Terminate DMX

And while I might mean to pop a cap in the rapper of that name, what I'm really talking about is building a DMX terminator for our new lights. They say it will prevent data signals from bouncing back or other oddities. I found a diagram that shows how to wire up a terminator and a tester/terminator. Since the tester has LEDs in it, I made that one.

Much to my surprise, my little drawer of resistors had no 270Ωs, so I made a trip up to Radio Shack. I also got a cheap Radio Shack XLR plug, rather than waste a good one. Then I dug through my LED drawer and found 2 tiny ones that matches brightness and opacity; one green and one orange (all the reds were clear rather than milky). It was fun soldering it up. I wish I had more opportunities to screw with electronics like I used to. Since I don't want to fuck around and fill it up with resin like he suggests, I put a small hunk of shrinkwrap around one solder joint and then wrapped electrical tape around the whole mess and shrunk it a bit with the little butane torch.

Everything checked out with the multimeter and both LEDs worked when I supplied some voltage in both directions from a nearby DeWalt 18V tool battery. So I cleaned up the tools and plugged it into the last light. I powered it all up and slid some faders around and punched some buttons. No LEDs. Hmm. I then plugged it right into the back of the board and they lit up a tiny bit. I guess I could've used a smaller resistor for the LEDs, or maybe more sensitive LEDs. Oh well. It was more fun that going out and shooting a rapper. Just a little.