Where did DMX come from?
The first dimmers/fixture functions were actually controlled by levers on the dimmers/fixtures themselves. During a show, it could take several men to move these levers and someone else to coordinate them. This kind of control was quite cumbersome. Later, control wires were run from each dimmer/fixture function to a control console. If you had 300 dimmers/functions, you had to have three hundred control wires! To improve this, manufacturers started using digital signals sent down one control cable. At first each manufacturer used their own protocols, meaning that different manufacturer’s equipment could not be combined. Finally, DMX 512 was adopted as the standard lighting control protocol. DMX has 512 individual channels, which can be set to a level between 0 and 255. If a dimmer/function was addressed to be on channel 1, and the level of channel 1 was brought up to 255 (or 100%), the dimmer/function would be sending out full power. Therefore, a color/gobo or other functions are assig
