ariesboy571
Well-known member
I don't have the cred to ask on Electronics Stack Exchange, or I would have done, and after quite a few searches with varying search terms (and not just a few "Hey Gemini" prompts) I've run up against a wall.
How in the bloody hell do you determine whether or not a DMX cable is connected to your rig? I have a feeling that the answer is almost literally under my nose.
Some background: at work, I work with Obsidian DMX repeaters, switches, and suchlike; the Netron series are able to tell when a cable is connected or damaged; when data is flowing normally, even when RDM packets are being sent (there's a little RGBW LED next to the port you're fiddling with, to tell you what's what). I probably don't need that level of functionality, but it did somewhat open a can of worms.
My trusty DVM is able to tell me quite a lot about what the DMX line is doing, while it's running. But I realized that DMX is not the only signalling system I might want to know the health of. I'm thinking voltage and current monitoring, for starters. Those would require sensors and a microcontroller of their own, but I'd like to get to a point that I can answer basic questions: what's the voltage (so I can extrapolate polarity) and what's the current (so I can extrapolate connected-ness).
I think I'm thinking about this correctly -- if expensively -- but...anyone know the answer to this?
It all started so innocently...
How in the bloody hell do you determine whether or not a DMX cable is connected to your rig? I have a feeling that the answer is almost literally under my nose.
Some background: at work, I work with Obsidian DMX repeaters, switches, and suchlike; the Netron series are able to tell when a cable is connected or damaged; when data is flowing normally, even when RDM packets are being sent (there's a little RGBW LED next to the port you're fiddling with, to tell you what's what). I probably don't need that level of functionality, but it did somewhat open a can of worms.
My trusty DVM is able to tell me quite a lot about what the DMX line is doing, while it's running. But I realized that DMX is not the only signalling system I might want to know the health of. I'm thinking voltage and current monitoring, for starters. Those would require sensors and a microcontroller of their own, but I'd like to get to a point that I can answer basic questions: what's the voltage (so I can extrapolate polarity) and what's the current (so I can extrapolate connected-ness).
I think I'm thinking about this correctly -- if expensively -- but...anyone know the answer to this?
It all started so innocently...