Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2000 13:52:40 -0700 (MST) From: Doug Russell <drussell@saturn-tech.com> To: "Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor]" <sperber@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Major number for PCDMX driver? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.1000116132526.21690A-100000@calvin.saturn-tech.com> In-Reply-To: <y9lln5qntbz.fsf@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>
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On 16 Jan 2000, Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor] wrote: > > Hi, > > I've written a driver for SoundLight's PCDMX DMX512 boards. (DMX512 WooHoo! :) I was hoping someone would get a DMX512 controller working before I had to break down and do it myself. :) I've never seen a SoundLight board. PCI? Reasonably priced? I actually thought I'd build my own board, but if they are reasonable, this sounds like a great solution. I have several lighting effects that I use while D.J.ing, and I've been starting to use a (well shock mounted in a rack) computer full of MP3s for much of my music play, and I want to be able to coreograph (sp?) the lighting effects beforehand, time-linked to the song. > is a serial protocol used for driving theater and show lighting > systems.) I plan to make it available via SoundLight's web site. How much documentation do you have on the DMX512 protocol and the various extensions used by many manufacturers? IIRC, you can buy a copy of the spec book, but I can't remember from where. I'd have to go searching. All I have is basic refrence for some of the units I have (Genie Nimbus-2) and some High End / Lightwave Research units I've used before (Emulator and Intellibeam) including their extended DMX512 stuff for better dimming control, etc. I still don't have enough info, however, to PROPERLY convert all of my old home built controllers to DMX512. Right now they run off a home-made I/O card with a centronics 36 pin on the back panel of the computer which goes to a controller of 74-series logic that is essentially some address logic and latches to hold the data for each channel's brightness, etc. It's then just countdown 8-bit counters reset by a 120 Hz pulse synchronised from the AC line. The counters trigger a TRIAC when they reach 0. This way I get a nice proportional brightness from off to full, depending on where during the sine cycle the TRIAC starts conducting current. Quite slick, actually, for something we built back in first year of high school. :) Still works! > The potential user base for this is not large enough to warrant > inclusion into the kernel (it's a kld), but having a reserved major > device number for it would maybe be nice. I don't know the exact > policy for this, so I'd appreciate if someone could tell me. I'm not > on freebsd-hackers, so please Cc me on anything that develops. I think there's something in the FAQ. At least there used to be. Later...... <Doug> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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