the port with no permissions (c---------).

Run

source .venv/bin/activate && python3 main.py

On Linux the adapter shows up as /dev/ttyUSB0 (or /dev/ttyACM0). Ignore the /dev/ttyS* entries, those are unused built-in ports.

Limitations

DMX512 is a unidirectional protocol: The controller has no way of verifying whether a device is actually receiving data; it can only check whether the USB-DMX adapter itself is accessible via the serial interface. And anyway, I don't think you can use this script for other devices because of the different channels; that might be the biggest limitation :/

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Claude for helping build the UI and for taking on the tedious parts: data formatting, saving, and the many small fixes/debbunging in between.

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.