Art-Net and Wireless Routers

For the past twenty years, the majority of entertainment lighting systems have been controlled using a serial protocol known as DMX512. Lighting technology has evolved considerably since DMX was first proposed in 1986 and the limitations of the protocol are being realised. Additionally, being limited to a niche market has meant that any related specialist equipment such as wireless links and storage devices are relatively expensive. Recently, there has been a trend towards developing protocols for the transmission of DMX over IP in order to overcome these limitations and to utilise the wide range of inexpensive hardware. A number of these protocols exist and one in particular, Art-Net, is gaining multi-vendor support due to the decision by the designers to release the protocol specification into the public domain. This work focuses on developing libartnet (a Linux implementation of Art-Net) and on the modification of existing off-the-shelf hardware in order to build a low cost wireless Art-Net node, which will allow DMX data to be transported over wireless Ethernet links.