ETC Gadget and Martin M-PC?

Colin Bishop

ValleyPoint Church AVL Tech
So I've been thinking about buying my own lighting controller/DMX dongle to use at my school instead of the Colortran Innovator we got, I have a feeling the Innovator won't be getting replaced for a while. So I want to buy a DMX controller for myself. I really like the idea of the ETCnomad Student Bundle and that $250 dollar price tag for both the dongle and Gadget, awesome to get in real experience with the industry standard software. BUT my church uses Martin's M-PC which I also work with regularly, so what ever I buy I'd want it to work with both. I know an M-Touch wouldn't work with Nomad of course, so I want the Nomad bundle.

My question then for you, is can I use the ETC Gadget with M-PC somehow? I know M-PC outputs one universe of Art-Net for free, can I use that somehow to translate it for the Gadget? FreeStyler does have an Art-Net to DMX converter bundled with it and claims to work with a variety of DMX interfaces, I don't see the ETC Gadget on it's list though. If there is somebody out there with an ETC Gadget, could they possibly test to see if they can get output from M-PC on the Gadget or give me advice on this situation?

Thanks!
 
Gadget communicates via proprietary protocol over USB, so not compatible with Art-Net. If you want Art-Net or some other protocol then you'd need something like a DMXKing eDMX Pro which will work with Nomad too. The Student package is a great value anyway.
 
Yup, a gateway (as sk8rsdad suggests) is a network device and Gadget similar things are USB. USB requires a driver for that device and so you get into proprietary software. Network devices are far more universal and good ones can receive both ArtNet and sACN. (I'm biased towards sACN.) And good consoles can send either so you have maximum flexibility. You also don't need a full network, just a patch cable from your computer to the gateway. (Phone remotes and other cool things take a real network.)

Also note that an ETC gateway can pass RDM from ETC software. ArtNet 4 does some RDM but not everything supports it either. RDMnet as a standard is coming but is not here yet.
 
M-PC now offers FOUR(4) universes for free!! It should theoretically work with any artnet node, even the $100 ones on ebay, that do 4-6 universes. It should also work with most usb devices, like enttec, and DMXking.
Here is a super cheap one that seems like its probably okay, you would need to connect cables to the Phoenix connectors, but I'm pretty sure this is the one used by a lot of Christmas light display enthusiasts. Might be worth a shot. http://www.ebay.com/itm/DMX-512-con...687165?hash=item4af2d5f17d:g:POUAAMXQ74JTV4To
 

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