Art-Net Ethernet DMX to Pixelcontroller Falcon board

I’m trying to control pixel strips with touchdesigner and a Pixelcontroller Falcon board. Ultimately I’m going to do more complex things with this setup, but for starters just trying to get the LEDs to light up. I’m not finding a lot of documentation on how to get this to work, and I don’t have any experience with DMX (I’ve controlled the LED strips with Arduinos previously).

I’ve done the basic setup as shown in this video (youtube.com/watch?v=G2aKT-bbNZI), however that one does not use ethernet for the Art-Net data.

I’ve got the IP of my device set, LEDs plugged into first universe port.
DMX Out settings:

  • Interface: Art-Net
  • Format: Packet per sample
  • Not sure what to do with Net and Subnet, both are zero.
  • Universe: 0

I’ve fiddled around with all these settings but no luck getting any light on my LEDs.

I know the LEDs work because I can control the Falcon board through a web interface, and I can activate demo mode.

Touchdesigner is allowed through the Firewall.

Not sure what else to check/modify. Any help appreciated, thank you!

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Ok, good news, I’ve been able to find a sample project and with some minor tweaking get the LEDs to light up. So many things can go wrong! I’m working on a simplified project that will just light up one LED strip just to test if the system is working, once that’s ready I’ll post it so it can be used as a reference for this kind of setup.

Hi there,
hopefully by now you are all up and running, otherwise let me know if you need a hand and read below.

When initially starting to deal with LED it can be a bit overwhelming, as there are several different types of LED strips.

I am happy to help if I can but first I need to understand which type of LED strip you intend to control. Do you want yo use your falcon board to control addressable LED? or to control simple LED strips.

By addressable LED strip I mean the ones where you can control each led cell individually.
Often this type of LED strips come in a 5m reel with 150 cells all up, and you can decide exactly which cell (pixel) to control, and assign an intensity and a colour.

By simple LED strip I mean the ones where all the led cells light up all together.
This type of LED strip also usually comes in a 5m reel, but it all light up all at once, all the cells at the same time.

The reason I am asking is because the type of solution and level of complexity is quite different depending on the type of LED you intend to use.

yo! do you have that sample .toe file? I’ve just started my venture in this direction…

There’s actually already a good sample in the snippets for DMX Out CHOP. In TD just choose “Operator Snippets” from the help menu or even right click on a DMX Out CHOP and choose “Operator Snippets…” from there. It’s the third snippet for DMX Out CHOP that shows TOP to mapped LED strips using SOPs to define mapping.

after that it’s just knowing how IP addressing works, but that’s a whole other conversation…

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oh thank you! hahahah yep