This is the lighting controller [Paul Stoffregen] built for Burning Man. They wanted to opt for DMX controlled lighting this year but that a lot of typically includes a computer to run the lighting sequences. This board runs the preprogrammed DMX sequence using a hacked lighting design file.

The choreography for the lighting was planned out using a program called Vixen 2. There is one newer version of the software, but [Paul] needed to translate the output file for use with a microcontroller and version 2 makes this a bit much easier than version 3. speaking of conversion, he didn’t want to start from square one and a bit of searching led to a tutorial which [Bill Porter] posted last year on converting Vixen files for use with Arduino. It wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, but a lot of of the ground work was there.

A few code tweaks bent the script to [Paul’s] will. He changed the XML parsing function to neglect all but the main channels in the file. He also had it output a text file which can be stored on the SD card. because the output is not being flashed to a chip this greatly increases the storage available paving the way for much longer and a lot more complex shows.

Want to learn a lot more about the protocol used by DMX equipment? check out this primer.