How To Control DMX Lights From A Computer Using QLC+ and uDMX Adapters

In this video, I go over how to control and program lights with DMX using the QLC+ software and uDMX adapters. The software is cross platform and works on Windows, Mac and Linux including small platforms like a Raspberry Pi!
Overview
I show you how to use the QLC+ software to control lights using DMX, as well as program scenes and shows. I discuss how DMX works, DMX channels, and how the configuration works on various lights.
Links
I won't link to any particular seller of these adapters, but doing a search for uDMX or DMX to USB on sites like AliExpress or eBay should bring adapters similar to the one I used.
Watch my tutorial and demo video on the 15W RGBW light I used in this video: • 15W RGBW LED Par Can T...
Computer DMX control software: www.qlcplus.org/
(just grab a generic uDMX adapter that is supported)
Bigclive has done tons of testing on LED lights like this one as well as very thorough teardown and analysis of products like this. Check his channel out! / bigclivedotcom
About Me
More of my notes on this and other topics on my wiki at
wiki.tonytascioglu.com
Thanks for watching! I hope you found this video useful!
Tony Tascioglu
tonytascioglu.com
Catch my livestreams!
twitch.tv/techno_tony
live.tonytascioglu.com
Production Remarks and Rants:
- The intro and outro are out of focus part of the time, it's hard to focus a 1080p camera on the small preview monitor... And autofocus missed it as well...
- I actually have proper audio now, it does clip sometimes, because I don't want to adjust the volume of each clip, so I used a baseline to normalize it.
Music
Music by Approaching Nirvana:
approachingnirvana.com
open.spotify.com/artist/3sS2Q...
/ approachingnirvana
Intro and Outro: 2nd Flight
Peertube
Watch this video on Peertube: peertube.tonytascioglu.com/vi...
Conclusion
If you liked this video, please leave a like and if you want more, then be sure to subscribe! If you didn't enjoy this video, then I welcome questions and constructive feedback (pls don't be toxic).
Copyright 2020
Tony Tascioglu
tonytascioglu.com

[@MorganReidguitar]

Just learned everything I need to know about DMX and programming light shows. Sick man, thanks a lot!

[@TonyTascioglu]

Thanks, glad it helped!

[@simonjustsen4817]

I cant thank you enough ive tried endless hours getting my laser projector hooked up and it finally worked cause of this video👍👍👍

[@mikelorenz4861]

It’s nice to learn how DMX works. I figured it was similar to MIDI. It seems the possible variations are pretty much limitless. Thank for your clarity.

[@reduceyouruse]

HOLY CRAP I WAS SEARCHING FOREVER FOR A TUTORIAL ON THIS!!!! THANK YOUUUUUU

[@TonyTascioglu]

Hope it helped!

[@DoodieSmoothie]

Thank u very much for the informative video. I only needed this video to build my rave room :D i'm aiming for mapping lights to songs.

[@sajijoseph117]

Only 21K views!? Wow this should have WAY more.

[@mauriciob3334]

thanks for including linux in the tutorial

[@lugogaming7844]

thank you for this tutorial

[@eldi]

Hi Tony, thanks for the guide. This is a step closer to what I want to do, but in essence I'd like to connect all of my lights, lasers etc., and I'd like to make them synchronize with each other - I assume I can do this through DMX and use my comptuer as the controller. But I would also like to download pre-built laser effects / shows for different lights, and then make the controlling unit take sound as input. Is this possible and how can I do this?

[@marioramirez7327]

Hi Tony excelent video! I have a question.., how can i switch to "dark theme" in qlc?

[@ManuelSantofimia]

Thanks! I really learned how to set up the program. But when I run the show manager after creating different intensities in my light as you do, nothing changes! Do I have to do anything else in order to make it work?

[@user-ew9dd8to8u]

Thank u tony Can I add music with the program?

[@josephjimenez4085]

this is very helpful!

[@TonyTascioglu]

Glad I could help!

[@pedrojacome.]

Thankyou! Very good!!

[@TonyTascioglu]

Glad you found it useful!

[@kazemzahedi1047]

Hi Thanks for the great video. I have a set of DMX512 LED pixel lights. These are plane basic fixtures. Can I use QLC+ to set the address of the fixtures, before I can use them

[@showmanderek]

Great video. Thank you for the insight. I have a question regarding not know what kind or how many fixtures a particular venue may have. If I am creating a light show to run in sync with click tracks, how will i know that the show I create in QLC+ will work in every venue. For instance, if one venue has 16 ChavetSlim Par 56 fixtures, and 4 moving fixtures (name any brand and model) but the next venue has less, more, or even none.

[@TonyTascioglu]

Unfortunately, I don't think you can ensure that. You can prepare for the most you might encounter, but you'll have to do "patching" at every show to map the channels their lights are on to the fixtures on your show regardless.

[@sirobellino]

Exploring different ways to control my dmx lights, this is by far the most simple technique. Just one question at 11:58 with the output, what exactly is "uDMX" referring to? the cable adapter? thanks.

[@johnkinghorn7427]

This video was excellent, thank you. I have a set up with several ADJ lights chained together, but up in the ceiling area of a hall. The first light has a DMX in leading to a port in the wall. Everything works perfectly, using 'lightkey' software and a simple DMX convertor box. However, when I close the software, and unplug the cable from the wall port, the first light turns on and stays a dark red colour. The light is too high to manually turn off. Is there a simple fix for this? The only way to turn the light off at the moment is through the master fuse box, which can't be a good thing! Thank you for any advice you can give

[@chacon1312]

Sometimes this can be a setting in the light itself. e.g. when it loses DMX value (computer powers off or cable is unplugged) it defaults to a red color. Worth checking if possible for you!

[@ambroise105]

Hi, is it possible to control lyre or par using bash command line? by using QLC+ ?

[@DynamismImpulse]

SO.. about that end channel terminator?? How important is it?

[@trevor1564]

Is there a way to have the scenes fade between

[@allenmaddox203]

Can you add music to the software?

[@johncuria]

Great tutorial! I'm having a 40'x60' steel building constructed to house my large audio system mostly comprised of JBL SRX series loudspeakers. Would like to start my retirement hobby by developing lighting effects tailored to specific audio recordings and have them synched during playback (automatically control the lighting when ever I launch the audio playback). Can the QLC program allow me to do that or would I need additional software/hardware?

[@TonyTascioglu]

As far as I know, yes. There's also other software more specialized to do music based light shows, Vixen comes to mind for example as I used it some years ago to synchronize Christmas lights.

[@anhellehna6858]

Excellent explanation!! 👍💯 I would like to connect the dmx lights directly to the computer. I actually use FL Studio for the music production. Is there any way to control the dmx lights with FL Studio? Which VST should I use? I tend to use DMXIS plugin inside FL Studio, but I am not sure if that would work. I find the automation in FL Studio very easy. Therefore, if possible, I wouldn’t change the DAW. Actually, I don’t know how I can use MIDI notes to control dmx lights. Is it possible in general? Then, how should I set the MIDI in/out settings to trigger dmx lights? Hope you could help me, because I don’t find any detailed source about that in the Internet. Wish you a nice day.

[@TonyTascioglu]

The naive way to do this would be MIDI out from FL-Studio, through loopback, into QLC. I know QLC works fine with hardware MIDI controllers, so it should be possible to do using software as well. You might need some software to act as a midi-loopback to send the output from FL directly to QLC. I found the QLC MIDI plugin page very handy to try to set it up, here is the link: www.qlcplus.org/docs/html_en_EN/midiplugin.html MIDI loopback on Windows if you need it: www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html

[@anhellehna6858]

@@TonyTascioglu Thank you so much for your helpful feedback with links. I’ll try it as soon as I receive the USB dongle for the connection. Then I can also give you a feedback to see if it worked or not. So we can learn something more together. Appreciate your knowledge about the lighting!! 👍🔥

[@fabz1509]

Deserves a thumbs up. Very informative and fantastic money saver. However not sure why you went into hyper mode at around the 20 min. With such fast cursor movements? Got quite confusing. Something to be mindful for your future videos. Thanks again.

[@TonyTascioglu]

Thanks for the kind words! As for the hyper mode, I will try to keep it in mind for future videos!

[@kevinramnath9458]

Are there preset scenes you can use/download instead of making your own?

[@dhil3571]

yes you can literally go through a wizard and it makes scenes and different effects for you . super dope!

[@OffGridandOutdoors]

I'm sure I'm not asking correctly, but what do I need on a windows PC so that QLC+ can hear midi commands from a presentation program like ProPresenter 7? I know pp7 will send the command, and I know QLC+ can hear them, but is there some other software that needs to be running to let both applications (pp7 and qlc+) communicate on the same pc?

[@TonyTascioglu]

I know on Linux, Jack can route any MIDI application to any other MIDI application. If you're trying to essentially loop a MIDI device, I'm not sure how Windows and Mac handle it. You might be able to use something like this to create a virtual MIDI port for routing: www.tobias-erichsen.de/software/loopmidi.html

[@OffGridandOutdoors]

@@TonyTascioglu thanks I figured it out. Tobias Erichsen's little program running on a PC ... loopMIDI ... does the trick.

[@fredbronkema6963]

How does QLC+ compare to Easy Standalone?

[@allenpoling6854]

HI, I acquired a 2780 Laser show box that runs through a test mode of all the images line a running man, happy birthday, a shark, and many others. It has DMX and I have a USB to DMX cable. Can this box be controlled like a DMX light so I can pick individual images?

[@TonyTascioglu]

Probably - it depends on the light and what parameters it allows to be set over DMX

[@dlgdlnrd]

Our school has already a DMX connector and lights built-in in our studio. I'm planning to buy the USB to DMX converter but it's way to short to connect it in the lights. Can I connect the DMX converter to the existing DMX cable? Won't there be any problems like delay or worst, a power shortage that could harm my laptop? Anyway, thank you for this video. I learned a lot and will be using this software. These kind of softwares really help a student like me with no budget and just starting with program lights.

[@TonyTascioglu]

It should be no problem to add a DMX cable between the adapter and the lights. You can extend it quite a bit before you run into signalling issues. Delay is inconsequential, electrical signals are basically the speed of light. Interference may be, since these USB devices don't have the strongest output, but I haven't run into issues (yet). If your school is older like mine was, you may need to convert the 3 pin DMX into 5 pin DMX - most dimmer racks are 5-pin vs new lights that are 3-pin . If so, you can solder yourself an adapter, the 5 pin signalling is the same, the remaining 2 pins are unused :) The main thing I'd be concerned about is if you have some no name cheap "LED Par" lights like the one I use in this video - I've seen the power supply of one of those fail which could have sent live AC power down the DMX port.

[@minsarasenanayake7864]

Can I please know the that specific usb to Dmx adaptor works on Mac?

[@TonyTascioglu]

Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac, so I can't check if it works or not. You might be able to find responses on Reddit or somewhere if people have experience with it.

[@ainttakenanyshit]

A couple of questions please.... I'm just a noob with all this DMX stuff and my low end laser has two "sets" of DMX commands, DMX 6CH and DMX 34CH. A "standard" DMX controller should be good for the "simple DMX mode" with only the 6 channels, but, to have access to the DMX 34CH mode is HOW?? Do I need a 1K dollar controller to access all 34 channels or is there a way to use a 16 channel controller to do the job? ANY help you may provide will be greatly appreciated in teaching this "old dog" some new tricks... Thank you, Hank

[@TonyTascioglu]

Sorry for the late reply, many lights have simple and more complex channel configs. If it will work on your 16 channel controller depends on the controller. Most 16 channel controllers just have 16 faders, but can access 100+ by switching with set of channels it's controlling. Of course, this means you won't be able to change all the channels for the light at once. If you're using a software controller as I did in the video, you can control all 512 DMX channels, so you can use the 34 channel mode without faders. I will mention though, if you're using a physical channel, it would be a lot easier to use the 6 channel - the 34 is great for programming shows wand controlling from a computer or fancy board with software, but if you're going to be 'riding the faders', then it'll be hard to keep track of all 34 at once. You typically see multi channel modes like this with RGB bars and moving heads where they'll have something like 5 channel mode that has some preset effects and basic r/g/b controls, an advanced 30+ channel modes, where you can set the R/G/B for each zone manually for example. That is harder to use with faders (most would prefer the preset effects), but if you're going to program a show on a computer, it can give a bit more flexibility (but then, you have to program your own effects).

[@meinbherpieg4723]

Can you control scenes values using midi switch controllers? Ideally I'd like something i can stomp on while playing to activate a new scene.

[@TonyTascioglu]

Yes, I believe it should be possible, I believe you can map MIDI inputs to DMX outputs. A good starting point might be from the replies on www.qlcplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8457 or through www.qlcplus.org/old/docs/html_en_EN/midiplugin.html

[@meinbherpieg4723]

@@TonyTascioglu Thanks for the reply I really appreciate it.

[@arjayslaysallday]

for some reason i dont see my device showing on the input/output area, what do i do?

[@paulmarlow7176]

Mine doesn't show either stuck before I start ?

[@pand_6879]

Tony: Explaining DMX His two monitors: *Just hacked in to the british government database.*

[@pickypete0]

I was about to install Freestyler...never heard of QLC which is better. i just got my dongle in and the instructions suck its a UDMX adapter from Amazon. this qlc seems to be easier if all you did to start up was what you showed

[@TonyTascioglu]

I remember using Freestyler back when I used Windows... I couldn't get it working on Linux though, hence why i switched to QLC. The setup on Linux is as I just showed it, it's pretty simple, and auto-detected. However, I have no idea how complicated the driver install is on Windows, if it's supported. Historically, these cheap adapters have had a questionable track record on Windows, sometimes requiring unsigned driver installs which I'd want to avoid...

[@CHGOfficial512]

you got it working? i got exactly same setup but i can't get working rgb, strobing and total dimming, only function selection works :(

[@TonyTascioglu]

Are the channels mapped in a weird way? I know some DMX lights (particularly more complicated ones) often have multiple DMX modes with different channels. I haven't heard of a 3 or 4 channel mode on these ones, but if there is a menu option, that might be a setting. On the other hand, have you checked that you're using the same DMX start address on both the computer and light? Seems weird that the channel for function selection would work but not the others...

[@CHGOfficial512]

@@TonyTascioglu I missed the fact that first channel is central channel since it wasnt in user guide. But after a while it suddenly cut off. Maybe i accidentally selected some option or it just overheated ( dmx module got pretty warm) So trying again tomorrow

[@KWMATIK]

artnet gate is the best interface to QLC+ , any usb dmx512 is obsolete solution

[@TonyTascioglu]

While I agree that artnet is definitely more modern, getting such a setup is also very costly. One of the big selling points of using uDMX adapters is that if you're just starting out, it's a much lower barrier of entry.

[@ludvigbergsaker8745]

Could you make a tutorial on how to connect midi to qlc+ 5.0?

[@TonyTascioglu]

If you're on Linux, you can do this natively with JACK (or Pipewire). You can use QJackCtl's graph to connect any MIDI inputs to QLC.

[@myleslux6983]

How come your QLC program looks so much different from mine? Making it really hard to follow this tutorial lol

[@TonyTascioglu]

Could be a few things, I used QLC+, not the C based QLC, and, I used the beta of QLC+ version 5, whereas if you install a stable release, it is likely still version 4. Aside from that, small UI changes are likely due to QLC+ picking up system themes.

[@julianklietz6558]

so, how important is a terminator now?

[@TonyTascioglu]

I'm pretty sure the rule of thumb is to always terminate a DMX connection to avoid random noise on the line (usually from reflections on the line) , though from personal experience, it's usually only be an issue if you're daisy chaining multiple fixtures. A terminator is surprisingly simple, just attach a ~120 ohm resistor between pins 2 and 3 on the final DMX output.

[@julianklietz6558]

@@TonyTascioglu Allright, the highest amount of fixtures i have ever driven at one time is like three. That might then be why ive never had any problems with noise and interference and such, eh?

[@RandomdudesPodcast]

It says the app doesn’t work anymore I’m not sure why

[@TonyTascioglu]

As per the QLC+ website, it's still maintained and releasing versions, so you might want to try filing a bug report with the devs!

[@kiyoshidev9781]

This is plug and play???, I saw Freestyler that it needs to set specific channels for it to work properly on generic lights.

[@TonyTascioglu]

The base functionality (if you know the DMX channels and have the drivers) is relatively plug and play. However, if you want to create proper features for all of these lights, then that definitely takes a bit of time to define the DMX channels and values - especially since they aren't very well documented for these cheap lights.

[@kiyoshidev9781]

@@TonyTascioglu Thank you for this info!

[@AlexandreGauvin]

Outputs on a mixer are actually male and inputs on a microphone female (mistake at 7:30). Not opposed as you say.

[@GrafGDrakyla]

Hi bro

[@Flickmakers]

Consider Slowing down

[@DJSonicScotland]

DO NOT USE XLR TO REPLACE DMX!!!!

[@tuzmuveszetcsapat2600]

Mintha nem akarná, hogy az emberek megértsék. Rettenetesen gyorsan magyaráz és csak félszavakkal. Csak olyanok értik meg akiknek nincs szükségük arra, hogy megnézzék ezt a videót.

[@fmslickful]

talk about hiding a subliminal message

[@kriss12loverap]

U are a cute lookin man.