Your
console is yelling out the following information down the stream of
dmx data over and over...
"Start signal: value between 0-255, next , value between 0-255, next , value between 0-255, next , value between 0-255, next , value between 0-255... repeat that 512 times then go back to the start signal... it completes this cycle
thousands of times per second up to 44 times per second.
When you turn
dimmer 56 up to half, the next time through the cycle the
console changes the value after the 56th "next" to 127.
When you set an
address on a
DMX device. You are telling that device where to listen for it's control information. Set a device to 347 and it waits for the data stream to have the start signal and then it starts counting nexts until it gets to 347. When it reaches 347 it listens for the value and does whatever that value says. Devices may need a lot of information and so they are listening for data on many different
dmx channels. The
address you set is the starting
point and then it listens in order. If a device needs 4 channels of
DMX data you set it to
Channel 100 and it listens for data on 100, 101, 102, 103. You can set the next device to 104 and it listens to 104, 105, 106, and 107. If you have 10
LED fixtures and you want them to all do the same thing, set them all to the same
DMX channel. If you want them to all have separate control, set them to separate channels.
A problem with
DMX is that the
console doesn't get any information back. It just keeps yelling out values endlessly. It has no idea if anything has actually done what it commands. Furthermore sometimes it makes mistakes. When you are dealing with dimmers and lights a mistake is no big deal because the error will be corrected by the next cycle of data long before you can see the results of the bad command. However if you were using
DMX to set off
pyro it only takes a millisecond mistake to say fire.