BlinderKitten: Free lighting software

What is that ?

BlinderKitten is a free lighting software designed to be used during live events or theater. Unlike other lighting softwares, there is no restrictions that you can lift by paying or buying a dongle. Everything is available, unrestricted and free.

The software is “fixture-oriented”, that means that you don’t have to learn and control each DMX channel by hand like in a traditionnal lighting desk, here, you just have to tell BlinderKitten what kind of device you’re using (called a fixture type), add one fixture per device patched on your stage, fill the address in the fixture and BlinderKitten have now full control of your device.
You can now have a control of your channels by moving the channels encoders corresponding to your needs.

Every composition you make with your fixtures can be recorded in a cuelist, containing one cue by composition. you can define timing to go from one to others and act like a conductor, and also can have multiple cuelists working together, respecting LTP and HTP priorities.
Cuelists are a center component of BlinderKitten, they have lot of options and usages.

There is currently three functions to add automatic behaviors to your fixtures : effects, carousels and mappers.
Effects use a curve to add values to you fixtures, Carousels use key values, both of them spread your fixtures and loop to add movement to your values.

Mappers apply a value depending another value for each selected fixture. They allow you for example to change yout fixture’s color depending of its intensity.

To render your creations, ou have a virtual faders panel and a virtual button panel. As BlinderKitten doesn’t have a physical console, there is no limitation on the number of buttons or faders. You can also set the number of buttons above and below each fader.

BlinderKitten can output as many universes you need (and you can) and can be remote controlled by OSC or MIIDI. As it can output artnet, it is fully compatible with capture.

Functionalities

Programation

Fixture based programation
Concurent cuelists.
Relative or absolute curved based effects.
Absolute waypoints effects (carousel).
Cuelists with auto follow or go triggered.
Groups and presets modifications are passed on cuelists.
Cues can trigger effects, carousels or other cuelists.
Unlimited universes.

Connectivity

ASCII import.
GDTF fixtures import.
Unlimited OpenDMX, ENTTEC, Artnet outputs.
Unlimited MIDI inputs.
OSC controllable.

Downloads & links

All informations about developpement are on the github page of the project. The software is continuously in developpement.

An online documentation is avalable on gitbook. There is a step by step guide to understand the primary concepts of the software and one dedicated page for every object of the software.

A discord server is available to discuss, ask help or request changes or new features in the soft.
Some video tutorials and demo are on the youtube page.

Begin to learn a software from scratch can be annoying, so you can use Capture Student Edition with the demo capture project and the demo show file presents in the shared data zip file. Installation and setup are explained in this page of documentation.

Help

Do you need help ?

If you need help to use blinderkitten, or experiencing bug or crashes, feel free to join the discord server to post your feedbacks.

We need help !

If you want to help BlinderKitten, there is a lot of things you can do :

• Use the software, join discord and post your feedbacks.
• Share the software, and talk about to your co-workers.
• Help people on the discord server.
• Watch, like and share the youtube videos.
• Contribute on github.
• Buy me a tea, a snack, or offer cat food and milk to my cat :