More Lights and Fixtures!

I found some new toys to play with and test DMX!



These are Aputure Lights that were added to the studio a few months ago. So far, I don't think anyone has used these lights for anything other than a constant RGB color. However, they have DMX capabilities! And the case includes a USB-C to 5-pin DMX converter! So of course, I had to try them out...



I started off by connecting one of the lights to the second port of Net3 Gateway. The first port is still occupied by the ADJ light since I want to try and use 2 different fixtures at the same time.


Next, I worked on adding the new light fixture to my Unreal project. Working in the same DMX Library, I created a new fixture. It mostly had the same settings as the ADJ fixture, except I added only 3 attributes: Red, Green, and Blue. The intensity attribute might also be a feature in Aputure lights, but I need to read the manual further to see what other attributes are available.

To figure out the DMX address and starting channel of the new light, I poked around in the Aputure menu through a small LED screen on the back of the light. Here, I was able to find DMX settings and the address.


Going off from the information I had, I added this new light to my Fixture Patch in Unreal, and assigned it to the first channel.


I used the same Blueprint test from last week and assigned randomized colors to the fixture. However, when I played the scene, nothing on the light changed. A quick check of the DMX Channel Monitor showed that data was being sent out, so I either had a network or hardware issue on the fixture.

After a few tests, I ended up going back to the Concert software to check on the Gateway box. Here, I managed to find the culprit!

By default, Port 2 on Gateway was assigned to Universe 2. However, in Unreal I had defined my Aputure light to exist in Universe 1 and be consistent with the other fixture. To fix this, I simply changed the Gateway settings in Concert and rebooted the network box.


Changing the universe number solved the issue and I finally got both of my lights working through Unreal!

(Two different lights being fed randomized RGB values through UE.)

After making sure the new light fixture was working as I expected, I wanted to take a step further and add it to my previous Pixel Mapping actor.


Here, I added the Aputure Light to take color information from around the area with a fire effect, while the ADJ light was taking color information from the sky. Following video shows how the ADJ fixture is reflecting a cooler color light while the Aputure fixture has warmer tones.



Future Possibilities with Aputure Lights

The cool thing about these lights is that except for the one fixture that's connected to network by cable, rest of the fixtures have the ability to communicate through bluetooth! 

This means they can be placed wherever desired throughout the scene. They can even be motion tracked and change lighting based on their position in the scene.

Multiple light connections also gives me the ability to look into DMX Matrixes and use the fixtures to create programs to act like moving light sources: scene through traffic, or in the x-wing, etc.

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