Art-Net (DMX)

Arkestra receives Art-Net on UDP port 6454. Every DMX channel of every incoming universe is a mapping source, so a lighting desk can drive any parameter in the project — the same way LFOs, audio or MIDI do.

There is no fixed fixture personality. You decide which channel does what, and you can save that decision as a patch file to reuse on another rig.

Enabling the receiver

Open the External Input panel in the right sidebar (antenna icon), switch to the Art-Net tab and turn on Enabled.

The receiver is off until you enable it, because starting it is what triggers the macOS local network permission prompt. Once running, the status row reads Listening on 6454. The port is fixed by the Art-Net specification and cannot be changed.

Arkestra answers ArtPoll, so desks and node-scanning tools list it as an Art-Net node once the receiver is on.

Mapping a channel to a parameter

Right-click any parameter → Art-Net. The mapping editor appears in the inspector with two ways to bind a channel:

• Learn — press it, then move a fader on the desk. Arkestra binds the channel that moved the most in that moment, so fading a whole group at once still lands on the fader you are actually touching.
• Pencil — type a Universe and Channel by hand. Channels are 1-based, as printed on the desk.

The panel’s Universes section lists every universe it has seen, with its Net.Sub.Uni breakdown and each active channel’s live 0–255 value.

Per-channel options

Expand a channel in the Universes list to configure it:

Option	What it does
16-bit	Reads this channel and the next one as a coarse/fine pair. Use it for dimmers and positions where 8-bit steps are visible.
Smooth	Smoothing time in milliseconds, up to 500 ms. Softens steppy or noisy channel data.

Bool parameters use their own threshold, so a channel crossing that level switches them on.

Colour

Right-click a colour parameter → Art-Net Color, then pick HSV, RGB or HSL and move the desk’s first colour fader. Hue, saturation and value bind to three consecutive channels in one gesture.

Arkestra stores colour as HSV, so RGB and HSL desks are converted as the values arrive. Pick the model your fixture profile sends.

Selection channels

The Selection section of the Art-Net panel holds channels that change structure rather than a single value. Map them like any other parameter.

Control	Behaviour
Scene Select	Reads the channel as a slot number, 1–255. 0 holds.
Track · Chain	Splits the channel evenly across that track’s chains. The bottom band holds the current chain, so a channel at zero changes nothing.
Track · Fade Time	Sets the track’s crossfade length from 0.05 to 5 seconds while mapped.

Both selects act only when the value crosses into a different band or slot, so holding a channel steady never re-triggers.

Scene slots

By default a scene answers to its position in the Scenes panel, which moves when you reorder scenes. To pin one, right-click the scene → DMX Slot → pick a slot number. Pinned scenes keep their slot no matter how the list is reordered; Follow Position returns a scene to positional behaviour.

Saving a patch

The Patch section exports every Art-Net mapping in the project — parameter, universe, channel, smoothing and 16-bit flag — as a JSON file, and imports it back.

Mappings are matched by parameter path, so a patch built on one project rebuilds on another with the same track, chain and effect names. Anything the patch cannot find is reported after the import.

Art-Net vs OSC

	Art-Net	OSC
Transport	UDP 6454 (fixed)	UDP, port of your choice
Values	8-bit channels, or 16-bit pairs	32-bit float
Addressing	Universe + channel number	Free-form string path
Best for	Lighting desks, show control	Software, custom controllers

OSC →