Artistic Licence to Debut New Products at PLASA 2011

Artistic Licence Engineering announces the release of Art-Net 3. Fully backward-compatible with previous versions, this free-of-charge Ethernet protocol is now capable of handling a staggering 32,768 universes (or 32 "kiloverses") of DMX lighting control.

Art-Net 3 retains all the features its predecessors (Art-Net I and Art-Net II), being simple to implement, highly efficient, and available in the public domain. Crucially, all existing Art-Net I and II devices will operate seamlessly with Art-Net 3.

The key difference of Art-Net 3 is its phenomenal data capacity, the company says -- at least two orders of magnitude greater than the 256-universe limit of Art-Net II.

When Art-Net I was released about a decade ago, lighting control demands rarely exceeded a handful of Universes. By the time Art-Net II arrived in 2006, the benchmark had increased to a few dozen. Today, fuelled by the explosive growth in LED technology, the largest installations have already reached the 250 Universe mark.

"Given the rate at which the data volumes are increasing, the need for Art-Net 3 is absolute," emphaszses Artistic Licence Engineering's technical director, Wayne Howell. "Already, numerous kiloverse projects are under discussion worldwide. This will still seem inconceivable to many!"