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OK, let’s get started with our Board of Chuckie (BoC) DMX tutorial.
This year, I switched over to DMX to run my Skeleton Quartet that I call Sindy Skinless and the Decomposers. It GREATLY reduced the wiring needed, improved the stability of the servos and made setting up and tearing down a 10 minute job as opposed to over an hour in the past. I eliminated lots of equipment and wiring and really simplified the entire setup.
To get started, first, you need to know what you will need to make a DMX system work. I will say that there are MANY different ways to do this, but I will focus on using Brookshire Software’s VSA program as the DMX controller, rather than buying expensive stand-alone equipment. (http://www.brookshiresoftware.com/vsa_order.php?ct=yes&PHPSESSID=t13cnqj72v7aponqrfml136ar0) With VSA, you can control servos, individual LEDs, or full lighting systems all within the same program with an easy-to-understand interface and minimal external equipment. Unless you plan to incorporate video into your VSA routines that is controlled by the program, you will not need anything more than the Hobbyist Version.
The DMX servo controller board I chose to use is the BoC from Skulltronix. (http://skulltronix.com/boc.html) There are other choices, but to my knowledge, not too many. I know of another one which was designed and built by another member here on Halloween Forum. It is called the Medusa Board and can be found here: http://ohmmygadgets.com/medusadmx.html
The Medusa board does come with a manual, but since I have not used it, I will not be a whole lot of help with anyone who wants to go that route. I hear that they do provide excellent customer service with the Medusa board, so I’m sure you would get up and running soon if that is your choice.
The reason that I chose the BoC board (They are both the same price) was because I needed a board with at least 14 servo outputs per board. The BoC provides 16 outputs. The Medusa only has 8 servo outputs. For my specific purposes, I would have needed to buy twice as many Medusa boards to do the same thing as BoC boards. I needed 5 BoC boards, but would have needed 10 Medusa boards and my budget did not allow that. If your needs for servo outputs are more modest than mine, you might benefit from some of the other features the Medusa offers that the BoC does not. It has 8 LED Dimmers and 8 general purpose digital outputs. These are switches that can be connected to relays to turn on or off anything you want. The BoC has only 3 LED Outputs specifically made for common anode tricolor LEDs. The Medusa has 8 individual LED outputs that can run 8 Separate LEDs or a couple common cathode tricolor LEDs.
OK, moving on. First, you need to know what other equipment you will need.
Here’s a list:
1. You will need a DMX 512 interface.
The one that VSA works with is the EntTec OpenDMX USB interface pictured here:
http://www.enttec.com/?main_menu=Products&pn=70303
2. You will also need a 5pin to 3pin DMX adapter like this one:
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...lfSws2eoFhdR4HrveyLDRwdk80474TMCvQxoCQqHw_wcB
3. Then, you will need as many DMX cables as you will need to connect however many cards you have together. You will need one longer cable to go from the above adapter (Which will be right by your computer) to reach your first prop. If you only have one prop, then that’s all the cables you will need. If you have more than one prop, you daisy-chain them together. So you need a cable long enough to reach from the first prop to where your second prop is and so on. I will cover how to connect the cables to the BoC card a bit later. I have heard from others doing this that you can use cheaper, standard XLR cables instead of special DMX cables. These would be ordinary microphone cables. In most cases this might work fine if there isn’t a lot of other wiring or power cables mixed in that could affect the cables carrying the DMX signal. Again, this has worked for some people, but is not recommended as DMX cables are shielded better and you could end up getting interference which could give you unpredictable results. I opted for purchasing DMX cables and not taking the chance. You can get your DMX cables just about anywhere. They are all over eBay or anyplace that sells DJ, musician, or Theater equipment will have them.
4. You will need a DMX terminator. At the end of the line, you need a terminator, so that you don’t get wacky unexpected results. I have heard from others as well as Jerry Jewel at Skulltronix that the terminator is most-likely not needed unless you are experiencing issues. So most of the time you’ll be fine without one, but you never know, and they’re pretty cheap so I just went ahead and bought one. You can get these just about anywhere as well. The links I provide are only one source just in case you don’t want to do your own research. They don’t all look exactly the same but as long as it’s a 3 pin DMX terminator, you’re fine. The one I listed had the best price I could find.
(http://www.mcmelectronics.com/produ...S1yEhO5QLPYg-tqr3Ft2ove8xfbVWtdLz4hoCu4Hw_wcB)
5. OK, now you need the DMX servo controller board. Again, I chose the BoC which was specifically designed to operate a 3 axis skull with LED eyes and has quite a few extra outputs for things like moving arms or any other servo-driven thing you want to incorporate into your scene. Below are some images of the BoC board that I purchased and I have labeled all the parts so that you know how to hook up what and in what order. There is very little documentation on the BoC as it was developed for Skulltronix use only in their skulls. Enough people wanted to buy them, that they make them available, but they did not make a comprehensive manual to explain everything you need to know to use it. The main advantages over using a board like this instead of the Lynxmotion SSC-32 servo controller board that I used to use is that you don’t have to worry about how far away your prop is from your computer. With DMX, you can have your prop 300 feet away or more with no signal loss. With the SSC-32 you started having servo jitters and issues once you got past 15 or 20 feet. Since all the wiring is done inside each prop, connecting them together is simple with only one three connector cable (The DMX Cable) going in and two power wires. If you have more than one prop, then there is also a DMX cable going out to the next prop, but only one wire that goes from your computer to the scene. The downside that I have seen is that you need to buy one card for every prop. For me that was 5 $90.00 cards which replaced a single $40.00 SSC-32 board. That’s a considerable amount to pay, but I am glad I did it. For someone with only a single prop, it will cost you just $50.00 more to go DMX than to use the SSC-32 board, once you have the Enttec open and other extras. There are extra costs to working either way, so if you are starting from scratch, it probably won’t add up to much more to decide to go DMX from the get go. If you already have a complete SSC-32 system, then you will be scrapping a lot of what you already paid for and replacing it with new things as I have listed above, but in my opinion, it’s worth it. I do ramble a lot, don’t I? Here are some pictures of the BoC board as promised:
Now I will tell you the parts that are not in the instructions online for the BoC, but that you need to now in order to make them work. First, here’s how you connect your DMX cables to the BoC board. You will notice that there is no XLR connector on the board. Look at the first picture. What I did was to buy a 10 foot long DMX cable for each board. I cut the cable in half. Then I separated the wires and prepared to crimp pins on the wires. To do this on your own, you will need the following things:
1. A crimping tool
http://www.vetco.net/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=22&products_id=9690
2. Pins
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0008500114/WM1114-ND/26475
3. A housing that mates to the pins on the BoC.
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0022012037/WM2012-ND/171992
You need to crimp the pins onto the ends of the two wires that you separated out of the cut end of the DMX cable. Make sure you strip the end of the wire first. Just enough to fit the pin on. Do not crimp over the insulation. You will not make an electrical connection. Then crimp your 3rd pin on the end of the braided shielding (bare ground wire) that is exposed. You can place a piece of shrink wrap over the bare wires first, but since the other two wires have insulation, it’s not really necessary. Then slide the pins into the housing in the correct order. To determine this, use an ohm meter to figure out which wire that you have crimped pins on goes to either pin 2 or pin 3 on your connector. Use the chart in the first picture. Take the Male cable end and compare it to the image that says Male (Front View) those are the pin numbers. We already know that pin 1 is the Ground or shield, that is the wire that has no insulation around it. Slide that pin into the housing so that it makes contact with the pin on the BoC board that I have labeled #1. These are parallel inputs so it doesn’t matter which one the input is on or which one the output is on. Now whichever one you have identified as either pin 2 or 3, slide that into the housing so that it connects to the appropriate pin on the BoC board and put the last pin in the remaining spot. If you are unsure about which image on the chart you should be looking at, I have labeled the pins in a Male XLR connector in the picture below:
Do the same thing to the other end of the cable you cut in half, only this time measure to find pin 2 or 3 by using the Female Front View image on the chart. OK, OK….I’ll post another simplified picture:
Now you have connected the board to these two DMX cable ends which will mate up with the other cables you have purchased and you now have a quick and easy way to connect up and disconnect your props. Plug your terminator into the last connector at the end of your daisy-chain no matter how many are in the chain. If you don’t want to buy the crimping tool and the parts I have linked to, you can use shrink wrap and just solder the wires to the pins if you want to do it ghetto style.
6. You will need a 5VDC power supply to run the BoC. It can be the same power supply that powers your servos. It must not be more than 5VDC. You can separate the power for the BoC board and your servo power if you want. I did it because I wanted to send 6VDC to my servos, but can’t use more than 5VDC on the BoC. Later, I will show you how to separate the power. For now, we will assume that you have found a 5VDC power supply with a high enough current output (in amps) to drive all the servos you need to drive. As a rule of thumb, allow ½ an amp (500mA) for each servo you want to power. If you are running 10 servos, you want a 5VDC power supply with a 5 Amp output. If you don’t want to go out and buy a power supply, use an old one out of a desktop computer. They all have 5VDC outputs (Any Red and Black wire) and plenty of current at the outputs. If you don’t know how to power up a computer power supply, look for a green wire on the main plug that goes into the motherboard. Cut that wire and any one of the black wires and tie them together. That is the switch that turns on the power supply. Again, refer to the picture of the BoC board above to see where to connect the power and make sure you get the polarity correct. Use a meter if you’re not sure. Connecting it backwards has the same effect as flushing $90.00 down the toilet.
7. Lastly, if you are using LEDs for eyes (or for any other purpose) you will want to hook those up to the BoC with the two 4 pin connections on the opposite side of the board. This board is designed to operate two common anode Tri-color LEDs. One on each output. You do not need to add any resistors or use a special power supply for the LEDs. All that is built into the board. The two outputs are just for convenience because most people are using this for LED eyes and there are 2 of them. The LEDs can not be controlled independently. There are just two sets of pins that are available from the same single output. You can dim the eyes up and down, Strobe them, Mix the colors, anything you want. Referring back to the pictures, I have labeled what each pin goes to on the LED. The pin outputs are not in the same order as the legs that come off a tri-color LED. The order that an LED legs are as follows:
The LED outputs of the BoC board reverse pins 1 and 2 and also reverse pins 3 and 4. It will not work if you connect up an LED directly to the pins without changing the order. If you want to add wire and plugs to run to your LED you can use the following part to mate up to the pins on the BoC board:
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0022012047/WM2013-ND/171993
This housing uses the same pins as the 3 pin one noted earlier in this tutorial.
Once you have connected at least one LED and a few servos, you can start the next step which is programming the BoC board.
I'll get to that as soon as I have time to sit down again and continue his Tutorial.
This year, I switched over to DMX to run my Skeleton Quartet that I call Sindy Skinless and the Decomposers. It GREATLY reduced the wiring needed, improved the stability of the servos and made setting up and tearing down a 10 minute job as opposed to over an hour in the past. I eliminated lots of equipment and wiring and really simplified the entire setup.
To get started, first, you need to know what you will need to make a DMX system work. I will say that there are MANY different ways to do this, but I will focus on using Brookshire Software’s VSA program as the DMX controller, rather than buying expensive stand-alone equipment. (http://www.brookshiresoftware.com/vsa_order.php?ct=yes&PHPSESSID=t13cnqj72v7aponqrfml136ar0) With VSA, you can control servos, individual LEDs, or full lighting systems all within the same program with an easy-to-understand interface and minimal external equipment. Unless you plan to incorporate video into your VSA routines that is controlled by the program, you will not need anything more than the Hobbyist Version.
The DMX servo controller board I chose to use is the BoC from Skulltronix. (http://skulltronix.com/boc.html) There are other choices, but to my knowledge, not too many. I know of another one which was designed and built by another member here on Halloween Forum. It is called the Medusa Board and can be found here: http://ohmmygadgets.com/medusadmx.html
The Medusa board does come with a manual, but since I have not used it, I will not be a whole lot of help with anyone who wants to go that route. I hear that they do provide excellent customer service with the Medusa board, so I’m sure you would get up and running soon if that is your choice.
The reason that I chose the BoC board (They are both the same price) was because I needed a board with at least 14 servo outputs per board. The BoC provides 16 outputs. The Medusa only has 8 servo outputs. For my specific purposes, I would have needed to buy twice as many Medusa boards to do the same thing as BoC boards. I needed 5 BoC boards, but would have needed 10 Medusa boards and my budget did not allow that. If your needs for servo outputs are more modest than mine, you might benefit from some of the other features the Medusa offers that the BoC does not. It has 8 LED Dimmers and 8 general purpose digital outputs. These are switches that can be connected to relays to turn on or off anything you want. The BoC has only 3 LED Outputs specifically made for common anode tricolor LEDs. The Medusa has 8 individual LED outputs that can run 8 Separate LEDs or a couple common cathode tricolor LEDs.
OK, moving on. First, you need to know what other equipment you will need.
Here’s a list:
1. You will need a DMX 512 interface.
The one that VSA works with is the EntTec OpenDMX USB interface pictured here:

http://www.enttec.com/?main_menu=Products&pn=70303
2. You will also need a 5pin to 3pin DMX adapter like this one:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...lfSws2eoFhdR4HrveyLDRwdk80474TMCvQxoCQqHw_wcB
3. Then, you will need as many DMX cables as you will need to connect however many cards you have together. You will need one longer cable to go from the above adapter (Which will be right by your computer) to reach your first prop. If you only have one prop, then that’s all the cables you will need. If you have more than one prop, you daisy-chain them together. So you need a cable long enough to reach from the first prop to where your second prop is and so on. I will cover how to connect the cables to the BoC card a bit later. I have heard from others doing this that you can use cheaper, standard XLR cables instead of special DMX cables. These would be ordinary microphone cables. In most cases this might work fine if there isn’t a lot of other wiring or power cables mixed in that could affect the cables carrying the DMX signal. Again, this has worked for some people, but is not recommended as DMX cables are shielded better and you could end up getting interference which could give you unpredictable results. I opted for purchasing DMX cables and not taking the chance. You can get your DMX cables just about anywhere. They are all over eBay or anyplace that sells DJ, musician, or Theater equipment will have them.
4. You will need a DMX terminator. At the end of the line, you need a terminator, so that you don’t get wacky unexpected results. I have heard from others as well as Jerry Jewel at Skulltronix that the terminator is most-likely not needed unless you are experiencing issues. So most of the time you’ll be fine without one, but you never know, and they’re pretty cheap so I just went ahead and bought one. You can get these just about anywhere as well. The links I provide are only one source just in case you don’t want to do your own research. They don’t all look exactly the same but as long as it’s a 3 pin DMX terminator, you’re fine. The one I listed had the best price I could find.

(http://www.mcmelectronics.com/produ...S1yEhO5QLPYg-tqr3Ft2ove8xfbVWtdLz4hoCu4Hw_wcB)
5. OK, now you need the DMX servo controller board. Again, I chose the BoC which was specifically designed to operate a 3 axis skull with LED eyes and has quite a few extra outputs for things like moving arms or any other servo-driven thing you want to incorporate into your scene. Below are some images of the BoC board that I purchased and I have labeled all the parts so that you know how to hook up what and in what order. There is very little documentation on the BoC as it was developed for Skulltronix use only in their skulls. Enough people wanted to buy them, that they make them available, but they did not make a comprehensive manual to explain everything you need to know to use it. The main advantages over using a board like this instead of the Lynxmotion SSC-32 servo controller board that I used to use is that you don’t have to worry about how far away your prop is from your computer. With DMX, you can have your prop 300 feet away or more with no signal loss. With the SSC-32 you started having servo jitters and issues once you got past 15 or 20 feet. Since all the wiring is done inside each prop, connecting them together is simple with only one three connector cable (The DMX Cable) going in and two power wires. If you have more than one prop, then there is also a DMX cable going out to the next prop, but only one wire that goes from your computer to the scene. The downside that I have seen is that you need to buy one card for every prop. For me that was 5 $90.00 cards which replaced a single $40.00 SSC-32 board. That’s a considerable amount to pay, but I am glad I did it. For someone with only a single prop, it will cost you just $50.00 more to go DMX than to use the SSC-32 board, once you have the Enttec open and other extras. There are extra costs to working either way, so if you are starting from scratch, it probably won’t add up to much more to decide to go DMX from the get go. If you already have a complete SSC-32 system, then you will be scrapping a lot of what you already paid for and replacing it with new things as I have listed above, but in my opinion, it’s worth it. I do ramble a lot, don’t I? Here are some pictures of the BoC board as promised:


Now I will tell you the parts that are not in the instructions online for the BoC, but that you need to now in order to make them work. First, here’s how you connect your DMX cables to the BoC board. You will notice that there is no XLR connector on the board. Look at the first picture. What I did was to buy a 10 foot long DMX cable for each board. I cut the cable in half. Then I separated the wires and prepared to crimp pins on the wires. To do this on your own, you will need the following things:
1. A crimping tool

http://www.vetco.net/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=22&products_id=9690
2. Pins

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0008500114/WM1114-ND/26475
3. A housing that mates to the pins on the BoC.

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0022012037/WM2012-ND/171992
You need to crimp the pins onto the ends of the two wires that you separated out of the cut end of the DMX cable. Make sure you strip the end of the wire first. Just enough to fit the pin on. Do not crimp over the insulation. You will not make an electrical connection. Then crimp your 3rd pin on the end of the braided shielding (bare ground wire) that is exposed. You can place a piece of shrink wrap over the bare wires first, but since the other two wires have insulation, it’s not really necessary. Then slide the pins into the housing in the correct order. To determine this, use an ohm meter to figure out which wire that you have crimped pins on goes to either pin 2 or pin 3 on your connector. Use the chart in the first picture. Take the Male cable end and compare it to the image that says Male (Front View) those are the pin numbers. We already know that pin 1 is the Ground or shield, that is the wire that has no insulation around it. Slide that pin into the housing so that it makes contact with the pin on the BoC board that I have labeled #1. These are parallel inputs so it doesn’t matter which one the input is on or which one the output is on. Now whichever one you have identified as either pin 2 or 3, slide that into the housing so that it connects to the appropriate pin on the BoC board and put the last pin in the remaining spot. If you are unsure about which image on the chart you should be looking at, I have labeled the pins in a Male XLR connector in the picture below:

Do the same thing to the other end of the cable you cut in half, only this time measure to find pin 2 or 3 by using the Female Front View image on the chart. OK, OK….I’ll post another simplified picture:

Now you have connected the board to these two DMX cable ends which will mate up with the other cables you have purchased and you now have a quick and easy way to connect up and disconnect your props. Plug your terminator into the last connector at the end of your daisy-chain no matter how many are in the chain. If you don’t want to buy the crimping tool and the parts I have linked to, you can use shrink wrap and just solder the wires to the pins if you want to do it ghetto style.
6. You will need a 5VDC power supply to run the BoC. It can be the same power supply that powers your servos. It must not be more than 5VDC. You can separate the power for the BoC board and your servo power if you want. I did it because I wanted to send 6VDC to my servos, but can’t use more than 5VDC on the BoC. Later, I will show you how to separate the power. For now, we will assume that you have found a 5VDC power supply with a high enough current output (in amps) to drive all the servos you need to drive. As a rule of thumb, allow ½ an amp (500mA) for each servo you want to power. If you are running 10 servos, you want a 5VDC power supply with a 5 Amp output. If you don’t want to go out and buy a power supply, use an old one out of a desktop computer. They all have 5VDC outputs (Any Red and Black wire) and plenty of current at the outputs. If you don’t know how to power up a computer power supply, look for a green wire on the main plug that goes into the motherboard. Cut that wire and any one of the black wires and tie them together. That is the switch that turns on the power supply. Again, refer to the picture of the BoC board above to see where to connect the power and make sure you get the polarity correct. Use a meter if you’re not sure. Connecting it backwards has the same effect as flushing $90.00 down the toilet.
7. Lastly, if you are using LEDs for eyes (or for any other purpose) you will want to hook those up to the BoC with the two 4 pin connections on the opposite side of the board. This board is designed to operate two common anode Tri-color LEDs. One on each output. You do not need to add any resistors or use a special power supply for the LEDs. All that is built into the board. The two outputs are just for convenience because most people are using this for LED eyes and there are 2 of them. The LEDs can not be controlled independently. There are just two sets of pins that are available from the same single output. You can dim the eyes up and down, Strobe them, Mix the colors, anything you want. Referring back to the pictures, I have labeled what each pin goes to on the LED. The pin outputs are not in the same order as the legs that come off a tri-color LED. The order that an LED legs are as follows:

The LED outputs of the BoC board reverse pins 1 and 2 and also reverse pins 3 and 4. It will not work if you connect up an LED directly to the pins without changing the order. If you want to add wire and plugs to run to your LED you can use the following part to mate up to the pins on the BoC board:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/0022012047/WM2013-ND/171993
This housing uses the same pins as the 3 pin one noted earlier in this tutorial.
Once you have connected at least one LED and a few servos, you can start the next step which is programming the BoC board.
I'll get to that as soon as I have time to sit down again and continue his Tutorial.