Guide

How GrooveDMX works.

The app listens to the music, detects beat and section, picks a look from that and writes 512 DMX channels onto the cable forty-four times per second. All on the phone, without the internet. This guide explains every function, from the first show to troubleshooting.

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Your first show

Plug in the interface: a USB DMX interface through a USB-A to USB-C adapter (OTG) or a hub, or an Art-Net interface on the same Wi-Fi. What you need is under “What you need to connect”.
Add your fixtures in the rig screen: pick a profile, enter the DMX address, set the position in the room.
On the start screen, choose the source: microphone or your own folder.
Start the show. The app listens, finds the beat and goes.
Fine-tune on the desk screen: pick the genre, tick the looks you want, adjust the faders.

The show also runs without an interface. The room view shows what the rig would be doing, which makes it easy to set things up from the sofa.

What you need to connect

A DMX interface sits between the phone and the lights. There are two ways: wired over USB or wireless over Art-Net on your Wi-Fi. USB is the easier one to start with.

Almost all USB DMX interfaces have a full-size USB-A plug, while most phones have a USB-C port. So you need an adapter or a hub in between. A normal charging cable will not do.

USB DMX interface: With an FTDI chip (FT232, such as Enttec Open DMX and its many clones), Enttec DMX USB Pro or uDMX. The app detects it by itself when you plug it in.
USB-A to USB-C, OTG: The smallest option: an OTG adapter from USB-A (socket) to USB-C (plug). Interface in, adapter into the phone, done.
Or a USB-C hub: Better for long nights: a hub with a USB-A port and a USB-C charging input. The phone stays on the charger with the interface connected, and the battery lasts all night.
DMX cable: From the interface to the first light, then from light to light. Put a terminator on the last fixture if you have one.
Phone with OTG: The phone has to power USB devices (USB host, OTG). Almost all current Android phones can; on some, OTG has to be switched on in the settings first.
Or Art-Net: An Art-Net interface or Art-Net lights on the same Wi-Fi as the phone. No adapter needed, but a stable network.

Without an interface the show still runs on the 3D stage. You can set everything up before the cable arrives.

What happens under the hood

The path from sound to cable is always the same. If something is wrong, walk it from the start, exactly like the self-test in the app.

Capture: Microphone or built-in player. The microphone picks up the whole room, the player lets the app listen to itself: no reverb, no delay.
Analysis: Eighty-six times per second: frequency bands, noise profile, level. From that come tempo, sections and percussion.
Detection: Tempo with a confidence value, sections from silence to outro, kick, clap and hi-hat separately. You pick the genre yourself.
Show: One look per section, with its effects layered on top of each other. Colour mood, gobo choice and group patterns keep running alongside.
Output: Offset by position in the room, afterglow measured against the beat, then 512 channels over USB or Art-Net.

The frame clock hangs on the output, not on the analysis. Otherwise the show’s clock would run in bursts, because audio hardware delivers in bursts.

The screens

The order follows the question you ask first in a room: is it running, what should it do, how does it look.

Start: Is it running, what should the show do, preview with tempo, section and output, music source and quick controls.
Desk: Genre, what is coming in, the looks, the four faders and the channel preview.
Rig: Add fixtures, pick profile and address, position in the room, movement window, room size.
Colour: Choose a colour set or fixed colours, plus the gobo choice and a preview of the room.
Settings: Brightness, output path, language, Pro and Club, safety notes and legal texts.

Modes

Microphone: The app listens to the room. Gain compensates for a quiet rig, and the level is measured against the room’s noise floor.
Built-in player: The app plays music from a folder you grant access to and listens to itself. No room reverb, no travel time, the microphone stays off. Part of Pro.
Planned Intelligence: Analyses each track once in advance and keeps the result, the song map. From it the app plans the whole show and knows ahead when builds, drops, breaks and blackouts come. Runs on the phone, no server and no AI service. In this mode the app picks the looks, so the selection on the desk is not used. Part of Pro.
Bass light organ: The light runs through the room as a wave and flashes on the detected beat. Gobos stay open, the heads point at the floor, and they only move to a new spot while the lamp is dark.

Choosing looks

A look is a handful of effects layered on top of each other. On the desk screen you tick which ones may appear.

A tap ticks a look on or off. Hold your finger down and you see it on the rig straight away, for as long as you hold. After that the show carries on where it was. The preview only starts after about two tenths of a second, otherwise a stray look flashes over the rig on every tap.

Nothing ticked does not mean dark, it means the usual vocabulary. The raw selection is always shown, so you can see what you decided yourself.

Each look is stored under a fixed identifier, so a saved selection, the Planned Intelligence plan and your own show designs keep working when you switch the language.

The 17 groove looks: Circles, Swing, Pan, Spirals, Wave, Hand-off, Staccato, Counter-run, Bands, Colour rain, Stomp, Scatter, Fan, Undertow, Counter-wave, Heartbeat and Drift.
The big moments: Intro, break, build, drop, escalation, outro, strobe storm, breathing, standing light, silence and idle light. The show picks these by section itself.
Blaulicht: A beacon like on an emergency vehicle: red and blue alternating, odd and even heads in counter phase, six bars there and back. Manual only, the automatic show never throws it in.
Scheinwerfer: A directed beam instead of a wash. Manual only as well.
Magnet: Before the drop the heads creep towards the middle and flicker, on the drop they fly apart. Both follow the music, not a clock of their own.

The four buttons

Blackout, haze, blind and strobe carry a symbol instead of a word. These are the buttons you reach for while looking somewhere else.

Blackout: Everything dark, stays on until you switch it off again. Reachable even when the desk is locked.
Haze: Switches the hazer, also stays on.
Blind: Work light for as long as you hold it. It deliberately ignores the master brightness: if you press it, you want to see right now.
Strobe: Manual strobe, also only while held. A work light left on by accident lights the dance floor for the rest of the night.
In full screen: Which buttons and sliders appear in full screen, and in which order, is set under Settings, Screen and full screen. Blackout always stays.
Energy in full screen: Drag up or down over the stage with two fingers; the frame shows the level. Or show the energy slider in full screen.
Camera tour: In stage mode the stage slowly circles the room. Switch it off under Screen and full screen to keep the view as you turned it.

The faders

Four faders belong to the genre and change with it: intensity, transition, offset and movement speed. Whatever you set by hand belongs to that genre and is there again next time. A dot on the genre tile shows where you changed something; long-pressing it asks first and then restores that genre to its defaults.

Two faders deliberately stay out of it, because they describe the room and not the music: master brightness and minimum brightness. A genre change that suddenly alters the brightness of the room would be a nasty surprise.

Intensity: How hard the show hits. Techno starts at 0.95, Calm at 0.57.
Transition: How softly brightness trails off. Flashes are exempt, they go out unbraked.
Offset: How strongly fixtures react one after another by their position in the room.
Movement speed: How fast moving heads travel, capped between 8 and 90 degrees per second. A head driven faster than it can move shows less movement, not more.

Colour and gobos

Colour set: Seventeen sets, plus one from your own colours. The show hands them out in turn, always by position in the room: neighbours get the same colour, otherwise it looks like confetti.
Fixed colours: One fixed colour means standstill, several mean changes between exactly those. A colour set and fixed colours are mutually exclusive.
How much colour: Two, at most three colours in the room at the same time. More looks lively on paper and like a funfair in the room.
Gobos: Chosen by name, not by slot number, because two heads have their dots in different slots of the wheel. A gobo stays for at least four seconds, otherwise the wheel turns more than it stands still.

Rig and room

The app works with positions in the room, not with fixture numbers. That is the only reason a wave travels through the venue and not through the address list.

Adding fixtures: Pick a profile, set the DMX address, give it a name. A rig that is only half understood is rejected rather than guessed.
Position: Where the fixture hangs or stands. Waves, chases and colour distribution follow it.
Movement window: The allowed range for pan and tilt. Without it the head lights up the wall or your guests’ faces.
Room size: Width, depth and height. That lets hand-offs and floor targets aim at real points in the room.
Mounting: Ceiling, floor or wall; the app asks when you add a fixture. On the floor a wash points up, a moving head stands upside down and still aims correctly.
Edit fixture: Place, depth, rotation and height act on the stage as you drag. Cancel restores the previous state.
Room view: Shows the rig from above with its beams. Good for setting up, even without a rig connected.

Output and continuous operation

USB: Cables with an FT232 chip, plus Enttec and uDMX. The phone needs USB host, that is OTG.
Art-Net: Over Wi-Fi to an interface on the same network. The app also keeps the radio awake, otherwise Android bundles the packets and the show stutters.
Screen off: The show keeps running as a foreground service, with a stop button in the notification.
No server: I run no server. The app itself only sends Art-Net on your own network; for purchases and updates it talks to Google Play.

Mirror ball

Aim moving heads at the mirror ball or another spot in the room, save the position and recall it in full screen with one gesture. The other lights keep following the music. Part of Pro.

More, Mirror ball. Pick a target or create one with “+ Target”, for example “Ball” or “Bar”. Up to six targets.
Tap a head; it lights white so you can see where it points. Drive it with the joystick: the further from the centre, the faster, very fine near the centre. The speed slider sets the overall speed.
“Save” stores the position for this target. Heads that should not move get “Not to this target”.
Switch on “Show in full screen”. A “Ball” button then appears next to Colour in full screen.

Tap Ball: Moves the saved heads to the selected target and holds them there. Tap again to hand them back to the show.
Hold and swipe up: Opens the bar. Releasing on a target selects it and moves there.
Colour: In the bar: white, the colour of the show, a fixed colour or a colour fade.
Automatic: Release on “Automatic” to switch it on or off. The heads then go to the ball by themselves when it gets quiet (intro, break, outro) and return to the show afterwards.
Targets of the automatic: Release on “Auto” next to a target to add it to the automatic. At each new quiet passage the next one takes its turn.

The mirror ball is part of Pro and needs at least one moving head in the rig. Tapping still works while the automatic is running.

Remote control

A second phone or tablet controls the show over Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi needed. The box is the device the lights are connected to; it needs Pro. The remote is any other device running GrooveDMX, also free. New in 1.4.5.

On the box: More, Remote control, “Make this the box”. The app asks once for “Nearby devices”. Then the four-digit PIN appears.
On the second device: More, Remote control, “Find box”, tap the box and enter the PIN.
“Open remote” shows the controls. Next time the remote reconnects on its own with the saved PIN.

Blinder and blackout: On while your finger stays down. A long hold locks it, a tap releases it.
Strobe: Hold to flash, drag up to go faster; at the very top it locks.
Drop: Hold to build the tension, release to fire the drop.
Point: Hold and tilt the phone: the heads follow the movement. Drag up and release to keep the light as a steady light.
Fog, new look, show: One tap. “Start show” and “Stop” switch the show on the box.
Colour and faders: Second page: colour, energy, brightness, movement speed, strobe rate, hold a look, genre, movement and mirror ball.

Bluetooth reaches about ten metres in a room. Keep the app open on the box. “New PIN” disconnects all remotes; they then need the new PIN.

Pro and Club

Locked features stay visible and carry a padlock, nothing is hidden. After the purchase your own choice is back straight away, because it was stored the whole time.

Player (Pro): Play and analyse music from your own folder.
Planned Intelligence (Pro): Analyse each track once in advance and plan the whole show.
Mirror ball (Pro): Aim moving heads at the ball or a spot in the room and recall them in full screen, also automatically in quiet passages.
Remote control (Pro): A second phone or tablet controls the show over Bluetooth. Only the box needs Pro.
More fixtures (Pro): Free drives eight fixtures. A bigger rig stays fully saved, the remaining fixtures stay dark, and the list names which ones.
PIN lock (Club): Locks the desk against other hands. After five attempts the waiting time grows. Blackout always stays free.
Autostart (Club): The app becomes the home screen and starts the show after booting, even after a power cut.
Fallback show (Club): After two seconds of silence a chosen look keeps running at a fixed practice tempo, so the room does not look dead.
Opening hours (Club): Weekdays with a start and end time. Outside them everything stays dark, inside the show runs by itself. Blind and strobe still work, and a time past midnight counts towards the starting day.
Rooms (Club): Switch saved rigs with one tap, for example for two rooms in the same building.

When something is off

No light: First the self-test in the app, then the signal path from the start: source, level, tempo, output path, address. Check the minimum brightness, some lamps produce no light below a threshold.
Interface not found: Is the adapter seated? A charge-only cable or an adapter without OTG carries no data. On some phones, switch on OTG in the settings. With a hub, plugging in the charger helps.
Show ignores the music: Raise the gain on the microphone. Below 25 percent tempo confidence the show deliberately does not trust the grid.
Movement judders: Lower the movement speed or stretch the cycle. A target that jumps across the whole window leaves the speed limit no ramp.
Heads point the wrong way: Check the movement window in the rig. A number in the window is not a direction in the room.
Show stutters over Wi-Fi: Art-Net needs a stable network. The app keeps the radio awake with the screen off, but an overloaded network is still a problem.
Only eight fixtures light up: That is the limit of the free version. The fixture list names which ones stay dark.

Safety

Strobe: The app flashes up to twelve times per second. That can trigger seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy. Warn your audience clearly beforehand.
Lasers: Operate only as the manufacturer says and within the rules that apply. Class 3R and above need a laser safety officer. Never aim at eyes or into the audience.
Rigging: Fix fixtures properly and add a safety cable. The movement limits in the app do not replace mechanical safety.
Haze: Haze can set off smoke detectors. Clear it with the venue beforehand.
Kill switch: Always keep a way to switch the lights off independently of the app.