Smartshow LMS
FreeWindows · macOS · LinuxArt-Net · sACN · DDPv1.2.0

Drive your LED wall
without fighting the software

A modern LED matrix server — a full Scenes / Chases / Show Mode pipeline, 30+ effects, your own GLSL and ISF shaders, audio reactive, and six output protocols. Maps any shape of rig, not just rectangles. Built with working shows in mind, not demos.

Free — no account, no licence key.

Button offering the wrong system? Every build — Windows, macOS and Linux — is listed at the bottom of this page.

LMS sits upstream of your controllers. You build looks on a virtual matrix — effects, video, text, images, audio-reactive layers — and it streams the pixels out over whichever protocol your hardware speaks. Patch once, then run the night from Show Mode: big touch buttons, scenes, chases, blackout, a master fader, and a tablet in your hand if you want one.

A look at it

Click any shot to see it full size.

The Smartshow LMS Builder — four channels with background and foreground layers, mix modes, live previews of the left group, main output and right group. The Builder. Four channels, each with its own background and foreground layer — eight effects running at once — with a mix stage between every pair, and live previews of the left group, the main output and the right group as you work.
Show Mode — large touch buttons grouped into Static Colours, Audio Controlled and Effects, with master, blackout, strobe and fade controls down the left. Show Mode. Where you run the night. Big touch buttons grouped how you like, master and gamma, blackout and strobe in latch or flash, and cross-fades between scenes. The panel footprint editor — a hand-drawn 48-pixel custom map spelling LOVE, with numbered pixels showing the wiring order across the matrix. Custom footprints. Draw the rig's real shape — here a 48-pixel LOVE sign — and set the wiring order pixel by pixel. Import and export maps, drop bridge pixels, trace over a reference photo. Settings — matrix width and height, pixel wiring, start corner, colour order and bit depth, with a live preview and a channel count. Set up once. Matrix size, wiring, start corner, colour order and bit depth — with the pixel and DMX-channel maths worked out for you as you type.
Real hardware, real venue. A 48-pixel LOVE sign driven by Smartshow LMS through an ENTTEC USB DMX Pro — running the same hand-drawn custom map shown in the footprint editor above. No rectangle in sight, and no network gear needed.

What's in it

🎬

Scenes, Chases & Show Mode

Build looks, group them into chases, then drive the whole night from one touch-friendly page with latch or flash buttons.

✨

30+ effects

Plasma, fire, radar, starfield, text crawl, metaballs, snow, hearts, pixel-mapped video and more — each with deep parameters, not presets.

🎵

Audio reactive

Live FFT drives VU meters, bars, rings, pulses and sine lines. Real stereo, auto gain, per-band assignment.

🧩

Layer mixing

Four channels × two layers — eight effects at once. A dozen Jinx-faithful mix modes at every stage — crossfades, combines, stencils and masks — plus per-layer opacity and cross-fades between scenes.

📐

Real pixel mapping

Serpentine, ring, arc, polygon and hand-drawn custom maps. Panel footprint editor for odd-shaped rigs and fixtures.

📱

Tablet remote

Scan a QR and run scenes, chases, master and blackout from an iPad or phone on the same Wi-Fi. Optional access PIN.

🎛️

External control in

Trigger scenes from a lighting desk over Art-Net or sACN, or from OSC and MIDI — including MIDI learn.

🖥️

Big walls, HDMI out

For large rigs, output to an HDMI sender card instead of flooding the network with universes.

🔷

Any shape, not just rectangles

Most software assumes a neat grid. Map your rig's real physical footprint — curves, rings, tubes, letters, gaps — and the previews show that shape instead of a rectangle, so what you build is what hangs.

🎨

Your own shaders

Import GLSL and ISF shaders from Shadertoy, TouchDesigner and the wider VJ world, with controls generated for you and a built-in editor.

📜

Scripting

Run community Jinx! .jns scripts, or write your own generators in the in-app editor with live preview and error checking.

💾

Export to file

Record a show out to FSEQ or Glediator files for players and controllers that run standalone, with no PC on site.

Outputs & inputs

Pixel outArt-Net · sACN (E1.31) · TPM2.net · DDP · DMX over USB (ENTTEC) · HDMI
Control inArt-Net · sACN · OSC · MIDI (with learn)
Media inVideo files · images · webcam · screen capture · NDI
Per-row patchingMix protocols in one rig — each row its own protocol, universe and target
ColourRGB / RGBW, per-row colour order, gamma, 8-bit output
ExportFSEQ · Glediator .out — for standalone players
Runs onWindows 10 / 11 · macOS 11+ · Linux (x86_64 & ARM64)
Companion tool · also free

sACN ⇆ Art-Net Bridge

A separate little app of mine that converts between sACN (E1.31) and Art-Net — in either direction, chosen per universe.

It exists because of a problem plenty of people hit: some lighting software handles one Art-Net universe fine but goes flaky across several, while its sACN output is rock solid. Both are just DMX over the network, so the Bridge quietly translates one into the other. Point the awkward universes at sACN and it feeds your Art-Net nodes — or convert an incoming Art-Net source back to sACN. Mix directions freely.

You don't need it for Smartshow LMS — LMS speaks both natively. It's for the rest of your rig: the console, the media server, or the software that only does one of the two. Pure sockets, no drivers, no Npcap. Windows & macOS.

Get the sACN ⇆ Art-Net Bridge

What's new in 1.2.0

A manual lighting desk, Open DMX that actually works, code signing at last — and one change to how output behaves that is worth two minutes of your time.

🎛 A manual lighting desk

Real DMX faders alongside the pixel engine — a bank of 6, 12, 24 or 32 channels over Serial DMX or Art‑Net, with settable universe, target IP and start channel. Bump buttons on every channel with an optional timed burst, for foggers and hazers where you want a two‑second blast and nothing else. Save looks as scenes, recall them with flash or latch, and build chases with crossfade.

🔗 One press, pixels and lights together

A Show Mode button can now fire a pixel look and a DMX fader look at the same time. Set the link once and your washes, movers and haze cue with the wall instead of being chased separately. The Tablet Remote carries the same thing.

⚠ One change to how output works

Output now follows a single rule: an empty Patch Editor sends the whole matrix to everything you have ticked. Any patch rows and the patch decides — a protocol with no rows of its own sends nothing.
Before, each output only asked whether it had rows. So if you had patched Art‑Net and also ticked Send to Serial DMX, your dongle was quietly being fed the entire matrix from channel 1 while the status read “Sending”.
If you were deliberately patching one protocol and whole‑framing another, add a patch row for the output you want, or clear the patch entirely.

🔌 Open DMX that actually works

A native FTDI driver path for cheap Open DMX adapters — it makes a proper DMX break that a browser simply cannot. Your dongle also reconnects itself when you relaunch. If you have been fighting a flaky adapter, set Device type to “Open DMX — native FTDI driver” and try it again.

🔒 Now code‑signed

Windows builds are digitally signed as Hi‑Lite Entertainment Limited and timestamped; macOS is signed and notarised. SmartScreen may still warn for a while — reputation is earned from download numbers, not from the signature itself — so check the publisher name and click Run anyway.

💡 Rigs no longer hold their last look

Serial DMX was never included in the blackout sweep, so DMX fixtures held their last look on Stop and on Quit while the pixel outputs went dark. If you have ever had lights stay on after closing LMS, that was this, and it is fixed.

🌈 Regions, and readable buttons

Split the matrix into named areas and drive them independently, with a Region Manager to organise them. Region buttons now show a padlock for their on/off state rather than relying on colour alone — which came from a user who could not read the colour‑only version, and is a better control for everybody.

❤ Free, and a licence to say so

LMS is free and always will be — no account, no licence key, no trial, no feature gates, including for paid work. Help › About now carries a proper Licence tab that says exactly that, and there is a Donate item in the menu bar pointing at Evelina London Children's Hospital.

Plus: “Remember output state” across launches, a proper start‑up screen, sub‑pixel text scrolling and a pixel‑crisp mode, savable audio presets with auto gain, WLED discovery over mDNS, patch import/export, and presets that survive File › New.

If you'd like to say thank you

Please give it to Evelina London instead

People kindly ask how they can support this project. Smartshow LMS is free and I'm not asking for anything — but if it has saved you time or earned you money and you want to do something, there is somewhere that deserves it far more than I do.

Evelina London Children's Hospital saved my granddaughter's life. At one week old she needed open-heart surgery to repair a hole in her heart and a damaged valve. She's four now, with no ongoing health problems at all. I will never be able to repay the people who did that.

So please donate directly to their own charity — nothing comes through me, and none of it is connected to this software. Every penny goes to them.

Donate to Evelina London Children's Charity

evelinacharity.org.uk · Their fundraising and admin costs are covered by the Guy's & St Thomas' Foundation endowment, so 100% of what you give goes to the hospital.

Commercial & OEM licensing

Building it into something you sell?

Using Smartshow LMS on paid work — gigs, installs, rental stock, production jobs — needs no licence and never will. That's what free means here.

What the standard terms don't cover is selling or supplying the software itself: shipping it inside a product, handing it to clients as part of a system you licence, putting it on hardware you sell, or wanting it under your own branding. Several people have already asked about exactly that.

That's available — just not off this page. Commercial redistribution, OEM bundling and white-label arrangements are done directly, so the terms actually fit what you're building. Tell me what you have in mind.

Email me about licensing

lee@leejamesapps.co.uk · Lee James Apps, United Kingdom

How this happened

This project started back in May 2026, to see whether a Jinx!-faithful matrix server was even possible.

Over the past few months it's gained a great deal of followers and traction, with many folks testing the betas, reporting their findings on the bug tracker and making solid feature requests. Every one of you who assisted with this vital intel can consider yourself a genuine part of this whole pipe dream of mine. We got it there!

Special thanks go to my two main sanity-checking and bug-catching gurus: Bobby of SmartShow, my partner in crime through all of this, and Mike of Mike's LED Shed. Without the pair of you I'd never have got it this far. Also shouts to Ian Villars of HexVIBE for leading the way on custom shaders and some other bits, and to Bruce for his valuable input. But most of all, to all of you who have used, or will use, this software on your live shows and projects.

It doesn't stop here. Development will continue, and there are some exciting evolutions coming in the future. For now: use it, enjoy it, and if you haven't already, please join the forum. The bug tracker is and always will be there, and in time we'll have a collection of video tutorials and further documentation to help you get the most from this.

Thank you all so much.

Best,
Lee James

Download

Free. No account, no licence key. Version 1.2.0.

Already a tester? The forum still has beta builds, release notes and the feedback board.

System requirements
Windows
Windows 10 (64-bit, build 1809 or later) or Windows 11. No admin rights needed — it installs to your user account. ~95 MB download, ~350 MB installed. A portable build is available if you'd rather not install anything.
macOS
macOS 11 Big Sur or later. One universal build for both Intel and Apple silicon. ~196 MB download. Signed and notarised.
Linux
AppImage for x86_64 or ARM64, glibc 2.28 or newer — Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm and friends. ~140 MB. Nothing installs; make it executable and run it.
Memory
4 GB minimum, 8 GB comfortable. LMS itself sits around 500 MB with a typical matrix; video playback, large walls and shader work push it higher.
Processor
Any 64-bit dual-core or better. 32-bit systems aren't supported. Extra cores mainly help with video decoding and very large matrices.
Graphics
Integrated graphics are fine for most rigs. GLSL and ISF shaders need WebGL 2, which anything from roughly 2014 onwards has. Driving a wall over HDMI means a spare display output at the resolution your scaler expects.
Network
Only needed for Art-Net, sACN, DDP, TPM2.net and NDI. Wired Ethernet is strongly recommended — Wi-Fi adds jitter you'll see on the wall. DMX over USB and HDMI output need no network at all.
Internet
Not required. LMS runs entirely offline; show machines with no network work fine. It only reaches out to check whether a newer version exists, and nothing installs itself.

For reference, the machines running it today are mostly Windows 10 and 11, with macOS on Apple silicon and Intel, and a handful of Linux boxes including ARM64 boards.

Windows: signed as Hi-Lite Entertainment Limited and timestamped. SmartScreen may still say "Windows protected your PC" for a while — reputation is earned from download numbers, not from the signature itself — so click More info → Run anyway, checking the publisher name says Hi-Lite Entertainment Limited first. macOS builds are signed and notarised, so they open normally. Linux: chmod +x the AppImage, then run it.