At ArKaos, it’s now many years we’re developing software that drives LEDs in a way or another: our media server software MediaMaster and our VJ software GrandVJ are used every day to drive LED fixtures or LED walls, and of course we have the LED Mapper extension which, combined with MediaMaster, creates a very easy solution to map visuals on complex setups of DMX driven LED walls.

However there is still something that makes it too complicated and / or too expensive for anyone to display visuals on LED devices: setup…

Simple LED fixtures rely on the DMX or ArtNet protocol to work, which means many magic numbers to type, multiplying chances that something goes wrong and prevents your little pixels to blink.. On the other hand, big LED wall components come with hardware interfaces facilitating the setup but they are most of the time so expensive that they’re not an option for most performers and clubs.

We’re in 2010 and it should not be science fiction to have a LED device with an Ethernet port that automatically ”says hello” when connected to a media server and then sends its description so the server can immediately use it without any setup. The device would contact MediaMaster and configure itself automagically by explaining its capacities like “I am a LED device with 48 x 12 pixels in 5 bits format of red green blue”.. In other words: Plug’n Play.

And of course, this should be operated by an affordable processor because you don’t want to add a PC behind each device..

Well that’s exactly what our Kling-Net protocol does. The prototype you can see on the video above is built with an inexpensive open-source electronics prototyping platform called Arduino, and as you can see, it just works.. We’ll now fine-tune it some more and decide what we’ll do with this baby.

If you want more technical info about Kling-Net, we have started to document it on a dedicated Wiki.

They have setup a very creative system to trigger visuals involving a NuVJ, a video camera, a MediaMaster controlled from a GrandMA console and.. a custom controller made of a simple plexiglass panel with duct tape, the so-called “PixelFucker controller”..

Philipp from LoopLight explains his creation:

Installation schema

I have setup ArKaos MediaMaster, ArKaos NuVJ and grandMA ultralight in one network session. The headlights were Jarag-5 in a matrix with par30 and 52 Movinglights with CMY. I made a led mapping patch in MediaMaster to control both the Jarags and the CMY of the movinglights.

MediaMaster was fed with two input streams:

The first input came from a camera filming a plexiglass panel divided in two areas, the left side was for Jarag and the right side for the CMY.

The second input was fed with the output of a NuVJ that I used to trigger SD Clips.

In MediaMaster I scaled my live input from the camera to match only the left part of the plexiglass and configured different effects like Edge detect, Greyscale and Contrast so that, by moving my hand vertically and horizontally in front of the camera (behind the left part of the plexiglass that I was using as guide), I could dynamically create visuals in combination with the SD Clips played by the NuVJ.

For the CMY, I prepared four large Colourwheels in different bright colours so just by moving them in the right half of the plexiglass I could change all CMY in the moving lights.

As you can see it’s a great example of creative processing involving video, lighting and a good dose of creativity.. And that’s exactly what the guys from LoopLight are known for!

There is no specific hardware necessary to convert the video signal for the LED Panels, ArKaos MediaMaster outputs the signal in ArtNet through an Ethernet cable that goes to a network switch connecting the 6 C100 panels together.

The total surface is 6 sq. meters (3x2m) and 18 DMX universes are used to drive the 2400 LEDs.