I was at NAB with Aputure this year to talk to people about Sidus Link Pro.  I ended up speaking to a lot of people who weren’t yet really aware of what DMX is, never mind sACN or Artnet.  At first they might be uninterested in hearing about it, but I could frequently engage them by asking about how they were currently controlling their lights.  If they had to use more than one app to control their lights, it was easy to engage them in how using a console app like SLP would mean they controlled everything through one app instead of many.  These conversations reminded me of why open standards are so important.  

Open standards are the foundation of lighting control.  DMX has been an open standard since 1986.  sACN has been an open standard allowing DMX to go over a network since 2009.  But what is an open standard?  An open standard is a technical specification that is publicly available.  Anyone can use it in anything.  No licensing fee, nothing like that.  So what did we do for lighting control before DMX for instance?  Every company that made lighting products made their own way of controlling them.  And of course, since they wanted to “encourage” their customers to give them all of their business, you couldn’t use a competitor’s dimmers with their console.  And that fueled a great deal of sales for them, but left the end user frustrated.  

When DMX came along, it basically obliterated the existing proprietary protocols and became the default for nearly everything.  Which brings up an interesting point- an open standard needs to be compelling.  It needs to be so well thought out that manufacturers cannot resist implementing it without becoming irrelevant.   

So why isn’t everything an open standard?  Because innovation tends to want to operate quickly and open standards by their very nature do NOT happen quickly.  A great example of speedy innovation crossing a deadline years before the open protocol is Artnet.

Artnet was developed in 1998.  My understanding (eg: this could be urban myth) is Wayne Howell (creator of Artnet) was on the committee that eventually created sACN.  He became frustrated with how slowly things were going, so he broke off and invented a way to carry 256 universes down an ethernet cable.  In a terribly unusual move, he made it free to license.  And it spread like wildfire through the lighting industry.  As I already mentioned, sACN didn’t arrive on the scene until 2009.

Currently, we are in closed standard systems when it comes to wireless control for lighting.  Sidus Bluetooth and Nanlink are great examples.  But hopefully you are not surprised when I point out that CRMX is a closed standard.  It just happens to have so much market dominance that it feels like an open standard.  If you work in theater, the same can be said for City Theatrical’s Multiverse wireless protocol.  Another great closed standard system.  As an end user, you probably don’t notice the fact that these are closed systems because they are everywhere.  But you feel it in the purchase whether you know it or not.  Both of these companies work off the model of “you want to use our protocol?  Buy our gear.”  And of course, that impacts your cost to purchase.  

Thankfully, both of these protocols are actually excellent.  And they are so compelling that any lighting manufacturer needs to offer these protocols to their customers or become irrelevant.  So we are in a position to be able to easily control an Arri light, an Aputure light, a Nanlux light and an Astera light with one protocol.  

But I can’t help but long for an open wireless standard.  Speaking as a person who regularly flows between theater and film, an open wireless standard would mean I could control an ETC light and an Astera light side by side using the same protocol, which would be super cool.  Maybe some day.

Featured image photo by Wesley Pribadi on Unsplash

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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film, television and theater based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE, an ETC Eos trainer and an enthusiastic trainer of many other platforms and subjects.  He offers remote console coaching in 30 minute to 4 hour times as well as a full range of training in person.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.