Home DMX lighting with QLC+ on Raspberry Pi, a good idea?

[vladrov]

Hi, is the following possible and a good solution:

I have 30 vertical non-addressable RGBCCT strips on the walls in one room, along with DMX Decoders for the strips.

I want to control them and create a wave pattern/chase. I need a very simple way to turn the strips on and off.

Is a Raspberry Pi with a button, USB DMX Interface (dongle), and QLC the right approach for this?

Or is it not possible or too difficult, and not the right solution?

I will greatly appreciate any possible tips!

Thanks in advance!

[Yestalgia]

Yes absolutely - you'll love it

[vladrov]

That sounds very good; thank you for the fast response.

Do I need a special USB interface, or is it sufficient to buy the cheapest one on eBay, and there won't be a difference?

Also, will the system be stable in the long term, or can I expect that occasionally, for example, I have to restart the Raspberry Pi or similar? Or is it generally a one-time setup where I only need to press the button, and the lights will switch on and off?

I am concerned because I won't always be on-site to troubleshoot if something goes wrong.

[janosvitok]

For stability, you want at least USB interface with a processor inside (enttec usb dmx pro, not the "usb dmx open" one), or even better an artnet node ("ethernet to DMX").

For the raspberry, the usual things - good power supply, good SD card,...

If you know some python, you may get by with OLA as well - less GUI, easier to do hand off setup. https://www.openlighting.org/ola/tutori ... pberry-pi/
I'm not sure if OLA supports reading gpio (but another python package may, so you may combine them in one program).
With OLA, you'll need to do e.g. the chase and colors by hand instead of a GUI (as you can do in QLC+). It is one lower level API.

QLC+ would be easier to setup (no programming needed).

You may troubleshoot somethings remotely, if you can setup VPN or reverse SSH tunnel to the raspberry.

Jano

[GGGss]

And if you are in a noisy environment, your Raspi input will have to need some electronics to be safe. Parasitic electrical influences or spikes will quickly kill the max. 3,3 volt input of the raspi...

[edogawa]

I have a similar installation running continuously since more than a year:

RPi 3, Raspberry Pi OS bookworm 64bit, LXQt, QLC+4 deb
my theater's internal network router/switch
Enttec ODE Mk2
a cheap chinese DMX LED controller 5/12/24V 24 ch/8xRGB
8 1m strips of RGB

running headless, controlled via RealVNC on a small virtual desktop but totally workable

Occasionally I reprogram what the 8 strips are doing - rainbow chase, ukraine colours, orangetheworld etc. ATM it's just white. Peace!
In LXQt, I've added an autostart command for QLC+, and in the workspace the appropriate autostart function so it restarts properly in case of power loss.