How to design a small club lighting-control network

Two networks, one desk

Put Art-Net or sACN nodes on a wired switch with the lighting PC. Put staff phones on venue Wi-Fi or a separate SSID for a control surface only. If those two worlds share a cheap switch without isolation, you will debug other people’s Chromecasts at 23:40.

A five-to-eight port gigabit switch that lives in the booth rack is enough for many rooms: PC, two nodes, a spare, maybe a visualiser laptop on tech days. Label every cable.

Power, spare paths and the Tuesday failure

Nodes need power as much as data. Put them on the lighting UPS or a known circuit, not a random bar socket that the cleaner switches off. A dark node looks like a software bug.

Keep a spare XLR snake from the booth to the first truss position if you can. When the Ethernet run dies, you can still dump one universe from a USB DMX interface and save the wash. That spare path is worth more than a second decorative pixel bar.

Write the static IP table twice: once in the rack, once in the cloud folder the Monday manager can open. The person who configured DHCP reservations will be on holiday.

Who is allowed to touch the editor

A kiosk PC in a booth will get a beer on the keyboard and a curious guest. Lock the editor behind a PIN or an account if the software supports it. Assigned banks and a phone surface should still work. The patch should not be one mis-click away from empty.

Visiting LDs need a documented merge path: their desk on DMX in, or their laptop on a spare switch port with a known universe range you reserved. “Just unplug our PC” is how house looks never come back.

A reference drawing

Booth: lighting PC (NIC 1 show, NIC 2 internet), MIDI controller, small switch. FOH or truss: two nodes, universes 1–2, XLR out. Phones: venue staff SSID, no route to the show subnet. That drawing covers a surprising number of rooms.

Scale up with more node ports and more universes, not by plugging the show switch into the office core “just for a second.”

Weekly habits

Ping the nodes when you open. Fire a known cue or a full-on on universe 1. Check haze fluid before you check plugins. Network problems that happen every Saturday at 22:00 are often a cleaner’s switch or a bar Wi-Fi AP that got replugged into the lighting switch.

People, not only packets

Train one other staff member on blackout and haze. Write it in verbs on a card taped to the booth: “Red pad = dark. Yellow fader = haze. Do not open the laptop.” That is operations, not branding.

Schedule a monthly “unplug the switch” drill if the room is an install. Know how long the PC takes to come back, whether nodes boot before the PC, and whether fixtures hold last look or go dark. Surprises belong in rehearsal.

If the club hires a touring LD, give them a one-page universe map and a spare port. Do not make them reverse-engineer your graph. They will unplug you otherwise, and they will be right.

What “small” still requires

Even a 12-fixture room needs labelled XLR, a terminator on the last fixture of each chain, and a universe map. Small is not an excuse for a mystery nest. The next technician might be you after six months away.

Budget a spare node and a spare switch. When the house node dies on Saturday, you want a pre-addressed spare, not a marketplace delivery on Tuesday. Write the spare’s IP on the device before you need it.

If the PC lives in the booth, cable-tie the Ethernet. Guests will trip it. If the PC lives in a lockable rack, give the booth a surface and a phone. The editor does not need to be next to the drinks.

Documentation that fits a clipboard

One page: switch ports, IPs, universes, first-fixture addresses, blackout pad, who to call. Laminate it. Digital-only docs disappear when the PC is locked.

Update the page when you change a node. An outdated clipboard is worse than none because people will trust it. Date the page. Throw out last year’s copy.

Related

• DMX over Ethernet →
• Club lighting software →
• Show Lock →