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New Edition of DMX512-A Is Now Available
ANSI E1.11 - 2008, Entertainment Technology - USITT DMX512-A, Asynchronous Serial Digital Data Transmission Standard for Controlling Lighting Equipment and Accessories, is now available for purchase from The ESTA Foundation. The path to the document starts at http://www.estafoundation.org/pubs.htm. The list price is $40; member and quantity discounts are available.
ANSI E1.11 - 2008 is the most recent updating of the ubiquitous lighting control protocol that started with the USITT DMX512 standard in 1986. It corrects errors and clarifies text in the 2004 edition and adds functionality. An important clarification is the maximum update rate. The maximum rate is 44 Hz if 512 data slots are being sent, but it can be almost 20 times faster if a data packet contains fewer slots. This has been true ever since the original USITT DMX512, but some receiver manufacturers have missed or ignored this detail. The new edition also adds an Alternate START Code for UTF-8 transmission so that languages that can't be rendered in ASCII can be used for sending diagnostic text messages. The 2004 edition only allows text messages encoded in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), which only supports American English and a few other languages that use the simple Latin alphabet.
The 2004 edition is now obsolete. Anyone designing new DMX512 products is encouraged to use ANSI E1.11 - 2008 rather than the old 2004 edition. However, the 2004 edition will continue to be sold on The ESTA Foundation website as a service to people trying to understand the requirements of a contract or request for quotation that references it.
For more information, please contact: Karl G. Ruling, Technical Standards Manager, ESTA, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1005, New York, NY 10001, USA Phone: 1-212-244-1505 Fax 1-212-244-1502.
19th January 2009
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