How do you take two different DMX sources and combine them into one signal? The answer, until recently, has been to use a piece of hardware that can receive both DMX source inputs and then merge them back into one DMX signal that is then sent to the fixture(s). This has been simplified somewhat, however, by the software engineers at ArKaos who developed Kling-Net. Kling-Net was created as an alternative communication protocol for pixel mapping video on an LED fixture. As it is an Ethernet-based protocol, it is sent out from an ArKaos media server via an Ethernet cable and then connected directly to the fixture or via a switch and then out to several fixtures. This communication protocol is not the same as DMX or Art-Net, and it does not require being merged back into the DMX stream before communicating with the fixture.
—From “Video Digerati” by Vickie Claiborne, PLSN, Sept. 2013
