London Haskell

Speaker: Peter Marks. Haskellight - a Haskell framework and DSL for controlling lighting. For many years commercial lighting systems have been digitally controlled. Whilst there have been many proprietary protocols, DMX 512 has become the dominant standard. Everything from stage lighting to nightclub, restaurant, hotel and even some home systems can all be controlled in the same way, and with a simple hardware interface and an existing library, we can talk to any DMX 512 device from Haskell. Haskellight is a small framework and DSL for describing fixtures (lighting devices), composing rigs (collections of fixtures in an environment), defining patterns and scenes, and ultimately sending control signals to the hardware. Using the REPL, it allows us to code in real-time and have our lighting react to live streaming MIDI control data or other input data such as audio frequency analysis. In this talk, Peter will discuss why we might want such a tool and why we would want to have it in Haskell. He’ll introduce the hardware involved and terminology used, and describe some of the implementation detail and design decisions. There will, of course, be a demo, and an opportunity for some audience members to have a play.