Prospective buyer with a DMX question

[kevint33]

Hello all. I to lights for a community theater ans we are looking for a program that will run lights, sound and projections from a pc. I have been testing SCS and it looks like it does everything we need. My questions are:

• What PC specs should we be looking at to run all 3 elements form this pc?

• Do I have to use the Enttec DMX Pro product to conteoll my dimmers or will other (cheaper) DMX controllers work?

We would be controlling one projector, about 6 dimmers and outputting sound cues.

Thank you for your help.

Kevin

[Mike Daniell]

Kevin, I've just replied to the email you sent. The Enttec Open DMX USB will handle sending DMX, although there is some overhead as SCS needs to refresh DMX 40 times a second. SCS doesn't need to do that with the DMX USB Pro or Pro Mk2 as these devices handle the refreshing themselves.

For video projection I recommend using a computer with at least an Intel i5 processor, and at least 8GB RAM. Windows 10 seems to be handling SCS requirements well.

Just a note regarding lighting: 6 dimmers is quite modest and SCS should be able to handle your requirements well. SCS is not a fully-fledged lighting design program, but if you just need fairly straight-forward lighting plots then I think you'll find the features in SCS will meet your needs.

[kevint33]

Thanks for your response. I am trying to decide if we need the receive DMX protocol. I am assuming that would be for if we wanted a light board to control the computer running the software? If we intend to run everything off of a suitable computer then i am assuming we would not need the receive DMX. Is this correct?

Thanks
Kevin