History
The Open Lighting Project began as a university project. In 2004, as a student at the University of Western Australia, Simon Newton was required to complete a year long software engineering project. DMX over IP protocols were starting to see adaption so Simon focused on the ArtNet protocol, since it was the only publicly available protocol at the time.. Simon wrote libartnet, a Linux implementation of the ArtNet lighting control protocol and since it was the first Open Source implementation of an IP based lighting control protocol, libartnet was used in venues around the world.
Recognizing a need for Open Source software within the industry, Simon founded the Open Lighting Project in 2005 and began work on the Open Lighting Architecture. The project grew and has spawned sub-projects to meet the needs of the industry.
Open Lighting Embedded is Announced
October 7, 2015
OLP announces an open source DMX/RDM stack for PIC32. The Number1 hardware is made available through Stellascapes.
Open Lighting Project joins the Free Software Support Network
October 5, 2015
OLP joined http://freesoftwaresupport.org/ , and in doing so obtained 501 (c)(3) status.
Debian Jessie release includes OLA
August 26, 2015
OLA Trademark Established
December 23, 2014
A registered trademark is granted for the OLA logo.
Google Summer of Code, doubling up for 2014
April 21, 2014
We’ve doubled our number of GSOC projects for 2014! Jesse Anderson is working on a touchscreen interface for the Raspberry Pi, while Lukas Erlinghagen is working on porting OLA to Windows.
Open Lighting Project at linux.conf.au 2014
January 9, 2014
Simon presented a talk on the Open Lighting Project at linux.conf.au 2014. The talk can be viewed on YouTube.
Open Lighting Project Repositories move to GitHub
December 24, 2013
As the project grew, the previous hosting site didn’t have the features we required. We moved over to GitHub and haven’t looked back.
Lighting and Sound International covers the Open Lighting Architecture
September 1, 2013
See Lighting And Sound International (LSI), September 2013 Edition.
#openlighting IRC channel created
February 3, 2013
The project’s official IRC channel was created on freenode: irc://freenode.net/openlighting
First OLA image released for Raspberry Pi
July 18, 2012
OLA Raspberry Pi
OLA featured in Linux Journal
December 1, 2011
The December 2011 Issue of Linux Journal featured OLA.
OLA is added to MacPorts
June 21, 2011
RDM Responder Tests released
February 19, 2011
rdm.openlighting.org site launched
January 19, 2011
http://rdm.openlighting.org/
Initial support for E1.31 (Streaming ACN) added to OLA
October 26, 2010
OLA 0.8.0 adds RDM support
August 7, 2010
Arduino RGB Mixer is released
February 7, 2010
See Arduino RGB Mixer.
Simon attends his first CPWG meeting & plugfest in Dallas
January 23, 2010
http://tsp.plasa.org/tsp/working_groups/CP/docs/CPmin01-2010w.pdf This influenced the direction of OLA as the majority of the equipment and effort at the plugfest was focused on RDM, rather than ACN.
openlighting.org registered
January 10, 2010
The new domain represents the shift in the project beyond just DMX512.
Initial support for E1.31 (Streaming ACN) added to OLA
October 26, 2009
OLA 0.3.0 released
August 8, 2009
OLA was almost entirely re-written for the 0.3.0 release. The RPC system was changed to use protocol buffers and a new web interface was introduced built on ctemplate. For the first time the patching of port to universes was persistent across restarts. This release adds the Python
LLA renamed to OLA
July 28, 2009
To reflect the fact that LLA now ran on more than Linux, the project was renamed to OLA (Open Lighting Architecture). As part of the rebranding the mailing list address changed to [email protected].
First post to the linux-lighting mailing list
July 21, 2008
The first message was a simple project status update.
LLA 0.2.0 Released
January 1, 2007
0.2.0 had support for SandNet and the Open DMX USB. It also supported basic universe merging. It was quickly followed by 0.2.1 which added Pathport and support for the StageProfi widgets.
libartnet-1.0.6 adds support for ArtNet II
November 3, 2006
ESTA Manufacturer ID assigned
April 18, 2006
The code is 0x7A70 or ‘zp’ in ASCII. The initials are from Simon’s Dog.
opendmx.net is registered
April 6, 2006
The plan was to run a wiki documenting Open Source and DIY lighting software.
libartnet 1.0.0 released
March 30, 2006
Initial commit of LLA
August 25, 2005
The first commit to the LLA repo is 730489abbc3de7127264a48fab30e145ec107be4. It includes an ArtNet and ESP Net plugin.
Simon emails the QLC list announcing an ArtNet Plugin
April 28, 2005
I’ve made an ArtNet out plugin, it’s available from http://www.nomis52.net/data/artnet/qlc/ It requires libartnet which is here: http://www.nomis52.net/data/artnet/libartnet/ If anyone uses it let me know how it goes. I just hacked it up quickly as a proof-of-concept type thing. It should really have some more options in the settings window such as which universe to output data on and the like
libartnet 0.1.9 adds support for OS X
April 18, 2005
First working version of the Netgear wireless ArtNet node
March 1, 2005
libartnet 0.1.2 is released
February 11, 2005
This is the first release licensed under the LGPL.
Simon buys a Netgear router and starts hacking it
January 24, 2005
The goal was to turn it into an ArtNet to DMX gateway using libartnet.
artnet-0.1.1.tar.gz released
December 12, 2004
Available from http://nomis52.net/data/artnet/libartnet/artnet-0.1.1.tar.gz This contained both the libarary and some example programs: artnet-discover.c artnet-dmxconsole.c artnet-usb.c artnet-usb.c was an ArtNet to Open USB DMX gateway.
Simon submits the proposal for his university project
August 6, 2004
http://undergraduate.csse.uwa.edu.au/year4/Current/Students/2004/SimonNewton.html This was the beginning of libartnet. The goal was to “create an open source implementation of the ArtNet protocol” and then combine the software with hardware that could transmit and receive DMX signals.
Simon emails Wayne Howell asking about ArtNet
May 26, 2004
The email that started it all: Firstly may I ask that if this is not directly applicable to you, can you please forward it to the relevant department within Artistic Licence. I decided to contact you initially as your name appears on the ArtNet specifications as I was referred to you by Ujjal Kar after posting on http://members3.boardhost.com/dmx512/index.html Let me quickly introduce myself. I am a 5th year student at the University of Western Australia in Perth studying for a Software Engineering degree ( http://www.csse.uwa.edu.au ). I have completed a Computer Science degree, as well as having studied three years of Electrical Engineering before I changed into Software. I’ve always had a keen interest in lighting and spent the majority of my high school years designing the lighting for school plays and discos. I build most of my gear myself, and my current project is programming an Atmel micro-controler to control an effects light that I have built. In July I am to begin a year-long research project as part of my Software Engineering degree and I am interested in the area of DMX over IP. I’ve looked into this area and see that there are number of protocols from different vendors. I initially thought of looking
