Controlling arena playback using external hardware

[eranno]

Hi,

We are planning to build a simulator, and currently checking the option to use Arena as our main playback software.
The simulator should include 4 video streams, around 7 channels of audio, and lightning.

As I understand we can use DMX to control lightning directly from Arena, and actually place light events on th timeline, which is great.

My question is: can we use some external hardware as a "remote", so users will b able to initiate playback without touching the computer?

Second question - is there a way to implement a scenario which says that where playback is not active (either finished or just not started yet) a DMX event will be initiated? we would like to use it for fixed light between shows.

Appreciate your help
Eran

[Zoltán]

you can control Resolume via Midi, DMX (ArtNet), OSC.

Any midi device would do, you could tear up or build a cheap midi device with a few buttons to fit your project.

I have seen several installations, for example an ardunio based midi remote via touch sensitive paint. (can't find the link)

I have experimented a while ago with an Xbox kinect sensor to make a gesture based OSC control implementation, it worked great, just didn't have the time to make a complex thing. It's based on SimpleOpenNI library and I coded it in Processing, the sample programs are a good start to build something interesting.

There are other gesture detection systems, like this one or this one

So a lot is possible.

As for the lighting controls, Resolume can send DMX based on the color/luminance pixel information ie, color of a video. so you play a video and map an area of that to specific DMX channels.
Also this could be useful - mac only.