Thread: DMX Address Settings

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I am editing the original post. What I think happened here was a confluence of events including Chinese/English instructions, faulty dip switches, technicians that only use hardware controllers and that old enemy "assume". So what follows is my original post that some technical types may find entertaining.

The first DMX devices I bought were a 2 channel strobe light, some small 5 channel dmx RGB can lights and a 4 channel dimmer box. I set the address on these devices by setting dip switch 10 to on and then using switches 1-9 to set the DMX address. I'm using VSA to control them and the only little hitch I had with that is the fact that VSA addresses start with the number 0 and DMX starts with the number 1. So I had to set the DMX device for one number higher than I was on VSA.

Everything worked great. Then I ordered 3 larger lights (Stallion model) from Cheaplights.com These are 7 channel DMX. When I read the instructions for the lights, it said that I needed to set dip switches 10 AND 1 to on to enter DMX mode. This was a problem as far as I was concerned because switch 1 in all of the other devices is used to assign the device address.

I called the folks at Cheaplights.com and they were very willing to help, the only thing was that nobody there ever used a computer to control lights. They were only familiar with hardware controllers. So, I was kind of on my own.

I figured out a way to discover which addresses would work but it was a trial and error method. I tried to identify some common factors with the addresses that worked but the only thing in common was that the DMX address that worked began with dip switch 1, however, not all addresses that began with 1 worked.

EDIT, I think the issues MIGHT be chalked up to a faulty light and some poor technical writing and maybe the guys at cheaplights.com not having experience with computer control. I think the instructions assume that the light you are setting up is the first DMX device in the DMX chain. If dip switch 10 only sets the light into DMX mode and 1-9 set the address then for the first device the dip switch settings would be 1,10. The Stallion instructions in the little booklet they send with it says ONLY this about DMX operation:

When the dip switch"1 10" is on and "2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 is off, the light accept DMX512 signal. It works as DMX512 model. When the dip switch"10" is on and"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 is off, the light is in slave model.

Here's the online DMX instructions for the Stallion light:

DMX mode:


Set dip switches #1 & #10 on (down) on the first fixture. This is a seven channel light so set the dip switches #4 & #10 on (down) on the second fixture.

Slider #1 Blue LED intensity
Slider #2 Green LED intensity
Slider #3 Red LED intensity
Slider #4 Gradual color change
Slider #5 Speed of gradual change
Slider #6 Strobe
Slider #7 Master dimmer ( must be all the way up for light to work)

Here are the instructions for the first lights I used.

DMX mode:

he 120-LED-86 is a 5 channel dmx light so you start DMX value 1. Set dip switches #1 & # 10 on the first fixture to the on position. Dip switch 10 is on to tell the light it is in DMX mode and does not have a value. This will allow the first 5 sliders on your controller to control the first light. So now set the next fixture at dmx value 6 which is dip switches #2 & #3 & #10 to the on position. This will allow you to us sliders 6 through 10 to control the second fixture.

On your DMX controller:
Slider #1 is:
0-15 = Off
16-79 = Strobe, slow to fast
80-159= Pulse strobe (fades out and back to bright, slow to fast)
160-255 = On
Slider #2- Brightness, low to high (controls overall brightness).
Slider #3- Brightness of the red LED’s
Slider #4- Brightness of the green LED’s
Slider #5- Brightness of the blue LED’s

Well, you got me here. That is just plain weird. I'm not sure if I understood if you already tried just ignoring the instructions for switching #1 to on and just address the device like you normally do.

Also, I'm guessing the additional instructions for setting #4 and so forth must be if you are using it stand-alone (not part of a DMX chain).

I echo your frustration for the crappy manual they provide with DMX lights. Chauvet's manual was just as cryptic. I mean how much longer would it take to write a manual for newbies??? It's like they assume you are already a master concert lighting guru. UGH!

LOL Terra! Ya, the bottom line is to forget what the instructions may seem to say. Dip switch 10 sets the device to DMX mode and the other 9 are used to set the address. I think the light with the bad switches is what was making the good lights do odd things. Perhaps the bad light was overlapping addresses already in use. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a utility that would identify what dmx addresses are being broadcast? Phoenix?????

DMX doesn't actually broadcast 'addresses'. There's basically a start condition that tells the slave devices to listen up. Following this is channel 1's data, followed by channel 2's data, and so on, until it gets to the last channel data it will be broadcasting. This can go up to 512 channels, but doesn't have to. Anyway, so the point is, DMX is always sending all the channels. Whether one channel's value changes is another story.

DMX slave devices don't 'talk back'. So, ostensibly they should not be able to affect each other. The main thing is you want to organize the devices so no slave devices' channels overlap. If you start your first device at address 1, and it has 5 channels, make sure to start your second device at channel 6 or higher (and so on).


- Hook

Hmmm, very interesting! So, it sounds like I could set multiple DMX devices to the same address. This would be useful where I want multiple devices (lights in this case) to perform the same routines.

I like to understand how things work so I really appreciate input from people who are much more knowledgeable than I am. I understand I'm no expert and I'm certainly not a programmer but if a DMX device can recognize an instruction (a change in a value) being sent down a certain address, it seems to me that someone could write a program that could "listen" on all 512 channels and report which addresses those instructions were sent on.

If the bad dip switches on the one light didn't affect what the other two lights did, I'm not sure why things seemed to work properly when that light was removed from the chain. What may have been happening is that one or more of the addresses did overlap. At one point when I was diagnosing the issues, I deleted all dmx events, including the bad light's events and the light did nothing. When I added back all the dmx events except the bad light, the bad light responded. So it would seem that some signal was being sent. The really weird thing was that the light's responses did not seem correlate to any specific instructions on any individual active DMX channel.