the "system" works!

[Steve Gase]

I sure like the system of cascading hubs, smart hubs... passive hubs... 4 pairs of signal running over a single cable... its is so flexible and its made things incredibly easy and flexible as I moved to my new house with a LOT of new road.

background:  before, I had a pie-shaped lot that had the narrow part facing the street off a culdesac.  now, I have a long street along my 4 acre lot and iron fence/gate to the right of the house and wall to the left of the house.

I wanted to use the entire "canvas" and so I have 16 aethers, 9 coroflakes, 24 arches, 3 matrix panels, 15 minitrees, 2 mega trees, and soon -- 1 25ft 5000-pixel megapixel tree in the center.

With the move to nearly all RGB, I also tried to create an easily deployable, and highly water-proof configuration.  So, I have 16 battery boxes, each with power supply and controller, and very little cable-to-cable connections out in the yard.  my SSC connections are all waterproof 4-core pigtails on the twisted pair, and 3-core pigtails connecting the lights.

everything is cascaded from the data source to the hubs and outward to other hubs and finally the controllers.  my DMX is all wireless -- and it works great!  the pixelnet carries 4 universes to the outer reaches with a single cable.  another set of 4 universes will control the big tree.

last night when hanging the coroflakes I found that they stretched out so far across the property, the original cables that I tested with where simply too short for the layout I wanted.  so, I pulled out 2 4-port passive hubs (built 2 years ago and gathering dust) and 2 more battery boxes with power supplies, and extended the universe along the far reaches. 

knowing that it would all simply work, relieved me of a LOT of stress.  and it did work, that easily!

thanks, RJ for the well-considered design of the system!!


now, if only the quality of the RGB pixels could be solved... 

[RJ]

Thanks!
I am glad it is working for you as I had envisioned the system working. I often do not do so well getting the ideas and plans from my head into others, but I see you understand the reasons for the system to be designed the way that I did it. Like you I have a large area of display (when I get time to do one) and so it does make it simpler and easier to manage and to make changes at the last minute(something I found out happens all the time in setting up displays, at least for me.)
By having single string controllers avaliable I can over come anything by throwing a SSC and string anywhere I can run a cable to a hub. The Zeus or other multistring controller is good for Mega tree etc. But you give up a lot of flexiblity. So having both is the best of both.

The strings are still the issue. I was somewhat afraid when I heard they were making new stings with much higher current on the nodes that there might be issues. We kept the current down on the original designs to allow long strings and prevent heat issues. I leave in florida and it is not uncommon for the temp to be 85 F at christmas time here. there is little heat transfer in the nodes so you can not disipate lots of heat. The lights are bright as it is so you do not need the extra current.

The current old style they seem to have the weatherproofing figured out. We had the same issues when the first LED strings came out. They would catch fire and make humming noises and just die. but we all like to be on the cutting edge. I guess someone has to figure it all out. 

RJ