Ignite DMX
An intuitive club and stage lighting control web app, designed to automate as much as possible and create stunning real world lighting
Stage and club lighting is seriously, seriously complicated
Existing apps require you to know complex lighting theory inside-and-out to achieve good looks, making it difficult for new and consumer users to get started in the world of lighting
Create a user-friendly, user-first experience
After multiple rounds of user interviews and user testing, research revealed that there was the need for a user-friendly alternative, focusing on automation and ease-of-use
A mobile/tablet-first PWA focusing on the user experience
Ignite connects to your lighting rig wirelessly over ArtNet, automating the animation, management and movement of lights, letting you focus on getting the look you want!
- 40
frames of output per second
- 512
max lighting fixtures
- 100
max users per live session
Multiple users in the same workspace in realtime
People can join the active lighting workspace and work collaboratively in real-time by scanning a QR code
Sound-to-light mode reacts to the beat
The app can listen through your devices mic or another input source and automatically detect the BPM of a song, animating the lights to the beat
The tech stack
- Node.js
The application was designed to run locally via Node
- WebSockets
WebSockets are used to keep all of the clients synchronised and for passing lighting data quickly between the client and server
- DMX
The application has to generate DMX lighting data at a high frame rate, calculating effects and animations
- Vue
Vue was used to speed up the front-end integration and tightly integrate with the WebSockets connections
- Knex.js
Knex was used as the database ORM to allow for quick and secure database queries with SQLite
- Express
Express was used to serve content, API requests and views on remote devices
Final Thoughts
Ignite was a great opportunity to completely rethink the way traditional apps in the domain work. There was some incredibly difficult changes to solve in this project, like generating lighting output efficiently and detecting the BPM from a live source. Ultimately, I believe the goal was achieved of making the most user-friendly lighting control app possible.
White Paper
Benge, S. J. (2021, June). An application to easily setup and automate the control of professional stage lighting. Staffordshire University.