My application is flight simulation (stationary cockpit) but I thought it would be interesting to have some external lights go off when there is a crash and to help simulate an engine fire on the wing. Also it might be useful to help simulate bad weather (lightning storm perhaps). I was thinking it would be nice to be able to drive a fog machine to help simulate an engine fire (using something like this ADJ VF Volcano Compact Vertical Fog Machine | DJ Equipment) in sideways oriented would be nice. Probably not too practical on the think fog machine at this point but that is a longer term goal.
I am not driving a large number of lights I was thinking about 4 different lights with DMX control driven by MIDI. There is no audio activation of lights involved. The application runs on Windows but since I am not concerned about latency since I am not driving anything else currently via MIDI but probably will add a few more things later. The only possible concern could be the number of devices on the USB bus but I do not think it will be issue.
The American DJ dmx-operator-384 was the controller I was looking at since it is both a MIDI controller and a DMX controller. The only other vendor which seems to be popular is Chauvet DJ. In looking at products I saw this was Chauvet DJ Obey 40 DMX. I have not seen too many reviews that on the Operator-384 (but most seem to be positive) about the controller. The ability to have it rack mounted is a big plus. Since each light seems to need a large number of channels I would like to have room to grow in the future. This is the URL I was looking at the operator-384 DMX controller for reference.
For most of the applications I used custom lighting on, architectural facades, interior light washes etc, we went with Chauvet for the ruggedness and build quality. Still want MIDI in the Unity core.
Thanks for the info on Chauvet products and other info too.
MIDI in the Unity core would be fantastic and seems like a perfect natural progression with huge benefits!
The Atari ST was great with its built in MIDI ports. Originally I was thinking all of these USB MIDI devices are going to be a USB device driver nightmare but it really amazing how well it works automatically. I did not know until recently that MIDI is also included as part of the USB audio spec and with a class driver it just works automatically. It was nice to just be able to plug in these MIDI devices via USB and it just works. Especially on the Windows side of the world this is really nice. I know the Apple Mac has had wonderful MIDI support for a long time. So it was nice to see how well Windows has progressed in that regard.
The teensy boards are really exciting so you can make your own MIDI gear and there is available a nice MIDI stack that gives your device USB audio class driver so it just plugs right into computer and just works.
For supporting some of my really old MIDI gear (Casio CZ-101) I picked up the MIO4. ( https://www.iconnectivity.com/products/midi/mio4). The really nice part is you can connect two computers (via USB) up to it at the same time. This seems to be a very good solution to have Windows and Apple Mac all connected to the same MIDI equipment without having to unplug everything to switch machines. It also a USB host port which you can plug in a powered USB hub to attach all of your USB MIDI gear. There was not an extensive search done for competing gear but it seems like the best deal at the time. In addition the MIO4 can also be used a standalone device. It certainly makes testing easier so you do not have to tear down your gear all of the time.
In theory I could have the Windows machine trigger a MIDI event and then have the Mac pick up from their and drive the rest of the MIDI events so I would not have to worry about any timing issues on Windows. The other part that is nice the MIO4 also has a network port so the MAC (via rtpMIDI) could drive MIDI devices over Ethernet for equipment that is farther away.