When the Cloud Goes Down, the Lights Should Stay On: Virginia Navy Veteran Builds Offline-First Lighting Control for Small Venues

Stafford, Virginia

For many households, it was a reminder that smart lights and speakers often stop responding when the cloud behind them does.

For Roman Khomitch, a U.S. Navy veteran based less than an hour south of that data center region, the lesson applies well beyond the living room. His company, White Crow Security LLC, develops DMX Smart Link, lighting control software designed to run entirely on a local network with no internet connection required.

"A live event has no pause button," said Khomitch, founder of DMX Smart Link. "If the lights depend on a server somewhere else, the people in the room are one outage away from standing in the dark. Our company's roots are in security, and in security you design for the day things fail. Lighting for a live audience deserves the same thinking."

The issue is increasingly relevant for small venues, mobile DJs, community theaters and event spaces, many of which now mix professional DMX stage fixtures with the consumer smart lights they already own. Those two worlds have traditionally been controlled separately, with smart bulbs often relying on cloud apps. DMX Smart Link brings both under one controller running on local hardware, from a Windows or Mac laptop to a Raspberry Pi, and recalls a full lighting scene with a single press.

The software includes more than 13,000 built-in fixture profiles, allowing crews to add equipment without programming it from scratch. It is in weekly production use at a venue where it is operated by volunteers rather than trained lighting engineers, which Khomitch says has shaped its design.

"The person running the lights at a small venue is often a volunteer who learned the job last month," he said. "They need something that works every time, whether the Wi-Fi is strong, weak or completely gone."

More information is available at dmxsmartlink.com.

Boardroom Release. This is a press release supplied by White Crow Security LLC and is published as issued on The CEO & Chairman's Row. Claims made are those of the company. How we label stories