Testing CRMX Capabilities

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 connections made between all the parts. Cable between controller and transmitter, and wireless between transmitter and lights, instead of vice versa. In theory (as usual), this should be possible. So far, none of my research points to MC Pro lights being able to receive and send out DMX data simultaneously the way I would like.

To test all these ideas, I've run a few tests in the studio. None of them were really successful, but at least I now know what doesn't work...

Between Unreal/Gateway, MC Pro, and a standard ADJ light, I wasn't able to get any sort of CRMX connection. There's literally nothing out there online to suggest that Unreal can do any sort of CRMX output, so that might require extra parts of equipment. 

Thus, I decided to add a new component to my setup and downloaded Sidus Link Pro, Aputure's native iPad app. Small disclaimer: this app is currently free, but the website mentions that it will be priced after some time...


This is what the app looks like when I have one MC Pro light connected via Bluetooth. I can add as many as 8 lights I have in the kit to the app at the same time, and they would appear next to each other. With only Bluetooth, I can control all aspects (brightness, RGB, etc.) of the lights via the master slider or individually.

While this process is very easy to set up and highly useful on a studio shoot, it doesn't fit my needs. I need the color and brightness information to be fed into the lights from Unreal, not by sliders on the iPad. This brings up the question of whether I can feed information from Unreal into my iPad and control the lights that way... but if so, I'm unsure how.


While playing around in the app, I did find a setting for "Output Protocol". sACN MultiCast is something I remember seeing in Unreal in the past weeks. So maybe, even though this is for "output" protocol, I can use sACN protocol to "input" data from Unreal into the app. Maybe? I'm just free-guessing at this point...



Next, I changed the connections between my lights to test a few things.

1. I connected MC Pro to Gateway and daisy-chained ADJ to MC Pro. With this setup, the connections looked something like this.

Unreal Engine --ethernet--> Net3 Gateway --dmx--> MC Pro --dmx--> ADJ


This is just a regular daisy-chain setup that's very common with DMX setups. But as a basic proof of concept, I made the connections, and DXM data transfer was pretty smooth. If nothing else wireless works, at least I know I can default back to daisy-chaining lights (in which case I think the studio needs more cables, whoops).



2. Bringing the Sidus app back into the equation, I tried the following connection with Bluetooth.

Sidus Link Pro --bluetooth--> MC Pro --dmx--> ADJ

This setup didn't work. Even if I was able to get the light on MC Pro to change, nothing was being sent to ADJ.


3. Finally, I connected MC Pro to the app with CRMX. I gotta admit that this process was a little wonky. The light would randomly disconnect and then sometimes just work as expected. Connecting with CRMX meant that I had to stop the Bluetooth connection, which took away my ability to control MC Pro with the faders in the app. I think that's because when the light is connected with CRMX, it automatically becomes a transmitter and the light functions turn off.

CRMX settings in Connection Management in the Sidus Link Pro app.

With CRMX, the new connections looked something like this:

Sidus Link Pro --CRMX--> MC Pro --dmx--> ADJ

Losing the faders with no Bluetooth meant that I wasn't able to control MC Pro as I wished and check if the connections worked properly. However, in the CRMX settings (pictured above), I found a slider that kind of works like a troubleshooter. Under "Identify Universe", the slider can send out the same information to all channels inside one universe. This way, all lights connected in this universe would respond to the slider change and you could troubleshoot whether the lights work properly or not.

In my case, something was definitely working! Increasing the slider caused the brightness to increase in both the MC Pro and the daisy-chained ADJ. Which means, CRMX is working and transmitting data correctly.


The issue now becomes, what data is CRMX exactly transmitting and how. Since I haven't been able to use the app faders to control the ADJ light through MC Pro, I am not yet sure if I set up something wrong or if the "Identify Universe" troubleshooter only helps to check if MC Pro is properly transmitting.


At the end of this week's research, I've discovered some things that work and a whole bunch that don't. I definitely have some more questions about my setup and all the connections in between that I hope to solve in the upcoming weeks...

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