DMXControl 3 for Raspberry Pi

    Hello everyone!


    I am an happy user of DMXControl 3 on my windows PC; and recently I felt the necessity to have a dedicated "controller"


    I found another DMX project (QLC+ not to name it) that can run it on a Raspberry pi and I wanted to buit myself a controller out of a Raspberry Pi 5/4Go + a 15.6 touchscreen. I have done it, and it run fine. However after some testing I really prefer DMXControl (I am missing so much the HAL and some other features! =O )


    Would it be possible to build this project for a RPi ? (Even if performance are a bit lower) Would it make a big effort or be straightforward? :rolleyes:


    I guess if it has not be done yet it means that it require serious efforts.. but that would be awesome :love:


    Thank you ;)

  • Hoc

    Approved the thread.

    Hi and welcome in our forum,

    Quote from AnthonyL

    I guess if it has not be done yet it means that it require serious efforts

    As you already guessed it, it is unfortunately a high effort to build DMXControl 3 for MacOS or Linux. It is not the programming language itself (we use C# with which you can build programs for Linux and MacOS) but the UI frameworks: We use Windows Forms (the Name already says, that it is only for Windows), WPF (which is also only for Windows but there are some expensive third party implementations of WPF, which are platform independant) and XNA (a former Game Engine which we currently try to drop because it is already EOL for some years). Currently, we see no real good possibility to get everything running on other than Windows because we have this mixture of frameworks and don't want to buy those third party implementations (which don't help us in the current state either). If we are done with our transition to WPF in a few years, then we can maybe think about that or also shift to MAUI (which is the multi-platform UI framework of Microsoft). MAUI and WPF are kind of similar and it should be much easier to transition from WPF to MAUI (however, there is also some stuff to do). And then, hopefully MAUI is in a state that it is really stable and usable (which was not when we decided to fully go with WPF). Despite this fact, we had already tests of DMXControl 3 running on Linux. But here only the Kernel and the Umbra were running on it (with some limitations). Despite this fact, running DMXControl 3 on Linux is currently not in our focus because there are so many other things, we need to focus first :saint: So sorry to say that, but yeah, we can only do the things, we have time for (so free time is the main limiting factor).


    JP

    im Falle eines Falles klebt Gaffa einfach alles, denn Gaffa ist dein Freund und Helfer :thumbup:

    Edited once, last by JPK ().

    Thanks 1

    A new Pi5 sells for 90€ these days. You can easily find a very potent used shuttle PC on ebay for 90€.

    This is what I would suggest: Search a litte on ebay for used shuttle PCs. If necessary upgrade from HDD to SSD and you will have plenty of computation power. Also you don't need a lot of disk space. Like 128 GB is plenty.

    Thank you very much for the detailed answer; it really make sense


    I guess I will use an old computer/laptop as suggested !


    By the way; many years ago when I was programing I was using QT framework, which is free (for personal and comunity use if I get it right) and crossplatform. Bonus it include a 3D engine and basically all you could need I guess.

    Qt Platform

    Maybe that could be a clue for future developments


    Thank you for your excellent work, I will continue to follow it :thumbup: :thumbup:

    Quote from AnthonyL

    Thank you for your excellent work, I will continue to follow it :thumbup: :thumbup:

    Thank you :) This supports and I will keep working on DMXC 3 :)


    Quote from AnthonyL

    By the way; many years ago when I was programing I was using QT framework, which is free (for personal and comunity use if I get it right) and crossplatform. Bonus it include a 3D engine and basically all you could need I guess.

    Qt Platform

    Maybe that could be a clue for future developments

    We are aware of Qt but their conditions are way worse than what we have currently. In addition, we are free but not Open Source so that is usually a problem for such kind of "free for community use" licenses. And the last point: We then still have the problem of not enough programmers who work on DMXControl 3. That is why we will not move to the Qt platform and will stay on the path of transitioning everything to WPF ;)

    im Falle eines Falles klebt Gaffa einfach alles, denn Gaffa ist dein Freund und Helfer :thumbup:

    Edited 3 times, last by JPK ().

    Quote from AnthonyL

    I guess I will use an old computer/laptop as suggested !

    But don’t buy a too old device. There a some requirements for DMXC3 like the graphics card. So I recommend to have a look after a device, which is able to run Windows 11. These devices fits basically almost to the requirements. But if you will be safe, you can ask again when found a possible device in your point of view.