QLC+ supports the Art-Net protocol through an input/output plugin that receives and transmits packets on the network.
No extra requirements are needed, since QLC+ has a native implementation of the Art-Net protocol that works on Linux, Windows and macOS systems.
The Art-Net plugin can send and receive packets from multiple network cards, virtual addresses, the loopback device (127.0.0.1) and multiple universes per network interface.
By default, Art-Net packets are transmitted as UDP, using the default port 6454 and the broadcast address of the selected interface (e.g. 192.168.0.255). When using the loopback device packets are always transmitted using address 127.0.0.1.
When transmitting multiple universes on the same interface, the packets will be sent by default with an Art-Net Universe ID equal to the QLC+ universe number minus 1.
For example:
QLC+ Universe 1 --> Art-Net Universe 0
QLC+ Universe 2 --> Art-Net Universe 1
...
QLC+ Universe 8 --> Art-Net Universe 7
This choice is due to some facts:
1- The first valid Art-Net universe is 0 and not 1
2- The first universe accepted by commercial Art-Net-DMX devices like eDMX and ODE is 0, so to have QLC+ to work out of the box, the first Art-Net universe must be 0.
If the above settings don't meet the requirements of your network, please read the following chapter.
When clicking on the configuration button, a small dialog will be displayed, showing 2 tabs: the Universes Configuration and the Nodes Tree.
Universes Configuration: after a QLC+ universe is patched with an Art-Net input or output, an entry will be displayed in this list, allowing to manually configure the desired parameters to be used by the Art-Net plugin.
Input lines do not have particular parameters, while an output line can be configured with the following:
Settings that are different from the plugin defaults, will be stored in your QLC+ workspace, to increase the portability of a project across different platforms, such as different operating systems or a PC and a Raspberry Pi.
Nodes Tree: This tab displays the Art-Net nodes discovered on the network, grouped by network interface.
QLC+ will always appear in this list as a node participating to the network.
Art-Net nodes are added to this list if they support the ArtPoll/ArtPollReply message, otherwise they won't appear. This doesn't mean you will not able to communicate with them.
If you own one of these devices, they both have configuration tools that might come handy when working with QLC+. With them you can set several parameters to match the best configuration to input/output data from/to QLC+.
For example if you want QLC+ universe 3 to output data on the first port of a eDMX, you need to use the tool below to change the device universe address to 2.
Here the links to download the tools:
DMXKing eDMX Configuration tool
ENTTEC Node Management Utility
QLC+ has been tested with the following Art-Net software and devices: