There are several DMX calculators available for the iPhone now, who’d have thought there would be such a huge demand for this type of application. What can possibly set this one apart from the rest and make it worthy of your attention? Well it’s free that’s what. But free doesn’t always mean better, does this application have what it takes?
It really is quite odd that this very niche market seems to have so many applications on the AppStore. There isn’t any other category so well catered for than DMX calculators on the iPhone. This new addition has been created by Tom Weber and is a very simple straight forward program. It doesn’t do anything clever, it just takes a value from 0-511, you hit the button and it tells you the dip switch settings to use. There is a simple pair of increment / decrement buttons that will change your current value by 1, but there is no option to customise this for calibrating moving lights. It also lacks a setting to allow a -1 offset that is required for certain DMX devices where 1 is set as 0 on the dip switch.
There are other features missing as well, it won’t accommodate more than one universe so you won’t be able to enter an absolute value higher than 511 and establish what its address is. Another small thing is that it will reset whatever state it is in when you leave the application. So if you receive a phone call from someone, when you go back to the application it will be back in its default state again.
However, you have to remind yourself that you didn’t actually pay anything for this. As such it warrants your attention if you only have a need for this very basic functionality. The dip switch display is large and clear, the keypad pops up from the bottom when you need to enter a DMX value and the number will update in real time if you fiddle with the switches. It all works very well, although the slider seems a little pointless as selecting a specific number is far too fiddly. It doesn’t move smoothly so you end up jumping batches of 50 to 100 addresses at a time or just stabbing randomly in the general area. It makes far more sense to just use the keypad for data entry.
So, for free it’s definitely a bargain no arguing there. But when you can get something like DMXCalc for only 59p, if you use DMX regularly you’ll get much more out of that application. It makes the money aspect barely worth considering. You’ve got nothing to lose though so give it a try.
Rating: 3/5
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