Lay out the room, pick a rig sized to your stage or describe it to the AI planner, and get the DMX patch and a shopping list with prices. When the lights are up, Vaib imports the plan and runs them.
Bars to mid-size venues
AI planner
Shopping list with prices
Exports to Vaib
Loading the planner…
From plan to a lit room
01
Plan it here
The room, the lights and where they hang, the patch, what it costs. Saved in this browser as you go.
02
Buy and hang it
Take the shopping list to a dealer, or print the plan for whoever rigs it. Set each light to its address and mode.
03
Import it into Vaib
One file brings the venue, the room, every light and its patch. Test each light, sign the room off, press Go.
Join the free betaVaib imports the plan and runs the lights. Mac now, Windows soon.
How many lights does a venue need?
Fewer than most people think — if each light has a job. These are the planner’s own starter rigs for typical rooms, with rough prices for new gear. Open any of them in the planner above and change what you like.
Starter rigs by room, with light counts and a rough budget
Room
Rig
Lights
By job
Rough budget
Open
A small bar8 × 10 m, 3 m high
Essentials
12
2 faces5 colour4 background1 effects
€1,500–€2,850
A bar with a band stage10 × 14 m, 3.5 m high
Full rig
20
3 faces6 colour2 audience5 background4 effects
€4,500–€7,450
A club12 × 16 m, 4.5 m high
Full rig
24
4 faces7 colour2 audience6 background5 effects
€5,700–€9,400
A church14 × 26 m, 10 m high
Essentials
19
5 faces7 colour7 background
€2,350–€4,250
A small theatre14 × 20 m, 7 m high
Essentials
24
8 faces9 colour7 background
€6,050–€9,900
New gear, excluding VAT, including a DMX node, cables and clamps; October 2026. The laptop is the one you have.
Light by job, not by fixture
A lighting designer thinks about what each light is for. So does Vaib, and so does this planner — every light gets one job.
Faces
From the front, about 45° up, on the performers. Usually white. Without it, the band is a silhouette — the most common mistake in small rooms.
Colour
From behind and the sides. Carries the colour and the energy of the song, and separates the performers from the wall.
Background
Uplights on the back wall, columns or a curtain. Makes the room look lit even when the stage is quiet.
Audience
Blinders on the crowd, used for hits on the biggest moments only — never as a steady wash.
Effects
Moving heads, strobes, beams. The first thing people buy and the last thing a room needs.
DMX, sACN and Art-Net, in plain words
DMX
The cable and the language most stage lights speak. One DMX line — a universe — carries 512 channels; a light uses a few of them from its start address.
Mode
How many channels a light uses, set on its display or DIP switches. The plan says which mode each light is in; the light must match.
sACN and Art-Net
DMX over a network. The laptop sends to a small box — a node — that turns it into DMX cables. sACN needs no IP address typed in, which is why Vaib uses it by default.
USB DMX
A USB interface straight from the laptop: one universe, the simplest start for a small bar with the laptop near the lights.
What to buy first
Face light. Two or more good LED pars on the front of the stage, before anything that moves.
Colour from behind. A row of pars or washes over the back of the stage.
Something for the wall. A few floor uplights make a room look finished for very little.
A DMX node or USB interface, and enough DMX cable.
Then effects — moving heads and strobes — if the nights call for them.
Yes — no account, no email needed. The plan saves in your browser as you go. Sending it to us to join the Vaib beta is optional.
Do I need Vaib to use it?
No. The plan, the patch and the shopping list are useful with any lighting desk — print them. The export is a Vaib venue file, so with Vaib it goes straight from plan to running.
What exactly is in the exported file?
Your venue and its kind, the room’s size and stage, every light with its full profile, mode, channels, DMX address, job and position, how Vaib should send (sACN, Art-Net or USB) and your room photo if you added one. Vaib opens it with Import a venue…; the lights arrive untested and the room unsigned, so they are checked against the real ones first.
What does the AI see, and is my photo uploaded?
When you ask the AI planner, your question and a text summary of the plan go through our server to Google’s Gemini to get a proposal back — nothing else. We keep no copy; Google processes it under its Gemini API terms, so leave anything private out of the question. Your room photo never leaves your browser unless you export the file yourself.
How accurate are the prices?
They are rough ranges for new gear from European dealers in October 2026, excluding VAT — good for a budget, not a quote. Pro and touring fixtures are marked; venues often rent those.
Can it plan a big touring rig?
It is built for bars, clubs, churches, theatres and small festival stages — up to about a hundred lights over a few universes. Arena rigs need a lighting designer and their own tools.
A light I own is not in the list.
Pick the closest generic light with the same channel count — an RGBW par, a wash, a moving head — and change it in Vaib, which can import any fixture from the Open Fixture Library or a GDTF file.
Free beta — open now
When the lights are up, let Vaib run them.
Import the plan, test each light, and press Go. Vaib listens to the music and lights every night like a designer would. The beta is free.