How Many Dongles

[lboucher]

Hi All

So these smart strings got me wondering.
How many LYNX Dongles can 1 computer support?
What computer specs are important in relation to this?

Will USB 3.0 help?
I assume ethernet will be needed soon, cannot wait till Gigabit hits the hobby.
Maybe one day fiber, or even a 10 gigabit ZOWI line. (Drooolll)


(I think I am misspelling ZOWI, but it is an actual 10 gigabit per second link.)

[rrowan]

Well how many usb ports does your computer have?
I have no idea if power usb hubs will or will not be approved for ss
current lynx dongle with new firmware will handle 4096 channels
the future pixelnet dongle will do 16384 channels

Rick R.

[lboucher]

Really? is USB 2.0 fast enough to handle this.
Doesn't multiple USB ports really mean nothing more than the computer has a built in USB hub.
I mean I could plug in USB hubs to all my USB ports on my computer then plug each of those into a dongle. That would quadruple my USB ports but somehow i think I would hit the data limit.

I should probably go research the protocol and do the math, i was just wondering if someone had tried 3, 4,5 dongles at once and noticed any side effects. I assume just because USB 2.0 can push that much data, it doesn't mean a CPU can process and push that data while running Vixen.

[chrisatpsu]

if you look in your device manager of your computer, you should be able to find how many usb controllers you have.
usb connection limit is 127 devices per controller (a printer counts as one, a lynx dongle counts as one, a hub counts as one)
As far as the computer cares, you can connect as many dongles as you can find + hubs, to keep below the 127 number)

Plus the rated bandwith for USB 2.0 is 480MB/s compared to Normal Fast Ethernet of 100MB/s makes the usb dongle a better solution until gigabit ethenet is more accepted (making inexpensive gigabit small workgroup switches)

[cubbieco]

To help with the answer - USB 3.0 won't be any help because the Lynx Dongle is not a USB 3.0 device.  If you plug a USB 2.0 device into a USB 3.0 port the port just acts like a USB 2.0 port.

With that said - I'm fairly new here but I've been reading a lot.  I haven't done this myself but I believe somebody had 4 dongles plugged in to a moderately old computer.  I think that the USB bandwidth won't be your issue but CPU power may be if you are using an older machine.

My show will be fairly modest next year but if you are going to go for it all I'd just add them one at a time until it stops working, then you know you've reached the limit for your machine.

[RJ]

I can tell you that I am running 3 pixelnet dongles on the bench without hardware issue.

Now let me tell you about other issue.

1 - Vixen will not let me run 12288 channels but limited me to adding 9999 channels. 

2 - I have a fairly powerful computer so I will warn you of this but, my cpu is running 2% - 3% so cpu does not look like an issue. Memory will be since you have to have enought to hold the whole seqence in memory with vixen and I can tell you there is a lot of squares when you have 9999 channels and if you run a 15 minute show. Figure 4 gb per 15 minutes at 9999 channels at 50 ms events in vixen.

3 - the other thing is that vixen can send the data out fine it appears but the interface can not keep up scrolling when you are in the seqencer running it and so the interface becomes hung and you can not stop it without clicking on the stop button over an over and over till it stops. if you do not loop the seqence when it ends, the interface instantly becomes responsive again. I know this is not an issue when you are playing your seqence form the scheduler but when you are working on it. It could be a pain.  Just being able to disable the scrolling of vixen would help I think.

I am using vixen 2.1 if you are wondering.

Man we need some software development serious.

I will post a video of vixen running three pixelnet dongles later tonight if I get a chance.

RJ

 

[dmaccole]

1 - Vixen will not let me run 12288 channels but limited me to adding 9999 channels.

I can imagine KC sitting there a couple of years back. "Hmmm. Where should I set the upper limit of channels? 1000? Nah, somebody will exceed that. 5000? Some jerk will try to set it there and then complain. Ah, I know: 9999 -- nobody would need more than 10,000 channels!"

\dmc

[RJ]

Ok I got the interface hang fixed. I thought about it after posting and realized I could change the plug in to fix it.

So it works much better now. It was not an issue at 4096 channels that I ran this year.

RJ

[RJ]

1 - Vixen will not let me run 12288 channels but limited me to adding 9999 channels.

I can imagine KC sitting there a couple of years back. "Hmmm. Where should I set the upper limit of channels? 1000? Nah, somebody will exceed that. 5000? Some jerk will try to set it there and then complain. Ah, I know: 9999 -- nobody would need more than 10,000 channels!"

\dmc

Yeah! I was thinking the same thing.

He's like, I will fix them, I will make it so high it is impossible anyone will need that many.  and he gives a little grin and set's it to 9999 channels.

RJ

[RJ]

Video of vixen on 9999 channels using 3 USB lynx dongles programmed with Pixelnet.
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RJ

[mmulvenna]

Hi RJ,

Can you import the VIXEN sequence into LSP and see how it works. Or to save you the time, if you would send me the vixen sequence, i will try the import and send you the LSP sequence back for you to test. bmulvenna at hotmail.com

Thanks
Mike

[rrowan]

Nice Video

Time to clean up that desktop   

Cheers

Rick R.

[RJ]

Hi RJ,

Can you import the VIXEN sequence into LSP and see how it works. Or to save you the time, if you would send me the vixen sequence, i will try the import and send you the LSP sequence back for you to test. bmulvenna at hotmail.com

Thanks
Mike

Yeah tried it. This is what I got after it finished importing all 9999 channels. Man what a let down after all that time of watching it do it.

RJ

[gforman]

nice to have all of those channels but it is really going to take some time to write the sequence for a 3 min song. hopfully the software gurus are going to come up with a good solution

[mmulvenna]

Hi RJ,

Can you import the VIXEN sequence into LSP and see how it works. Or to save you the time, if you would send me the vixen sequence, i will try the import and send you the LSP sequence back for you to test. bmulvenna at hotmail.com

Thanks
Mike

Yeah tried it. This is what I got after it finished importing all 9999 channels. Man what a let down after all that time of watching it do it.

RJ

Can you send me the sequence and let me give it a shot? bmulvenna at hotmail.com.  That usually indicate a memory issue and I have a machine that has nothing but LSP and the opsys on it that has been successful in other situations like this. (Large aurora sequences)