EtherDongle and Multiple Vixen sessions on different universes

[wjgiles50]

If someone has already raised this question and I missed it please bear with me.  I try to read everything but there is so much and so little gray matter.

Would it be possible to run multiple occurance of Vixen each running a different universe through the EherDongle and then to a splitter so that you could have multiple "shows" running at the same time.  I want to run some small animated static pieces in a different area while a full show is running in another area.  I can see that sound would be a problem but as long as I don't have any music on any of the others will it work?

I know someone out there as puzzled this out already.

[chrisatpsu]

if you can connect to the universes seperately (maybe similar to how xlights connects to the Etherdongle, might be a start)  it might be possible, but i think you'd need a seperate plugin for Vixen to talk to the device.

if this might be of some help, in vixen, i can have it run the show via the etherdongle, and while it's running, i caqn still test equipment via the usb dongle.

it might help you in the long run keeping track of everything as well. but that's my 2 cents

someone else might have a way.

[tbone321]

You could possibly do this running the different occurrences on different machines and connecting then to the EtherDongle thru a hub or switch.  The etherdongle simply listens for its multicast packets on the network and really doesn't care what machine(s) are sending them.  From what I remember reading the spec, the different universes are on different multicast addresses so there should be little confusion.  There could be some issues with network traffic with multiple machines dumping large amounts of data on the network at the same time.  Another issue is I don't know of any reliable way to keep the machines synced and if they go out of sync then the EhterDongle will send the signals to the seperate universes out of sync as well.

[RJ]

I guess I am confused to what is being accomplished so I can't answer. Is it simple two different programs you atrying to use at the same time?

RJ

[jnealand]

I've never been able to run more than one instance of Vixen on a single machine.

[Steve Gase]

I interpret the question as the desire to have the same computer host multiple shows -- each with a different version of vixen and its own set of dongles -- with different networks for each.

If I was to do this, I'd use VMware or another virtualization product.  in each guest you'd have a vixen, and each guest would have its own dedicated physical USB device. 

i don;t think it would be choppy, but you'd need to try it.  I think there might be a free version of vmware available now.

if your host is linux, your free choices fora virtualization product would increase.

[chrisatpsu]

you don't have to go that far, you can run a vixen sequence, and then turn around and run another sequence at the same time as long as its connected to another piece of hardware.  (like one running on the EDongle, and one running on the USB Dongle)

[tbone321]

I think that what he wants to do is run two different shows using a more than one instance of Vixen and using the same EtherDongle.  The idea appears to be to have the single EtherDongle process the two shows in two different universes and then send the data to a splitter that will send the seperate universes to different parts of the yard, one with the main show and the other is animating some static pieces. 

I don't think that can be done on a single machine unless you do as Steve suggested and set up two virtual machines to run the seperate instances of Vixen.  Then you could bridge the network card between the two virtual machines and the EtherDongle should be able to handle it with no problem.  The only other way would be to set up two seperate machines.

[wjgiles50]

I was trying to avoid multiple machines.   I know that on my machine running XP I can run many Vixen sessions at the same time.  If each were using a different USB dongle it might work.  I will give it a try and report what I find.