Luminair [iPhone, QuarzComposer]

The team behind DMX Remote app Luminair have just released a new free plug-in for Apple’s Quartz Composer called Pixelnode. Pixelnode enables lighting and multimedia designers to turn Apple’s Quartz Composer into a powerful live media-server, controllable via DMX lighting consoles. Luminair application for the iPhone enables you to wirelessly control, view, record and manage intelligent DMX lighting fixtures, consoles, media servers and other software directly from your iPhone or iPod touch.

Although slightly expensive, Luminair is targeted at lighting and multimedia professionals who work with DMX equipment and since all of the work is computed on the device, user’s don’t need to go through a computer or console to operate, just an Art-Net interface.

Guys at Synthe FX were kind enough to send us a promocode for the iPhone app and we got a chance to have play. If I remember well, Luminair was one of the first if not the first iPhone app in the appstore (Aug ’08) to offer over the air control of hardware. The app interface is as impressive as the images below show and an in depth tool providing multiple levels of control.

Quartz Composer is an application for Mac OS X that provides a visual programming environment geared towards live-performance and installations. We have already mentioned few projects that use Quartz Composer. If you are familiar with the work of vade, you’ll see that endless source of possibilities QC can offer. Whether Luminair is a tool for artists as much as professional lighting designers remains to be seen. For now, the price tag may deter some especially as there is no demo application to download. What is certain is the team at Synthe FX have put a lot of effort to create a very sophisticated DMX lighting control software for a mobile device.

For a full set of features and app capability see the beautifully designed Luminair website.

If you’re looking for DMX support in other environments, here’s an open source project: http://code.google.com/p/simple-dmx/ (via createdigitalmotion.com)

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.5.6
Cost: $99.99
Developer: Synthe FX