CRMX for Lights!

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 helpful because it helped me wrap my head around CRMX and how it is used. With a CRMX setup, there needs to be three components: Console, Transmitter, and Receiver. So far, I think my setup would go something like this:
  • Console: Unreal Engine
  • Transmitter: Net3 Gateway Box (maybe?)
  • Receiver: Aputure Lights
I've watched multiple videos and explanations from the Gaffer & Gear channel. According to this and this video, the CRMX feature in Aputure lights enables them to become transmitters (for other lights). Meaning that the Aputure lights do not function as a light source but as a piece of equipment that transmits data to other lights. This doesn't feel like a big issue, because then, in theory, I should be able to use one Aputure light as a transmitter and send the information to the rest of the Aputure lights we have...

Lastly, I found this video quite helpful. Even though it was specific to a different brand of lights, it made me wonder if Aputure Lights would have the same function through their own software. I will try to download the app to my iPad and see how much control I can get over the lights for CRMX.

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