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Hardware => Lynx EtherDongle => Lynx Conductor => Topic started by: Zeph on April 17, 2012,
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Which wireless units work with the Conductor (to slave)? Any links?
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No not until the beta is over and they are avaliable.
RJ
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Hi RJ, been away for awhile overseas just getting back into it. I read thru some of the threads about the conductor wireless units but didn't catch any specifics I know you mentioned at one time last year it to be and off the shelf item that one could up for $30-$50 that a DLA'er could pick-up, can your release that info yet? I could have very well missed something since I'm trying to get back up to speed since the coop is going on, will keep digging but since this thread is here I thought it would be a good spot to update the info if there is an update.
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Asus-330N is what Keith and I are using.
http://www.asus.com/Networks/Wireless_Routers/WL330N/
You can buy them here:
http://www.amazon.com/802-11b-Portable-Wireless-Router-WL-330N/dp/B007GFYHPG/ref=pd_sbs_op_1
$39 each!
RJ
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As always, thanks for the update and posting the info RJ.
So I take it that you would need at least two of these units one for the conductor and one for the pixelnet hub, if I have more than one hub that is far away then I just purchase another one of these wireless units correct. If not we can just daisy chain as we normally do with the pixelnet out of each hub. Oh yes good price with the rebate going on now till the end of the month :)
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Greetings,,,
The units are connected to the EtherDongle, just as if they were hard wired ethernet connections. One per each, if you have multiple EtherDongles including slave units working together.
Keith
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Conductor and slaves connect via cable to the hubs. It is the conductor and slaves that are wireless. The hubs will never be wireless as they have no brains to understand ethernet data.
RJ
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That's right forgot to include the slaves as part of the solution see what jet lag does to you :o. So one conductor multiple slaves connect to each hub if you what them to be wireless. I'm going back to bed.
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you would use something along the lines of : http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Universal-Ethernet-Adapter-GWU627/dp/B004UAKCS6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1348012527&sr=8-4&keywords=wireless+ethernet+bridge
to connect your etd/conductor and/or etc/slave to a wireless network/access point.
Need to hook them up to a computer 1 time to program wireless SSID/password etc, then after that, just plug them into the ethernet port, apply power and they will link the units to your wireless network
Myk
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Or just use three of them one on computer, one on conductor and one on slave. Then use the wifi in your android phone. So you are connected everywhere.
RJ
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Forgive my crude hand drawing - but something like this.
Wireless router/access point can be a dedicated or something you already have in your home. If dedicated - it dot NOT have to have internet access available to it, just DHCP so it can assign address on its wireless....
Myk
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mycroft, in your drawing you show the Wireless Router as "passing" or "relaying" the signal from Master to Slave. I think it would be independent (as in, no wireless router need be involved).
RJ or Keith, is that correct?
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Greetings,,,
Once everything is set up, you don't need anything else to use between the wireless units. But you can manually interrupt and start shows, or just observe the shows with a computer or Android unit.
Keith
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If you are going to use a computer/smartphone etc to monitor/control functions of your conductor, it will need to be connected to your network, either hard wired or wireless..
Otherwise conductor straight to slave would be in adhoc mode and they will only talk to each other and nothing else - so you would not be able to the the PC control panel software to sync the time, disable it etc.....
I am going to assume the sync signal is a output multicast as one conductor can sync many slaves.
Again, perty uch anything can be used to get the signal from one device to another, wireless - a router if you already have one will work, a AP - which just relays wireless to other devices connected to it, or adhoc which is single device to single device.
adhoc was designed to allow like laptop to laptop connection without a router/AP - single point to single point
Myk
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If you are going to use a computer/smartphone etc to monitor/control functions of your conductor, it will need to be connected to your network, either hard wired or wireless..
Otherwise conductor straight to slave would be in adhoc mode and they will only talk to each other and nothing else - so you would not be able to the the PC control panel software to sync the time, disable it etc.....
Myk
This is not correct.
The wireless units we have shown can be run in many modes. I have run one on the conductor one on the slave and eanit through my house system as you show.
I have also used three of them to build a network by putting one on the computer one on the conductor and one on the slave.
In both cases the phone will control it fine.
RJ
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then you have one in either Router, Access Point, or Hotspot, and the other 2 in ethernet adapter mode
same as what my drawing showed
my suggestion was just a cheaper choice if you hadd a wireless router already....
Myk
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Correct but they can be there own network then.
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I have purchased one of the ASUS wireless units. I configured it as a network adapter. However it is telling me that it has an IP address of 192.168.220.1 when my wireless router is on the 192.168.0.x network and gives out addresses on that network. Where is the ASUS unit getting this ip from and how would I communicate to it via my home network. I am confused. Seems to me that if the ASUS wireless is getting its address from the router it should have an address like 192.168.0.xxx which is what my computers, tablets, and adroid phones get. Very strange.
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Ok so this is clear as mud to me! I already have a wireless router, but I would like to control with my Droid...so... do i still need the Asus routers? AND if so do I need one for each conductor\ETD and Slave\ETD unit?
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Ok so this is clear as mud to me! I already have a wireless router, but I would like to control with my Droid...so... do i still need the Asus routers? AND if so do I need one for each conductor\ETD and Slave\ETD unit?
You have to get the signal to the therdongle somehow. You could use a wired connection or you would need to get some kind of wireless unit to connect to the etherdongle that will then connect to your usual wireless connecton. The ASUS unit can be configured to be a wireless network connection to a network capable device that does not have its own wireless. Since I want to put the active hub, powersupply, etherdongle in one box outside my house I need a way to get wireless inside my outside box. This appears to be the way. I then have only one power connection cable to that box, but a lot of pixelnet wires coming out to all my SSCs. That is the plan anyway.
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I ordered 2 Asus units and my next question is; will my Cisco wireless router comunicate with those units or will they only comunicate with each other?
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Greetings,,,
In order for the Conductor Control Panel to work, other wireless items, such as computers running the Control Panel, and the Android units, can see the updates from the units, and send commands to them. Just as if the items were connected with wires.
Keith
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Sorry for bumping an old topic, but I'm running into some interesting issues (probably non-supported)
Instead of picking up the Asus units, I had in the closet a linksys router that was reflashed with 3rd party sveasoft firmware to turn it into an AP. On the other end, I have a normal linkys wireless router that it talks to and runs DHCP, etc.
Basic layout is [Home Computer] -> [Linksys Router] <--> [Linksys AP] <---> [ED w/ Conductor] <---> [Smart Hub]
Good news: The Conductor will relay show information and time information to my home computer. I can also plug in a laptop to the AP's wire ports and get an IP from the master router and control the Conductor from there.
Bad News: I cannot seem to send commands from the home computer via the control panel software to the Conductor over the access point connection. It almost feels like I entered the wrong password. I can click start show, change the time, etc and nothing happens on the end.
I assume that this is nothing more then packets not being able to be sent from my home pc all the way to the ED. But the ED sending broadcast packets back to the control panel seems to be working just fine. Is that a good assumption? If so, that doesn't seem too bad as I can monitor the show but not edit any of the parameters without running a cat5 cable out the window if I need to change anything.
Otherwise, I guess I can pick up three Asus units and have one on the home computer, one on the ED, and another one for a slave if I determine to expand this year across the street (still in progress).
Thanks!
-John-o
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So is the AP a different subnet? Sounds like a multicast/routing issue which could be the case if the AP is on a different subnet from the PC.
What RJ is normally talking about with the conductor/slave configuration and wireless over the Asus devices is the sync traffic. That is different than the communication information you are looking at in the control panel.
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Ahhhh, that makes a lot of sense that the sync traffic could be handled but not the conductor control panel.
AP is on the same subnet, but I am curious if my routing tables or something similar is off - like my show computer is trying to connect to the conductor and the router is sending the traffic to the WAN instead of over to the AP. Guess I'll do some google-ing to see how to configure the dang thing correctly.
Just so I'm clear, does the control panel also send multicast packets that the ED/Conductor picks up? Same in the opposite direction? Or does it actually grab an IP address that I can configure with routing tables?
-John
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I have not gotten it specifically from RJ, but I know you do not have to have an IP address assigned for it to work, so it has to be multicast.
So how is the Linksys AP connected to the Linksys router, just in bridge mode? Is the WAN port on the AP connected to the Linksys router, with the Etd in a LAN port? I'm not sure I understand specifically how your are configured yet.
The reason I ask is because I bet multicast is making it one direction and not the other. If you are crossing a a WAN port in one of the Linksys devices, even if it isn't really the WAN, I think it might be dropping multicast. Or at least not sending it both directions. I expect that would give the behavior you are seeing.
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Actually. in order for it to work, the device needs to have an IP address assigned to it and the ETD does. It is hardcoded into the firmware and is not assigned by the user. Devices can send out and subscribe to multi-cast sessions but they still need an IP address of their own.
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You're right. It will work in windows though without manually assigning an IP address or getting one via DHCP. I believe this is because windows will assign a reserved IP without telling you. The conductor does have an assigned multicast address, but not an addressable unicast address which is what I was trying to explain, although not very well.
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Mine on the asus do both sync packets and allow me to control it from the computer or phone. So it is not just for the sync packets. Wanted to clear that up.
RJ
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RJ, how do you have them configured? In Ethernet adapter mode? That would make sense. Where I would expect an issue is if someone was trying to push multicast through a routed or firewalled connection.
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1 is a Access point and the others are all clients if I remember. Nothing hard to do. i know some of the beta guys had them working wirelessly also.
RJ
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1 is a Access point and the others are all clients if I remember. Nothing hard to do. i know some of the beta guys had them working wirelessly also.
RJ
LOL, yes me being one of them, but I'm not at home to look.
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Or just use three of them one on computer, one on conductor and one on slave. Then use the wifi in your android phone. So you are connected everywhere.
RJ
Where is the Lynx conductor software for the Android. I've looked in the App store but the only two I found were one to tell you where the nearest xmas show is. The other seems to only work if you are using Vixen.
I've been trying all day to get my conductor to work with my wireless routers, but no luck. Are the wireless routers setup in Client mode? I have a wired/wireless AP (netgear wndr3800) thru which my pcs and android tablet are connected, but the lynx conductor software on the pc just can't see the Conductor.
I have a couple of Zonet routers which can be set to either AP or Client as well as a couple of dd-wrt routers. I have tried every combo I can think of but no luck thus far.
Any suggestion other than just give it up!
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Do you have one you can setup in client mode? I think the issue is passing multicast through routed ports. If you have one that will setup in client mode that might work as it is not a routed connection. Multicast doesn't always make it through routed connections (i.e. LAN to WAN port).
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Well, I got this to work (sort of) by setting the dd-wrt router up as a client-bridge and then 'Joined' the Netgear. They are on separate subnets. If I look in the netGear AP I can see both ED which was assigned an IP using DHCP on the dd-wrt router - as well as the wireless dd-wrt client itself. When I bring up the conductor software I can see the show but am unable to control the ED (except for setting the volume level) - even Sync Time does not work. If I move the ED off of the dd-wrt router and plug it into the same switch as the pc - everything works fine! Obviously, something is not getting routed properly. I would have thought that that if the multicast wasn't being routed (and btw, I unchecked the block multicast option in the dd-wrt setup), that I wouldn't even see the ED or its shows with conductor software. Not sure what is happening here! I have two Conductors and the results are the same with either of the two.