Compatible Alternatives to Lynx Express

[jwilliams31]

With RJ no longer involved in producing new boards, other than trying to purchase LEs from other DIY users, what alternatives are y'all using for DMX that are compatible with the LEs and the Lynx Dongle?

I know about LOR, but they aren't the cheapest product out there.  I was wondering if there might be other controllers out there.

Thanks.

Jason

[rjhodgefamily]

Yeah I had the same question in march of last year. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login) Pretty much the only option is the LOR CTB16PC which people say you should pick up during the Secret Sale in the spring. Supposedly not much more then the LEs.

Personally I prefer the Lynx hardware we are running 25 of them in this year's show. Some of them have been running with little to no problems for 10 years this season. I try to pick up a few every now and then but it does seem that there were far fewer this year than in years past. And while we put out almost 6000 pixels this year A/C lights will always have a place in our show since we run 11 houses currently and possibly expanding to 15 next year. So the cheapness of running an A/C controller over pixels just makes sense.

I have also thought about trying to design my own but not being an electrical engineer it is a daunting task to think about. I'll stick to programming for now.

Richard

[rjhodgefamily]

Also since we moved to using a few pixels this year every house now has a Raspberry Pi and a Falcon Pi Cap so we have completely eliminated our Lynx Dongle and our Lynx TX/RX this year. Keeping them as back up just in case. Now we just use the DMX out on the Falcon Pi Cap.

[jwilliams31]

I looked at the LOR devices and they are expensive.  I will have to keep an eye out for the sale.  Otherwise I will have to hope people keep selling their LEs here.

I will have to look into the Falcon.  I waited too long to get the pixels in this year, but I will have to see if maybe I can make that switch over and eliminate my dongle next year.

Thank you for the tip and information.

[DaveM]

Have a look at the Renard controllers. Load them with the DMX firmware and you can even run them off of your Lynx dongle.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

[tbone321]

You may need to be a bit careful using the Renard controllers in DMX mode.  Unless they further refined their DMX firmware, it is not a true implementation of the DMX standard.  All that the initial DMX revision did was allow the Renard controllers to understand the DMX data stream but the controllers still treated the data stream as they did with the Renard protocol, IOW, stripping the channels from the stream they they were using and that's not what DMX or the Links controllers do.