If you have an active hub, I would build it. Unless the only thing you intend to put in your dispay is a MegaTree, you are going to need it anyway. Once built, you can use it to power your SSC's for testing. Then as jnealand said, load the test firmware into your SSC and you can use it to test your strings as well as the SSC itself. Even though I was and still am a big proponent of the ETD, I would also suggest picking up a USB dongle as well. Even though it is at the end of its development life, it does work well for testing and bench work such as setting start channels. Sure, you can use the ETD for that as well but not if it s set up as a Conductor. It is also smaller and lower cost which makes it a better bench tool and can output either DMX or PixelNet with the correct firmware. You also don't have to wait for a coop because there are no coops for it.
