Lara's Research Updates

Here is a small update for the LED strip lights: I've been trying to solder 4 wires running between the LED lights and the decoder. These wires are for the little conductive pads on the lights corresponding to RGB channels + power. However, after two tries and ruining 3 different conductive pads, I've realized that soldering is not a viable option for these lights. The pads are too tiny to solder each wire individually without making a mess. And if I manage to solder properly, the cooled metal peels off from the light strip too easily, probably due to the shiny and slippery surface of the strip. For now, I decided to continue focusing on CRMX to get it to work and focus on adding the LED lights afterward.

The day has finally come!! CRMX finally works!!! :D I started my setup by unboxing our new CMRX transmitter and connecting it to power and to the Gateway box. This way, the transmitter should receive DMX data from Unreal and wirelessly send it over to Aputure lights. Setting up the transmitter didn't require any additional steps within Unreal since the DMX data has been long setup to be sent to all 4 ports of Gateway. This brand (Godox) also sells CRMX receivers that pair up easily with the transmitter. But those are mainly used for studio lights that do not already have CRMX capability. With Aputure lights, we didn't need to buy extra receivers. One receiver per light can get very expensive depending on the setup. Next, I worked on connecting the lights to the transmitter. This process was not as straightforward as I thought it would be. I had to do a lot of back-and-forth between resetting the light settings, activating CRMX, turning on the transmitter pairing, and hoping tha...

DMX decoder has finally arrived! I've taken a look at the pieces I have in hand to figure out how to connect everything together. First of all, the LED strip lights... The end of the strip light has 4 small pins to connect into an outlet (the white cable that came with the light strips). However, these small pins are too small and too close to each other to be plugged in to the decoder. Instead, professor Nick suggested that I cut a length of the light strip at the conductive points and solder a wire between the light and the decoder. I'm planning to try my hand at soldering later this week. Here's a look at the decoder itself... There are 3 main outlets on the decoder: DMX, ethernet, LED channels. I will be connecting Gateway to Decoder's DMX In. For now, DMX Out will not be used. I'm not sure what to use the ethernet ports for... Maybe in a different setup, they could also work for DMX data??? For the LED strip, there are different input and output outlets. Input ...

Since I'm not entirely certain how much I will be able to achieve with CRMX in the upcoming weeks, I decided to also focus a bit on using LED strip lights with DMX. I already own 2 strips of LED lights that I bought for fun. What I need is a decoder that'll send DMX info to the light strip. I've found a few different options online. Some of them have the ability to connect multiple light strips or control multiple DMX universes. For testing purposes, I purchased the most basic and cheapest option on Amazon. --- After talking to Professor Nick about CRMX and the hardware limitations we have in the studio, we did a bit more research. In a few online tutorials, we came across individual wireless DMX transmitters. While I didn't have any plans to purchase extra equipment, Nick mentioned he could get one for the studio and I could test it for this class! When we have this transmitter at hand, the idea is that we will be able to use it as a CRMX transmitter instead of an MC P...

Alright! So, the past week has been a lot of testing (and failing). But I think I finally fully understand the capabilities of CRMX and what I can achieve with the hardware we have at hand in the studio. To start us off, as I found out in my previous post, there are 3 main components to a CRMX setup: Controller, Transmitter, and Receiver (Light). Online sources I've found thus far only mention the capability of Aputure lights to become transmitters. In this case, there would be a controller -> via CRMX (wireless), the controller would send info to the MC Pro Transmitter -> via DMX (cable), the transmitter would send the info to a light. What I want to achieve, however, is a little different. As a controller, I want to use Unreal Engine -> via DMX (cable), Unreal would send info to MC Pro Transmitter -> via CRMX (wireless), the transmitter would communicate with the rest of the lights and send info. The way I want to set up my system relies on (kind of) opposite connecti...

For the past week, I've been trying to figure out how to get the Aputure lights to communicate with each other wirelessly. This process was a little more complicated than I had imagined and I was surprised by the lack of information on manuals and tutorials. I don't think there's any information online about connecting Aputure lights to Unreal Engine specifically. Eventually, however, I've come across something called "CRMX". Turns out CRMX is the wireless new version of DMX and it stands for "Cognitive Radio MultipleXer". And surprise, surprise... the Aputure lights have this future implemented natively. However, once again, the manual information on CRMX is as limited as I had feared. Yeap... this is all the manual has to say about CRMX. At this point, I wasn't sure how to actually use CRMX with these lights. So I started looking up any and all tutorials I could find online. This video , though it wasn't specific to Aputure Lights, was help...