DMX beginner here. I’m attempting to control a series of LED strips through DMX. I’ve got an Enttec USB pro, a generic DMX512 decoder similar to this one: https://www.aspectled.com/dmx512-decoder-and-led-driver, and an RGBW pixel strip.
I’ve thus far been unable to get the strip to light up with a DMX signal. I’ve got the USB pro recognized and set up in the EMU software and can use the decoder’s built-in patterns to light up the strip just fine, so I doubt it’s an issue with those components. This leaves only the adapter as the likely culprit. It’s a 5-pin XLR male to cat6 adapter, ordered from amazon here: Amazon.com
Wanted to ask if anyone could either offer their own experiences with doing something similar to this, or if anyone has any tips about XLR-RJ45 adapters in general, including how to approach potentially modifying the one I have. Any advice would be greatly helpful.
I recently had a very similar issue with one of those Amazon DMX to CAT adapters not working. The first set I bought didn’t pass signal and after checking reviews I found that it wasn’t actually wired correctly for DMX. After that I bought these adapters that do work for my setup - Amazon DMX to Ethernet Adapter
I’m also using the Enttec Pro but going into fixtures that have an ethernet port to receive DMX. Hope that helps!
Same here.
Last year for a project I bought 5x decoders similar to the one in your link, each one came with a 3 pin XLR to cat 6 adaptors.
One decoder wasn’t responding to DMX, It turned out it was the adaptor, it wasn’t working, and when I opened it up the wires were not soldered on the XLR side. It was an easy fix.
One thought though, can you just bypass the enttec USB pro and XLR to cat 6 adapted and feed DMX straight from your laptop using an ethernet cable? After all the decoder is just expecting to receive DMX.
Also, if you have multiple decoders, you can just daisy chain them using ethernet cables, no need to keep using cat6 to XLR adapters in and out in and out.
You just go out your first decoder and into the input of the next one using a decent ethernet cable
This was my thought initially as well, but to my knowledge you need a DMX USB interface. I’m going almost exclusively based on this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2aKT-bbNZI, one of the only videos I’ve seen so far that mentions the hardware…
I had asked a lighting designer friend the same thing, but I think if a lighting fixture just has normal DMX you can’t send that through a laptop’s ethernet port, but if it supports a standard like Art-Net or sACN you may be able to.