Trying to plan ahead

[Voltorb]

With all of the issues with LSP this season, I'd like to use the conductor, and slaves next year.  I currently have 3, 8-Universe controllers on separate IP addresses, and a few Animated Lighting controllers which will be DMX next year.  My understanding is that the Etherdongle supports only 4 DMX universes, so that means, I'll need 6 just to support the 3 8-Universe E1.31 controllers correct?  Are there any plans to support more than 4 DMX universes?  How about Unicast?   I've currently got those 3 controllers on a Gigabit switch, and would prefer not to Multicast.  Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome.  Thanks!

[rdebolt]

At this time I do not believe that there are any plans for the Etd to support Unicast. The Etd itself supports DMX, but the firmware to make the conductor support DMX is not out yet, but I would think that RJ will have that done by next year. You are correct that the Etd flashed for DMX supports 4 universes of DMX

[tbone321]

If this is an issue, I would suggest using some smart hubs and tap off of their DMX outputs.  This will also allow you to use the Conductor even if RJ never creates DMX firmware for it.  I actually suggested to RJ to eliminate all DMX firmware for the EtherDongle and Conductor and instead come out with a standalone PixelNet to DMX converter.  This would allow a single Etherdongle or Conductor to support up to 32 DMX universes.  Sure, you could do that now by using the DMX output of smart hubs but thast could get expensive.  A stand alone DMX converter would be much smaller and less expensive and the circuit design already exists.

[Voltorb]

Wow Tbone321, that would be fantastic!  I agree, it's a better option, and does not require further DMX firmware development for the Ehterdongle.

[Steve Gase]

Add another vote for the pixelnet-to-dmx converter.

[Voltorb]

I'll even volunteer to run the first Coop!