Guide

DMX512 Control for Architectural Lighting

DMX512 is the control method that turns a set of colour fittings into a programme. Most Lesan models offer it; planning it well is a cabling and addressing exercise as much as a lighting one.

Where DMX512 appears in the range

DMX512 is offered on the LX-UD005, LX-SC009 and LX-UD-001A (the LX-BG84786 is DALI only); the LX-LNW465P spot light offers it; the LX-XT-001 washer offers DMX512 control; the flood families offer a DMX512 controller option. The RGBW models are the natural DMX citizens, since each colour channel needs its own control channel. The protocol comparison with simpler methods is in DMX512 vs on-off control, and the colour models are grouped on the RGBW DMX series page.

Planning points

• Universe and addressing. Count channels per fitting (an RGBW fitting uses at least four) and lay out addresses before the fittings are ordered, so the shipped configuration and the addressing plan agree.
• Controller location. DMX runs are data cables, not power cables; fix the controller position and the run lengths at design stage, including any splitters for branched runs to separate water features.
• Static fallback. Decide what the installation shows if the controller is off or replaced — many projects set a default white scene so the feature is never dark by accident.
• Mixed estates. Where part of a project is DALI (interior, or the LX-BG84786) and part is DMX, the gateway between the systems is a design item, not an afterthought.

Ordering with DMX in mind

The control variant is part of the shipped configuration: a fitting ordered in its on-off variant does not become a DMX fitting later. Name DMX512 in the first inquiry for any model where colour sequencing is even a future possibility, and confirm the variant in the quotation. The parent range is LED underwater lights for the submersible side of a programme.

Worked example: a fountain-and-facade programme

A civic square where the fountain and the town hall facade perform together on festival nights. The fountain ring: RGBW submersibles, each fitting an address, the jets grouped so the programme can chase around the ring. The facade: RGB washers washing the wall in the same palette, grouped by floor so the building can breathe with the fountain's programme. Two fitting families, one protocol, one controller logic — the square reads as a single instrument. The addressing plan that makes it work is a drawing, made before the order: fitting, address, group, scene membership. Buyers who fall in love with the effect in a showroom and skip the drawing discover at commissioning that a programme is an addressing plan with lights attached, and that the plan is much cheaper to draw than to improvise up a ladder.

Commissioning: where DMX projects are won

Budget a commissioning session, in the dark, with the addressing plan in hand. Walk the programme scene by scene: check that each group answers where the plan says it should, that fades run at the pace the design imagined (programmes are almost always written too fast the first time), and that the static fallback scene is set and sensible. Record the final plan as built, not as designed — the two always differ somewhere, and the as-built version is the one the next engineer needs. An hour of this discipline at handover replaces a season of small mysteries.