Author Topic: Questions  (Read 6496 times)

Offline Harley

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Questions
« on: January 08, 2013, »
Pixelnet? can someone wxplain the difference between pixelnet and DMX...

Universes, i came to believe that a "universe" is 512 channel, wether its DMX or pixelnet

im new to this and trying to learn about the pros and cons

im wanting to mainly use RGB stuff and maybe a few of the regular lights

any info would be greatly appreciated

Thx, Harley in La
Harley in Louisiana

Yep im a n00b, i can break it and blow it up with the best of em

Offline Steve Gase

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Re: Questions
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2013, »
Pixelnet is a DLA/Lynx-custom protocol.
It is based off of the DMX protocol (wire and packet) but it increases the channel counts from 512 to 4096, and decreases the timings.


Pixelnet allows the higher channel counts needed for pixel-based lighting.  Otherwise, with a 512-channel limit you would find that a 3-channel RGB pixel would be limited to 170 pixels on a DMX universe.


Since Pixelnet is not an industry standard, it is not shared with other products from other forums or vendors.  BUT, there are capabilities in the Lynx kits that allow a page of Pixelnet channel space to be available as DMX channels.
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Offline JonB256

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Re: Questions
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2013, »
The one other super-DMX protocol is Hyper DMX. It squeezed 4 Universes into the space of 1 just by increasing the speed by 4 times.
Pixelnet puts 8 universes out by doing 2 things. Bumps up the speed, but also removes some wasted space used for Break Signals. Since DMX is a fairly old protocol, designed back when discrete components rather than integrated circuits ran the world, it is super conservative on speed and timing. My personal experience with Pixelnet data integrity has been problem free.

I found it a little overwhelming at first using an Etherdongle (E1.31) that was putting 32 DMX Universes (32 x 512) out from a single device. You can do a lot with 16 thousand channels. :)

Offline Harley

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Re: Questions
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2013, »
 <;d 16,000 channels


Anyway, thats what m after, i plan on using ALOT of RGB so pixelnet is the way to go, thanks for the info
Harley in Louisiana

Yep im a n00b, i can break it and blow it up with the best of em

Offline rrowan

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Re: Questions
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2013, »
to be correct its 16,384 channels

of course adding a second etherdongle with a slave board and then you can have 32,768  ;D

of course you can keep adding more etherdongles and slave boards but… The sequence software now becomes the problem.

Rick R.
Light Animation Hobby - Having fun and Learning at the same time. (21st member of DLA)
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Offline kgustafson

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Re: Questions
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2013, »
But the sequencing software is getting better!
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Offline Steve Gase

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Re: Questions
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2013, »
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to be correct its 16,384 channels

of course adding a second etherdongle with a slave board and then you can have 32,768  ;D

of course you can keep adding more etherdongles and slave boards but… The sequence software now becomes the problem.

Rick R.
I don't think sequencing gets any harder for the slave configurations... yes, programming a slave is another 16,384 channels... and that is definitely work.  adding yet another slave is another 16, 384 channels to do.


BUT... in the past you had to worry about the ability of the software to scale to these increasingly large pixel counts... or the power of your computer to do larger sequences... or your show computer. 


With the separation out into multiple EtDs with slave or conductors, the same software and the same workstations are used no matter how large your show becomes.  Each time, you are working on the sequences for a max of 16,384 channels.


You join it all together by sequencing to the same song and timings.  that is how it all comes together.
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Offline Eshep1000

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Re: Questions
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2013, »
What are you using for light (pixel) strings?
Dave

Offline drlucas

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Re: Questions
« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2013, »
Lots of options in the wiki that are supported here...  stay away from things NOT in this list.

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Offline jnealand

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Re: Questions
« Reply #9 on: December 27, 2013, »
You guys are answering questions from a year ago.  Check the dates when reading old posts.
Jim Nealand
Kennesaw, GA

Offline drlucas

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Re: Questions
« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2013, »
Dave should of started a new thread....I replied to his question from today though :-p
-Ryan Lucas-
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