6. By way of illustration
You can imagine a DMX universe as a long street in an industrial estate with 512 numbered addresses.
Every "factory" extends over several numbers, with the individual numbers themselves representing different departments.
Take, for example, "Moving Head Industries", located at 1-6 DMX Avenue:
| 1 DMX Ave. | is the address of the PAN department, dealing exclusively with the production of left/right rotary motors. |
2 DMX Ave.
| is the address of the TILT department, also building motors, but only for tilting forward and back. |
3 DMX Ave.
| deals with gobos and ensures that they can be swapped. |
| 4 DMX Ave. | takes care of colours. |
| 5 DMX Ave. | produces a shutter motor to produce a strobe effect. |
| 6 DMX Ave. | takes care of all dimming needs. |
This corresponds to our DMX universe, in which a moving head occupies channels 1 through 6 with the following channel assignments:
| Channel 1 | PAN |
| Channel 2 | TILT |
| Channel 3 | Gobos |
| Channel 4 | Colour |
| Channel 5 | Shutter |
| Channel 6 | Dimmer |
But don't forget the 256 staff that work in every department and who are responsible for different tasks.
By way of example, let's look at number 4 DMX Ave., the Colours department:
Employees 0-30 look after the quality of white light
Employees 31-60 make sure the red is nice and brilliant
Emplyoees 61-90 mix a lovely hue of blue, etc.
This illustration corresponds to the DMX values in Channel 4, Colour.
The DMX values, then, look like this:
Value 0-30 = White
Value 31-60 = Red
Value 61-90 = Blue
Of course, all the remaining addresses along DMX Ave. have been assigned, for example to "Dimmers, Inc." with its departments Lamp 1 to Lamp 4, which each employ 256 staff to look after the increasing brightness of the lamps.
You can study the DMX chart that is included in any device's user manual for detailed information on the particular light effect assigned to the various channels.
