More than 16,384 channels?

[smeighan]

This year i had 12,100 channels. It fit within 3 hubs (12288=3x4096). I foresee that i might get somewhere in the 18-20K channels next year.

Do i need a second etherdongle to drive another 4 hubs?

This year

E1.31 => Etherdongle => Pixelnet => Hub1 => Hub2 => Hub3
                                                                => DMX

Wow , last year a 6 channel Mr Christmas, this year 12K channels. This year I did not use any sequencer. Just Nutcracker => xLights.

This year, i hope to make better sequencing.

thanks

[mrprez1198]

From my understanding yes you need another etherdongle to go beyond the first 16,384 channels.

[bcstuff]

Yes, unless you overlap channels.
You could have 2 hubs with the same universe doing the same thing.

[chrisatpsu]

a couple of options...

if you're using the conductor, then you can add a slave (gets put in another etherdongle)
(with this setup, you could have as many channels as you wish, just keep adding etherdongles + slave units over and over to reach whatever channel cout you want!)

in this setup, you would have to break your sequences apart in chunks of 16,384 channels to fit the format for the sequence going on the flash memory card.
(and for each slave)



if you're using a computer, you can use another etherdongle setup to use ip addresses other than what the original etherdongle uses. (there's test firmware floating around the forum somewhere that you could use to test, until RJ has a chance to write the final ones {unless RJ says otherwise})


you don't have to break apart your sequences, but i can see that at some point, then you'd have so much traffic on your network that you will find a limit.
(the first scenario would only use a "sync" signal between the conductor and slave. no sequence information would travel across your network as each slave would contain the sequences of it's own 16k channels)

[travailen]

In theory you could have unlimited channels just using only Conductors and slaves. Put the first 16,384 channels on the conductor. put the next 16,384 channels on a slave. Then the next 16,384 channels on the 2nd slave. Add as many slaves as you need to control all your channels. Each set of 16,384 channels start at channel one. When you run the conductor, the slaves sync each second to the conductor and run their part of the program. so, you can run X times 16,384 channels for your show with 1 conductor and as many slaves as needed. Each with their own part of the sequences.
My plan for next year is to do the show in chunks. The house will be run by the Conductor. The mega tree will be run by a slave. The arches and spinners and candycanes will be run by a slave. The neighbors house will each be run by a slave. It seems a simpler to my mind to break down large channel counts into manageable sections and program them each separately.

Rick S

[chrisatpsu]

^^^^  +1