At ArKaos we are writing software to drive LEDs since many years. We have our standard media server software MediaMaster and our VJ software that is used every day to drive LED walls and LED fixtures. We have also our LED mapper that is a cool way to drive LED fixtures based on DMX or ArtNet.
Still it’s too complicated and/or expensive to use. It’s too complicated because simple LED fixtures do rely on DMX or ArtNet to work, and there are too many magic numbers that can go wrong and prevent the magic pixels to blink. On the other side bigger LED walls have expensive hardware interfaces and make it unpractical financially for too many performers and clubs.
There must be a way to create LED device having an ethernet connection and there should be a way for a LED device to say hello automatically to a Media Server and to describe itself to it. It would be so cool if a LED device could contact MediaMaster and configure itself automatically, it would explain it’s capacities saying “I am an LED device having 48 by 12 pixels and I expect pixels in the formats of 5 bits or red green blue”… Of course to make this economically practical the LED devices should not have a too expensive processor, you don’t want to add a PC behind every light 🙂
That’s the prototype we built lately, it uses an inexpensive open-source electronics prototyping platform called Arduino, here is a video explaining this:
If you want to know more details, here is a start: