Owner manual

Lucid DMX

IX Appendices

1. DMX512 brief description

By the time you are done reading this section, you will understand how DMX works and why the lighting

world uses this standard communication protocol. For a more technical and detailed description, please

visit www.dmx512-online.com

1. The need for a standard

About 20 years ago, most lighting and console manufacturers had their own proprietary communication

protocols. During installations, it was necessary to use all lighting fixtures from the same manufacturer,

of course with their own controller board. If you wanted to use lighting fixtures from different

manufacturers (even simple dimmers), each group required their own lighting desk. It is clear that a

standard form of communication between controllers and the fixtures was necessary.

2. Understanding DMX

To understand the DMX512 communication protocol (commonly referred to as “DMX”), we will use the

“Cable TV” analogy.

Imagine a simplistic cable TV system, with only 4 relevant parts:

a. TV station

b. cable

c. decoder

d. TV set

The TV station broadcasts a signal that travels through a cable network until it reaches a decoder. The

decoder receives information on hundreds of channels, but only displays on the TV set the information

(in this case video and audio) from that single channel that we select. The TV set ignores the

information from any channel that is not selected. It only displays the information from the channel

selected in the decoder.

DMX can be related to this cable TV system, where:

a. the TV station is the controller (Lucid)

b. the cable is a DMX cable

c. the cable decoder is the DMX decoder (which usually is inside each lighting fixture)

d. the TV set is the lighting fixture

In DMX, the number of channels that are broadcasted is always 512. Maybe some of them will be

empty or unused, but they are still broadcasted because it is a necessary component of the standard.

So, the controller sends out a signal (512 channels of information), which travels through a DMX cable

until it reaches the decoder inside the lighting fixture. In the same way you set the channel you want to

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