I’m trying to figure out a way to have my DMX light control software let SmartThings know that I want some SmartThings lighting turned on or off. Is there some way I could get the DMX software (QLC+) to ping my SmartThings hub (since they are on the same network) and have SmartThings respond to that ping? I’ve found code for SmartThings to ping a Raspberry Pi, but I want to go in the other direction, having something else send an HTTP signal to SmartThings.
Barring that, I’ve thought of two ways to hack this to work, but both seem messy. I have an Eliminator brand DMX controller with AC outlets and I thought about plugging something into it that was SmartThings enabled and creating a rule where if it was powered on or off SmartThings would react, but I suspect it would take several seconds for the smart device to power up and be registered by SmartThings, so the latency would be awful.
The other thought was to use the DMX Art-Net to Hue bridge to control a Hue lights and then have a Hue light that, when turned on or off, triggers a SmartThings rule. However, that would mean I’d have to have one Hue fixture that’s whole purpose was to bridge between DMX and SmartThings/Zigbee/Zwave. It seems like there should be a cleaner way to do it, I’m just not sure what it is.
Youll have to figure out the specific implementation, but in essence you’ll need something on your local network that speaks both ART-Net and HTTP so it can communicate with both your DMX software and your ST hub. This would likely be some kind of custom code or script running on a RPi… Kind of how AlarmServer works for Security systems. So your software will think it’s talking to a DMX lamp and ST thinks it’s talking to a smart bulb (or whatever best emulates your device)
You’ll also need a custom DTH that can tell ST how to speak to your particular device(s)
Thanks @nathancu for your help! So, it’s a convoluted setup: I have a young adult ministry that does movie discussion nights and church services for college students on the neighboring campus. I use a software program called Proclaim for announcement, lyric slides, etc., that can control Hue bulbs directly (to match their colors or turn them on and off) and can also send MIDI signals to communicate with a DMX controller. It has a nice function where these Hue or MIDI signals can be fired whenever a new slide comes up, so instead of having someone run slides and someone run lights, the slide person “runs lights” too using the scenes I’ve preconfigured. The MIDI signals cue up different lighting scenes set up in QLC+, the DMX control software we use, which then has a USB-to-DMX controller to control lighting.
SmartThings on the other hand, has the ability to turn on and off a number of lights around the space that aren’t DMX enabled. I’m getting ready to install some Zigbee switches to control the overhead fluorescent lights that are only on before and after an event. My goal is to get a signal from the DMX controller to SmartThings that would somehow tell SmartThings when it should turn those lights on or off. Assuming I can get QLC+ to either directly send HTTP or do so via some sort of Art-Net intermediary, how could I then communicate with the SmartThings hub? Is there an HTTP-based API to talk to it?
Gotcha. Yeah it’s technically possible but will take a lot of work this thread probably has a lot of the tech you need to know about. Scroll to the bottom for some posts that get into the how.
Like I said your essentially going to have to make st think its talking to a device… And from there you can ‘control’ (send commands) or monitor state (recieve events and status). But it’s theoretically possible.
Hmm, thank you! It’d be great if I can figure this out somehow. If only there were a way to send a command to SmartThings instead of having to get SmartThings to repeatedly poll an HTTP address. I’m tempted to use IFTTT, but if I could keep it local…
So continuing to muse here: what if I bought a USB Z-Wave/Zigbee controller such as the Aeotec Z-Stick? Can one of those be recognized by SmartThings in such a way that my DMX software could do something with the Z-Stick and then SmartThings would react to the change in the Z-Stick’s state? Or, if it were setup as a secondary Z-Wave controller, could it actually directly control Z-Wave devices on the network without messing up SmartThings?
Secondary controllers can control devices on the same network (thats what scene controllers are and my Harmony home hub works this way to give me lights on the remote) Possible, but I still think you’ll have to figure out a way to control the zwave controller. - basically the same problem twisted sideways.
True. This is growing more complicated, although if the Zwave controller were being controlled by something like OpenHAB on the same computer as the DMX software, if I could control that software via the command line, I’d be set. (QLC+ has a scripting language I was pointed to that would let me execute any arbitrary command on the system I’d like, so I could write a shell or Perl script, etc.)
