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Drivers and software
From wiki.openlighting.org
There is a number of ways to get a controller application to send DMX data to a hardware interface (that can send the data out on your DMX wire).
Sometime the driver is split up i two:
- Hardware driver for sending raw data to and from the hardware
- Protocol driver for translating the codes from the controller app to codes the hardware can understand (both ways)
On linux there exists a system for hardware drivers, which is a kernel driver with a common interface to the controller sofware that is independent of which hardware you choose to use. This is called DMX4Linux.
For various reasons there is as many separate drivers as there is in DMX4Linux.
Most USB interfaces works as a "virtual com port", which means that there is a real com port in the hardware, and a driver makes a com interface available i the operating system. Most USB com ports are supported 'out of the box' on both Windows and Linux (nice!), so most USB-to-DMX interfaces just need a protocol driver (easy to make and use)
On Windows it seems that (almost) all controller apps have their own drivers.
Remember that it is possible to send DMX data over a network to an other computer or a ethernet-to-DMX hardware interface
If your are looking for a interface to buy, then start with finding your favorite controller app, and find out which drivers and thereby which hardware is supported.
