Hello and welcome to The DMX Wiki,

As you may have of seen or heard many times or perhaps even not DMX is sometimes referred to as DMX 512 Or you'll here the word 512 bounded around alot!

This '512' refers to the maximum amount of channels that DMX can have in One 'Universe' so they say, what do I mean by Channels? Well imagine infront of you 512 milk bottles in a row… Each one can contain some milk but only so much and that limit is '255' so the milk bottles in front of you represent the 512 Channels in DMX but what does that '255' refer to? Well that's the maximum 'Value' of the amount of milk your bottle can hold.

and this is how DMX Works imagine your light needs 1 Channel (a milk bottle) and when that milk bottles empty (the values at 0) you get no light output but slowly as you fill the milk bottle with milk (increasing the value) your light gets brighter and brighter until your bottle has got 255 litres of milk (the max), need it dimmer? Then pour some of that milk out! every litre is activating a switch that does something on your light and some lights don't mind having a value within a range for example in the manual it will say 230 - 255 turns the light green so when you fill that bottle up once it reaches 230 and up until 255 your light will stay green!