LightFactory – Eric D. Burdo

As I mentioned recently, our church just started using DMX lights for our platform lighting.

One of the bonuses from LightFactory, is the iOS app for controlling shortcuts. In LightFactory, you can set just about ANYTHING to a shortcut. And then just click the right button to do what you want. We have a Windows PC we run this on, and the Shortcut screen is just a big list of buttons. Seems to work well for what we want.

Except… most of the people who will be managing the lights… are Mobile/Tablet folks… and not PC users.

So, when I saw LightFactory had an app to launch your shortcuts for the iPad (we use a lot of iPads at church for OnSong and such).

Yup… just a big ‘ol screen of buttons. You setup your shortcuts in LightFactory and then you can use them via the iPad.

However, every time we went to start the app… it found my LightFactory software on the local network, and then hung and crashed.

According to everything I was reading, it Should Just Work ™.

After some thinking and contemplating… I had an epiphany. It’s seeing my install, but not communicating over the network properly. And then I remembered the Firewall notice when I first launched the LightFactory app.

So I checked… and noticed that the Firewall was set to block traffic on the Private connections and allow on Public. That got me thinking…

And I realized that my internet connection was Public, and it should be Private (since I was one the private church wifi. I switched the WiFi to be Private Network (which makes devices discoverable on the network).

After making that change, I restarted LightFactory and tried the iPad Shortcuts for LightFactory app again. TADA! Worked great!

So… if you are using LightFactory and the iOS app (or their Android control app) and it just seems to hang… check to make sure that your Firewall settings and Public/Private network settings are all correct. :)

At my church, we recently started upgrading our platform lighting system. Our original platform lights, consisted of some old flood lights on a light bar. Over the years, they have slowly died. When we replaced them, we had 3 working lights left. Our platform looked a little anemic. :)

The decision was made to upgrade, so we talked to Sweetwater, and they recommended using DMX controlled lights. That basically meant we could control those lights from a control board or software. We bought their recommendations… Full RGB and some moveable spotlights.

We chose to use software to control the lights. So we purchased the Enttec DMX USB Pro Mk2. It’s a USB to DMX device. A very nice little piece of hardware that does what it should… and does it well.

Then began the long and arduous process of finding software to control the lights. Enttec provides a list of compatible software on their website. Unfortunately, much of the software for controlling DMX systems looks like it was designed by engineers. Drunken engineers who wanted to see how many buttons they can put on a screen. And use some really old developer UI tools to do it. I suffered through some truly horrible UIs.

After trying several tools, I found LightFactory. It had a couple of things going for it. 1) a working demo. You get a 1 minute delay on startup… and then you can use the software “unlimited” for 30 minutes. 2) it was reasonable priced. 3) it was one of the few that just worked. (you’d be surprised how many of the software options I tried just did not work)

We are now in the process of tuning and tweaking our lighting. I’ll try to post another piece with some pictures of our new lighting setup.

Tag: LightFactory

LightFactory Shortcuts and iOS

The Search for DMX Lighting Control Software.