In order for Dragonframe to work with a third-party motion control system, the third-party must implement one of our communication protocols.

There are two choices, “DFMoco” and “DMC”. The DFMoco protocol is fairly simple, but it does not support real-time (video) motion control. It can only be used for shoot-move-shoot style stop motion animation or time-lapse.

The DMC protocol is much more complicated, but it can be used to provide real-time motion control.

The DFMoco protocol is described in a document that is installed with the software.
The location is: [Dragonframe Installation Folder]/Resources/Arc Motion Control/DFMoco/DFMoco_Protocol.rtf

The DMC protocol is defined in this document: DMC-Protocol-2024-02-13.pdf

We also provide a message parser you can use for the DMC protocol:
dmc_msg.h
dmc_msg.c

You can also look at the ‘dmc-lite’ implementation of the DMC protocol for more insight into it.
This is installed with Dragonframe 2024 and newer, at:
[Dragonframe Installation Folder]/Resources/Arc Motion Control/dmc