Design of Bi-directional RDM-DMX512 Converter for LED Lighting Control

Abstract

LED lighting control system using unidirectional DMX512 (digital multiplex with 512 pieces of information)) protocol has been the most popular. Nowadays, the user’s consumption has been upgrading to the more intelligent system but the upgrading process does not affect the existing infrastructure. There were many researches use the additional communication for the feedback communication way such as WiFi, Controller Area Network (CAN), Power Line Communication (PLC), etc but all researches had inherent disadvantages that created the independent feedback with the existing DMX512 system. Our paper represents the novel method that uses the remote device management (RDM) protocol to associate the additional feedback with existent DMX512 infrastructure in the one system. The data in DMX512 frame sending to the DMX512 client is split and repacked to become the RDM packet. This RDM packet is transferred to the RDM monitor console and the response RDM packet is converted to the DMX512 frame for control DMX512 client devices. This is the closed loop control model which uses the bidirectional convertibility between RDM packet and DMX512 frame. The proposed method not only upgrades the feedback control function for the old DMX512 system without changing the existent infrastructure, but also solves compatible problems between new RDM devices and old DMX512 devices and gives the low cost solution for extending DMX512 universe.