Servo Motor Controller With DMX 512
October 2007
QuickSilver Controls adds the DMX512 serial protocol to its SilverDust™ line of servo motor controllers. This popular entertainment industry standard (ETSA E1.11-2004) allows a master show controller to broadcast a packet of information up to 44 times per second (250K baud) over an RS-485 line. The DMX frame contains 512 bytes or "Slots" of data to control such things as lighting dimmers, fog machines, and now QuickSilver’s servo motors. Each piece of equipment is pre-configured to only receive data from its Slot. Therefore, all the show elements are synchronized.
Multiple DMX Slots can be “mapped” to multiple servo controller registers. Since the SilverDust is a programmable controller, the data can be used for anything. For example one “mapped” register could be used to command the servo's position, one to command velocity, and one to set the states of one or more of its 24V outputs. Such things as light curtains or “Enable” buttons could be read through the controller’s 24V inputs and a special joystick (analog) input can be used to “jog” the motor for maintenance.
The SilverDust controller can be used on any of QuickSilver’s brushless AC NEMA 17 or NEMA 23 frame servo motors which are available in both IP50 and IP65 (wash down) environmental ratings.
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