Part of this hardware was designed in early 2013. The interactive button firmware was done at the request of Tom from Kew, Victoria for his Christmas light display.
Tom made up a box with 8 large illuminated buttons for the visitors to press. These are active during the short break between songs in his nightly show.
Each button corresponds to a preset (static) scene, so people can change the look of the whole display at the press of a button.
The scenes were recorded earlier by simply setting up the scene in LOR, activating the record function of the board and pressing the associated button to store the scene.
According to Tom, kids both young and old enjoyed interacting with his display. You can see more of Tom’s beautiful display on his Facebook page.
The push button switches wire into the 8 opto-isolated inputs of the top circuit board.
A cable links the top and bottom boards. More than one input board can be linked together (for extra buttons) if required.
The bottom (CPU) board does the DMX I/O processing as well as the scene recording and playback.
Relays ensure that the DMX chain is bypassed in the event of power loss.
The CPU board can also connect to optional relay or opto output boards.
This and other custom solutions are available from the team at Audio Visual Devices