So if a USB dongle will run both LE's (DMX) and SS's (pixelnet) what is the advantage of using the EtD?
Ok as far as the DMX dongle running Le's and SS it cannot as a DMX Dongle.
1. The DMX Dongle must be reflashed to a Pixelnet Dongle.
2 Then you run cat5 to an Active hub that will drive 16 strings of Smart Strings up to 80%max capacity of the power suipply that you are using.
3. Then the DMX is run out of the Active hub to the LEs (the Active hub changes the Pixelnet back to DMX, but uses some of the Pixelnet channels for those DMX channels.)
For example If you wanted a full universe of DMX and let's say that you wanted DMX 1-512 then the first Pixelnet channel would start at 513 -4096.
There is a lot more to it, but that is the basic set up.
The benefits of the Etd is that it will run 4 Pixelnet universes of 4096 channels each for a total of 16384 and is run through your network and not a USB port.