Author Topic: Slave Firmware  (Read 3250 times)

Offline TAdamsOK

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Slave Firmware
« on: July 30, 2014, »
Hey all,
Been a crazy year so far and low and behold it's almost August!  I was kicking some idea's around for this years show and have come to the conclusion that I want to add around 4500 channels.  This will take me way over the pixelnet channel limit for a single conductor.  I used the conductor last year, and man it was a really slick setup.  My network wasn't congested with streaming data, and I didn't have a computer tied up all month running shows.  So I swung by here and looked at the wiki and saw that the firmware wasn't posted yet which isn't a big deal right now of course.  I was wondering if RJ had any estimated completion date since I would rather not spend a ton of time and money on nodes, wiring, etc if it isn't going to work this year.  Unlike last year, I am hoping to get most of this years set up put together and tested before it has to go on display!  :D 

A big part of the driver will be doubling my mega tree from 16 strands of 50 nodes to 32 strands of 50.  So that will have to be split across two separate 4096 channel uni's.   Might get interesting programming, but I think LSP should be able to handle it seamlessly.

Edit:  titled it for the conductor, meant slave doh!

Offline animal

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Re: Slave Firmware
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2014, »
Hey TAdamsOK,

  I assume 4500 is going to put you over the 4th pixel universe, so you are pushing over 16000 channels. I have 20 strings 84 pixels folded in half to make 40 strings 42 pixels 1 up and 1 down on my mega tree. I set this up in LSP that way String 1 up Then String 1 down and so on. I used 2 active hubs 1 set on pixel universe 1 and I think around string 11 where it went to the next universe. It went to my second hub set to pixel universe 2. This worked out good to balance the load and with some tricks in LSP. It was easy to sequence. I don't know how seamlessly it would cross over from conductor to slave. In theory. It would. In reality who knows. You might have to re-channel to keep the mega tree with in the channels of the conductor or visa versa. I'm also intrested in the slave for other reasons. Someone will chime in.

      animal

Offline TAdamsOK

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Re: Slave Firmware
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2014, »
Yes, I'm scheduled to go over the 16k channel count.  I was going to rechannel so that it is all on the same controller,  but couldn't all be on the same hub since it's over 4096 channels. 

Last season, I had 16 strings all starting on the ground headed up, but I'm still debating whether to splice another 50 onto the end and go up and down like you are talking about, or just setup 16 more controllers.  I had a few strings die last year on my mega due to heavy icing that occured.  The rj45 pigtail connectors actually corroded down to nothing from the moisture!  So this year I am going to try to sheild them a little better from the elements.  But was leaning toward just having separate controllers due to ease of replacing and if one goes down its not such a huge dead spot in the tree.