DMX Analyzer & Recorder
Two instruments in one. A passive analyzer that tells you what is wrong with a line in plain English — and a full-universe recorder that captures a show to SD and plays it straight back. No phone, no app, no subscriptions.
✓ Shipping Now — First Production Batch · Firmware v1.4
Buy Now — $399Monitor all 512 DMX channels simultaneously with instant visualization of signal levels and changes.
Instant snapshot and recall capabilities allow you to capture states and playback scenes for testing and verification.
Non-intrusive passthrough design lets you analyze without disrupting your DMX signal chain.
Capture DMX data to SD card for later analysis, playback, and troubleshooting.
Powered by a robust 18650 battery for extended field diagnostics without hunting for power.
3.5-inch color display with intuitive touch controls for easy navigation.
Leave VERSE watching a suspect line and it tells you what is wrong in words, not numbers — and what to check first. “Source timing is bad. Shortest break 61µs, needs 88. Try a different console output.”
Measures break, mark-after-break, refresh rate and universe size against the DMX512-A standard, accurate to a couple of microseconds. Finds the marginal line that plays back fine and still makes a rig flicker.
The hardest faults are the ones that behave while you are watching. Leave VERSE inline on battery for hours and it timestamps every dropout and timing fault to the SD card.
Discovers fixtures, reads model and personality, sets DMX addresses, and identifies a fixture so you can see which one you are talking to. Re-address a whole rig from one screen.
Most DMX testers show you numbers. VERSE reads the numbers and tells you what they mean. Leave it watching a suspect line, press Report, and it says what is wrong in plain words — with what to check first.
It names what to check, not what is broken.
The evidence supports “suspect the console” far better than “the console is faulty.” So that is what it says — and it leaves the numbers on screen so you can disagree with it.
A healthy line reports nothing at all.
No noise, no false alarms. Any steady trickle of events means something real is happening on that cable.
It refuses to guess.
A line with no DMX on it reports “No signal seen” — never “healthy.” Sending someone away from a fault is the worst thing a diagnostic tool can do.
Not a few channels. Not a snapshot. All 512 slots, frame by frame, straight to SD — and back out again at the rate it was captured. This is the half of VERSE that quietly competes with rack-mount hardware costing two and a half times as much.
Record your looks at soundcheck. If the console or the laptop dies mid-set, plug VERSE into the line and press Play. Cheap insurance that fits in a pocket.
Loop a single capture or a whole sequence, indefinitely. Architectural lighting, museum displays and window installs need a look to run — not a console to run it.
Capture a console's output once and carry it back to the shop. Test fixtures, burn in a rig or demo a look without hauling a desk to it.
Proven, not asserted
5,290,145
consecutive frames recorded
0
frames dropped
10 hrs
longest continuous run
36.7
unit-hours tested
VERSE counts every frame it has to drop and shows it on screen while recording, so a clean capture can always be told from a lossy one. A recording also survives losing power — a flat battery or a pulled cable costs you the last few frames, not the capture. See the full test report.
VERSE sits between two categories that have not previously overlapped: handheld DMX analyzers, and dedicated DMX recorders.
| VERSE | DMXcat | XMT-450 | XRC-200 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturer | REHMLIGHTS | City Theatrical | Swisson | Swisson |
| Form factor | Handheld | Handheld + smartphone | Handheld | Desktop / wall mount |
| Connectors | Neutrik XLR-3, in and thru | XLR-5 female | Neutrik XLR-5, male and female | 2 in, 2 out |
| Own display | 3.5″ touchscreen | None — uses your phone | 2.4″ IPS TFT | Yes |
| Requires a phone or app | No | Yes, Bluetooth LE | No | No |
| Power | 18650 battery, USB-C | Battery, micro-USB | Li-ion 3200 mAh, USB-C | AC mains |
| DMX universes | 1 | 1 | Not stated | 2 |
| Live channel analysis | Yes, 512 slots | Yes | Yes | Not stated |
| Signal timing measurement | Yes, 0.5µs 1 | Yes, break / MAB / rate 2 | Yes, all timing parameters | Not stated |
| Plain-English diagnosis | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Unattended fault logging | Yes, to SD | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Full-universe recording | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Yes, 64 sequences |
| Playback | Yes, with looping | Not stated | Not stated | Yes, 10 play lists, fade times, automatic failover |
| Storage | Removable microSD | Not stated | Not stated | 256 Mbit flash |
| RDM controller | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated |
| Trigger inputs | No | Not stated | Not stated | Yes, optional contact box |
| Cable tester | No | Not stated | Yes, 3- and 5-pin | Not stated |
| Price | $399 | $446–492 3 | $518 3 | $1,098 3 |
1 Break and mark-after-break, verified within 1µs against a Swisson XMT-120A reference instrument — see the Test & Calibration Report.
2 The DMXcat brochure’s DMX Tester screen shows break, mark-after-break, mark-before-break, slot count and refresh rate.
3 Typical US street prices, August 2026 — none of the three manufacturers publishes a list price. Dealer pricing varies.
Competitor figures are taken from the manufacturers’ own published product pages and leaflets, retrieved August 2026: City Theatrical DMXcat, Swisson XMT-450, Swisson XRC-200. “Not stated” means the capability is not listed on that page; it does not establish that the product lacks it. None of the three publishes a price. Specifications change — check current manufacturer details before making a purchase decision.
Any FAT32 or exFAT microSD card works — which is essentially every card sold. Smaller cards ship formatted FAT32, 64 GB and larger ship exFAT, and VERSE reads both as they come out of the packet. Nothing to reformat, no size limit to worry about.
VERSE writes about 74 MB per hour recording a full universe — roughly 20 KB/s against a card rated at 10 MB/s, so throughput is never the constraint. What matters is that the card never stalls: VERSE buffers about a third of a second, and a cheap or worn card can pause longer than that while it tidies itself up.
Use a name-brand A1-rated card — SanDisk, Samsung, Kingston. A1 is specified for sustained small writes, which is exactly what recording DMX is. Counterfeit and no-name cards are the single most common cause of a bad capture. VERSE counts any frame it has to drop and shows it on screen while recording, so you always know whether a recording is clean.
| Card | Approx. recording time | Format |
|---|---|---|
| 32 GB | ~395 hours | FAT32 |
| 64 GB | ~785 hours | exFAT |
| 128 GB | ~1,585 hours | exFAT |
| 256 GB | ~3,190 hours | exFAT |
Figures are for a full 512-slot universe at 40 Hz, calculated from measured write rates. A single recording on a FAT32 card is capped at 4 GB — about 56 hours — by the filesystem itself; exFAT cards have no practical limit beyond the card.
Every figure on this page was measured, not estimated. The full method and results — including verification against a Swisson XMT-120A and 5.29 million frames of recording tests — are published in the Test & Calibration Report (PDF). A one-page product cut sheet is also available.
Quickly identify signal issues, channel conflicts, and timing problems in your lighting rig.
Verify proper addressing, patch tables, and signal distribution during installation.
Visualize DMX protocols and demonstrate signal flow for students and trainees.
Monitor system health, record performance data, and diagnose intermittent issues.
VERSE is shipping now. First production batch: 50 units.
Questions before you buy? Get in touch.
No. VERSE is a complete instrument on its own — screen, battery, storage and processing. No pairing, nothing to install, no second device to keep charged. If your phone dies at the top of a ladder, VERSE carries on working.
Yes, that is what it is designed for. Both XLR connectors are wired together as a passive thru, so VERSE sits inline in a running chain without breaking it. Plug it between console and rig and the show carries on while it watches.
No — a microSD card is required for recording and fault logging, and is not included. Use a name-brand A1-rated card. See the card guidance above for sizes and recording times.
About 74 MB per hour for a full universe, so roughly 395 hours on a 32 GB card and over 1,500 on a 128 GB one. The longest continuous run we have tested is 10 hours, which produced 1,441,292 frames with none dropped.
The recording survives. VERSE writes a valid file header from the moment recording starts and syncs to the card continuously, so a flat battery or a pulled cable costs you at most the last few frames — not the capture. This is tested on every release.
For playback of a captured look, yes — that is exactly the “show saver” case. Record your looks at soundcheck, and if the console or laptop dies you can plug VERSE straight into the line and press Play. It is not a replacement for programming a show.
Not today. VERSE is a wired DMX512 instrument. Network protocol support is on the roadmap but is not in the current hardware.
Break and mark-after-break are captured at 0.5µs resolution by a dedicated state machine. Verified against a Swisson XMT-120A professional reference: agreement within 1µs on break, 1µs on mark and 0.1 Hz on refresh rate, in both transmit and receive. Two VERSE units agree with each other to the same. Full method in the Test & Calibration Report.
Settings → Firmware, then connect USB-C. VERSE appears as a drive; copy the new file across and it reboots itself. No tools, no disassembly, no drivers. Current firmware and step-by-step instructions are on the support page.
Yes — isolated RS-485, so VERSE cannot inject a ground fault into a rig it is plugged into. Termination is a 120Ω jumper on the board, shipped off, which is correct for sitting inline.
The VERSE unit with its 18650 cell fitted, and a USB-C charging cable. A microSD card and DMX cables are not included.
The support page carries the manual, quick start, firmware and release notes. There is also an owners’ group on Facebook where questions get answered by us and by other users.
Something not answered here? Get in touch or ask in the owners’ group.