SS Active Hubs - what parts would be needed just for the "active" part?

[JonB256]

I don't need it this year, and may never need it, but if you had 32 SS Active Hubs, you could set each one to give a different and unique DMX universe. If you weren't using Pixelnet on some of them, you should be able to build the board without a lot of the RS485 chips and isolators and RJ45 jacks. Even the power required goes way down.

To be most useful, the part that gives both Pixelnet Outs would be needed, so their RS485 chips would be needed.

So, has anyone thought about a Mouse BOM to build an SS Active Hub that only does the DMX out?
(I searched but didn't find a similar question)

[n1ist]

This is just from looking at the wiki pictures; I don't have the board in front of me.  You could probably leave off the 5 ST485 chips above the RJ45s, the 16 smart string output RJ45s, and the 3 4-pin power connectors.  If you don't want the pixelnet output, you can leave off the MAX490s and two RJ45s below them.

As for power, the 5V or 3.3V load won't be reduced an appreciable amount.  The big savings is at 12v (not needed unless you add the optional regulators - I would do that and use a wallwart to power the board)

/mike

[dearvbguru]

I posed the same question a little while back but never heard anything.  I just created my own and actually ordered yesterday so I could run my LOR stuff from etherdongle and conductor for this I needed 4 new universes because my pixelnet addresses are pretty much filled on my hubs.

What I did was removed 16 of the RJ45 jacks and the 16 fuses associated with the individual pixelnet outputs.  I then removed the 24 pin power header and the 3 4 pin power adapters and added in the 12 V optional kit so that I could use a simple inexpensive power supply and split the 12V coming out of it and feed four hubs. 

The jacks are $1 a piece ($16) and the power connectors are $5.64, then the fuses are $7.52 so thats $29.16 saving not counting the additional cost of the 12V kit.

The 485 buffers are $1 a piece and the 485 transceivers are $3.25 each and the 8 pin sockets are so there is room to squeeze more out. 

I wasn't sure right off hand which 485 chips I could omit if I wasnt going to have any pixelnet outputs to strings but agreed I wanted to leave the ones for the pixelnet outputs that could go to other hubs so I could always use it as a regenerator if need be as well.

Note: If ordering now, I had to find a suitable replacement green LED as the one listed is on back order.

If anyone knows what 485 buffers and transceivers could be omitted please chime in.  It would be nice to know which ones we could also exclude if we did not want pixelnet output stripping it down to the bare essentials as a pixelnet to DMX output only

[n1ist]

As I mentioned in the post above, the 4 MAX490s are for the regenerated pixelnet output, and the 5 st485s above the smart string outputs are for those outputs.  The other two ST485s are for the DMX output.
/mike