Control c-bus via DMX

Hi Guys,
This may have already been addressed, but I couldn't find this thread when I went searching.

The Problem:
A small theatre I work in had some flood lights installed in the lighting grid to act as house lights for when the audience walk in. The electricians installed the cBus controllers where they thought they should go, not where we told them to install them (because sparkies know better than what the end users do).

Before some one suggests it, no we can't move the panels due to the walls.

The Outcome:
We have a lighting console which outputs DMX. Is there a box which is DMX addressable, that will convert DMX to c-bus? All I want is one fader on the lighting desk to fade the house lights in and out. Our lighting desk only has DMX out, there is no RS232 or Midi.

Thanks in advance guys.

 

I've come across 2 different products that covert DMX to C-Bus, with varying degrees of success but I can't remember who made them.

I've also seen DMX to C-Bus done by using a DMX to 0-10 unit, and the output of the 0-10V unit fed into a C-Bus General Input Unit.

The challenge you have is that you are converting a high-data-rate protocol (DMX) that is constantly streaming data and trying to put that information into a low speed protocol (C-Bus).

Have you thought about using one of the C-Bus Infinity Architectural dimmers that has a native DMX input?

 

Thanks Newman,

We don't have a budget to buy new c-Bus dimmers. I have seen the ones with the DMX and cBus sockets on Clipsals website. They look nice, but we don't need to switch that much of a load.

 

Can you get a CBus cable to the desk?
Then you could have a key input there.

 

There in lies my next problem..... I can get DMX near one of the poorly positioned controllers

 

Are the lights in your control room operated by CBus?
How did you expect to operate the lights without a CBus cable to the desk?

 

I am currently working on a project where we have to do a bit of this. Also quite a bit of CBus controlling DMX. But because we have about 6 universes of DMX we have to control, we basically have a lighting console in a server that has been adapted to talk CBus. So this is probably a bit out of your budget and spec.

I have also seen DALI used as the common medium on another job. A DMX to DALI converter then a CBus DALI gateway with 2way mapping. But if you were to go down this sort of path, using analogue voltage as your transfer medium is probably a better way to go. Cheaper and simpler...

Just had another thought, could you replace your CBus dimmer with a small single channel DMX dimmer then use a DMX gateway to bring in CBus control. The problem with this approach is you then need to merge the DMX data from your 2 inputs...

 

Thanks for the comments guys. We don't have a control room. Lighting is operated from within the performance space. I could run a dmx cable from the last dimmer over to where the sparkies have put one of the c-bus panels. All I want to be able to do is fade up and down the house lights. I can't get rid of the c-bus because when the space isn't a theatre, there are community groups using the space for functions, or playgroup, or meetings so we need a simple push one button and the lights come up. I was hopeing that this would be a simple conversion. Address an adaptor, plug it into the cbus cable and off we go.

 

You could use a Dmx relay to send an input to a Cbus bus coupler.

Ben