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Sprite DMX Control Confirmed

I spent the day digging through my old DIY DMX projects and piecing together a system in order to test the Sprite DMX controller. It's best to explain as a series of tasks:

  1. Locate my Lynx DMX Dongle and install the FTDI/Virtual Comm Port drivers on my laptop (I'll use an older laptop later)
  2. Dust off my Lynx Express 16 channel AC controller to test the DMX dongle as well as finding the DMX-wired RJ-45 cables for doing so
  3. Figure out the RJ-45 to DMX signal wiring fron the Lynx Dongle
  4. Wire up the Sprite DMX module
  5. Find a suitable computer based DMX sequencer and figure out how to use it (a lot harder than I expected)
  6. Put it all together and make it work (my wife thought I was doing something useful)

With the exception of spending about two hours trying to find the two tiny Sprite DMX controllers that I purchased last year (they weren't where I thought they'd be), most of my time was spent finding a suitable and easy-to-learn computer application for controlling the darn things. Perserverance paid off and I ended up with xLights, one of the original applications I selected for the project.

I manged to get both Sprite Media Players and DMX controllers to work and respond to the xLights sequence from my laptop. I can't tell you how satisfying a feeling was that. I'm now objectively able to order a few more players and DMX controllers.

On top of the success with the DMX controllers, I came across in the Sprite DMX controller documentation a "tip" for when transistions between videos resulted in a "glitchy" frame. The glitchy frame in question was a flash of random screen garbage that tended to ruin the effect of transitioning from one scene to another. I encountered this last year when I used only the Sprite Media players. Well, the tip said to change the output video format if a "glitch" occurs, and I did. It got rid of the glitch and transitions between video is now nice and smooth.

Late into the evening, after the confidence boost of successfully testing the computer DMX sequence software and the Sprite DMX controllers, I wanted to see how the new projectors would do against our dark brown garage door. I'd been researching large projection screens for fear of the garage door being a very poor surface, so I had to at least see what it looked like.


I loaded up a TV version of "Halloween Moon - Scarecrow Surprise" in the Sprite player and stood up the new big video projector I recently purchased. After pulling the projector back to nearly the end of the driveway and setting the 4-point keystone, it looked awesome! The lumen projection easily overcame the very dark brown of the garage. In fact, it motivated me to reconsider getting a short-throw projector for the whole house.



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