I see. So the etherdongle has 4 pixelnet universes worth of channels, but we are in effect changing those pixelnet universes to DMX universes, so since there were 4 pixelent universes, now we have 4 DMX universes instead. I was thinking that we were gaining access to the DMX universes within a single pixelent universe rather than converting the four pixelnet universes into DMX universes. Do I have that correct?
Another question if I may. What would people use at the other end of the etherdongle when you have 2048 DMX channels to play with. I noticed in one of your light show demo videos RJ, that you pointed out quite a few expresses in boxes on posts. Is that the "suggested" way to handle the channel counts? I know that I am opening up a big can of worms as far as the "suggested" way, but I am just thinking that if I have 2048 channels to play with, that means I need 128 expresses or 512 SSR4's with DMX. That's a lot of boxes spread around the yard and at about $70 for the express for mouser parts (plus XX fo the PCB) or $26 (plus XX for the PCB), that means we are talking around $13,300 just for enough SSR4 parts (plus however much the PCBs run and cost for the boxes, cords, shipping, etc.) or $8960 for the express parts (plus PCB, boxes, cords, shipping, etc.) to run all those channels.
I know that coops bring the prices down a bit on that, so those numbers will definitely be high. Now, looking at SmartStrings with those figures in mind, we are looking at about $85 for the smart string controller parts (plus the cost of the PCB) and a 128 Node smart string. Again coops should bring the price down proportionally, so if my numbers are right, you could get about 105 smart strings for the same cost as the express parts for 2048 channels, or 156 smart strings for the same cost as the SSR4 parts. That equates to 13440 RGB nodes for 105 strings or 19968 RGB nodes for 156 strings. Of course one etherdongle has 16,348 channels, so you would not be able to run all those nodes on one etherdongle, but, as RJ pointed out, you could simply add another etherdongle...
I realize that with 2048 DMX channels you are able to get a lot of the regular old led strings per single channel, so your light count will be much higher than with the RGB nodes. On the other hand, if you were to take almost 20,000 RGB nodes, and spread them around, you could do some amazing things. If I understand correctly, you could space each RGB LED node out 4-6 feet from the previous one, so you could spread them around better in things like bushes or trees. Alternatively, you could take those 128 node strands and wire tie them up to look like icicles, and now you have fully controllable collor changing icicles. Just some thoughts and some figures that are probably way off because I do not have the figures for the boxes, PCB's etc. Not to mention all of the soldering that would need to be done for all of those boards