Link Status and Output

Once you have an active account with a plan, are signed into the app, and are connected to your lights through one of the methods in Hardware Setup, you need to configure your output settings within Blackout and that is done through the Link Status button in the top right corner.

TIP

If you are having issues connecting to your Fixtures please checkout this article for Troubleshooting Steps.

Output Protocols

In this section you choose what industry standard protocol you are sending out of the iPad. It's very important that you match your output protocol to what your lighting network/gateway/node are receiving.

Art-Net

• Directed Broadcast: Recommended option for broadcasting Art-Net where all hosts require the same data
• Limited Broadcast: Broadcasts to 255.255.255.255. This is required by some devices but is not per the Art-Net spec and not recommended if it can be avoided as it spams the network.
• Unicast: Allows for specifying a single IP address that Art-Net will send to
• Offset: Art-Net numbering starts from 0. Ensure that the offset in Blackout matches your Art-Net node's settings. For example:

Art-Net Numbering	Actual Universe
0	1
1	2

If your Art-Net node is set to Universe 1, the offset in Blackout should also be set to 1. Once this is set, forget about it. Don't let this complicate your patch.

For more information checkout: Art-Net Official Website

sACN

• Priority (1-200): This is useful when there is more than one controller on the network. Leave this at the default of 100 unless you have a reason to change it.

sACN multicasts data to a group of receivers that have to ‘subscribe’ in order to receive the correct data. Multicast can be more efficient but most ethernet switches have limited capability to handle multicast and so convert it to broadcast.

Bluetooth

Blackout STRONGLY recommends against using Bluetooth as Bluetooth is significantly slower than WiFi or Ethernet. Blackout does not allow effects over Bluetooth for this reason.

• Find Devices: Tap this to bring up a list of available devices.
• Universe to Output: This allows you to specify which universe you are sending.