Open Lighting Architecture Developer Documentation

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Features
• Supported Platforms
• Getting Started
• Licensing

Overview

The Open Lighting Architecture is a flexible framework for working with lighting control protocols such as DMX512 and RDM. It contains a framework library (libola), a C++ API (libolaclient) and the main program (olad).

Features

OLA can act as a gateway, where it converts between different protocols. It can also be used by client applications to communicate with DMX devices.

OLA supports the following:

• Various DMX512 over IP Protocols, including:
  • ArtNet 1, 2 & 3
  • Streaming ACN (E1.31)
  • Pathway Pathport
  • Strand ShowNet
  • Enttec ESP
• Other network protocols, including:
  • KiNet
  • OSC (Open Sound Control)
• More than 20 USB DMX widgets, including those from the following manufacturers:
  • Enttec
  • DMXKing
  • JESE
  • Robe

Other features include:

• Built in web based control panel
• Support for acting as an RDM controller or RDM gateway.
• C++, Python and Java APIs.

Supported Platforms

OLA runs on Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD. It's been tested to run on x86, x86_64 & arm platforms.

Getting Started

As a developer, the easiest way to get started using OLA is with the C++ Client API Tutorial.

Licensing

The OLA framework and C++ client library is licensed under the LGPL. The OLA Daemon (olad) is licenced under the GPL.