About freeACN

FreeACN will be open source/free software implementation of the ESTA's Architecture for Control Networks (ACN).

It will consist of:

What is ACN?

ACN is a standard produced by the Entertainment Services and Technology Association (ESTA) for the control of entertainment equipment via networks. ACN was ratified by ANSI as a standard in October of 2006. It is supposed toreplace the limited and ageing DMX512 protocol currently used in most of the world's venues. ACN will run over any physical layer, though Ethernet is the most commonly used.

With ACN there is the hope to have a unified protocol to control lighting, sound, audiovisual and stage equipment. It is currently not used anywhere I know of but many of the moving lights, lighting consoles and sound desks available now are "ACN aware" or ACN upgradeable. There are other competing standards but these are all proprietary and thus would make it difficult to have a mixed network of devices.

ACN consists of several parts. These are the root layer protocol, session data transport, device management protocol and device description language. It is designed to be extensible so that more protocols can be added. Indeed, there is already a DMX512 over ACN protocol devised by

More information about ACN and links to draft standards can be found in the wikipedia article.

Project Status

We are a long way from completing these projects but a start has been made. Once libacn is working and some tools are in place I plan to develop a full controller/device suite. Stay tuned for more...

This is an open source project, and as such is staffed by volunteers. If you would like to help please do not hesitate to contact me via dr_saturn at users dot sourceforge.org

Licencing and Copyright

FreeACN will be released under the GPL and perhaps the LGPL.

Hosting

This project is hosted by Sourceforge.

SourceForge.net Logo

A bit about the Author

I am currently Head Staging Technician at the Brisbane Powerhouse. Despite having been a theatre technician (mainly sound and mechanist) for 20 years I still have a few brain cells left :P I've studied stagecraft, physics, control theory and computer engineering.