Author Topic: Thought of a guide to help new users...  (Read 594 times)

Offline chrisatpsu

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Thought of a guide to help new users...
« on: January 14, 2015, »
Thought of a new guide to help new members, or even members that might be confused about the channels...  Feel free to comment if you find it useful (it helped you) , or if you have comments to help make it clearer.

Channel Numbers and DLA Equipment.

Working with high channel counts can sometimes be confusing. Hopefully we can make this as painlessly as possible. There are more advanced and complicated scenarios that you can achieve with this equipment, however, we’re going to focus on a more simplistic approach to make it easier to understand.

Things we’re going to assume.
Using an Etherdongle
Using a pixelnet active hub to output DMX channels
A complete DIY Light Animation hardware setup without outside hardware
At least 1 pixelnet device
At least 1 DMX device.

There are 4 sets of numbers when setting up a lightshow. The design software’s channel count, the pixelnet hardware universe, the DMX hardware universe, and finally the hardware channel itself. A universe is a block of addresses that the hardware can work with. (512 channels for DMX, 4096 for Pixelnet)

The design software contains the complete list of uniquely controlled channels for your show. Every uniquely controlled item with have its own separate channel number (for example 1-64, or 1-12467, etc.)

The pixelnet hardware uses universes of 4096 channels. Once you go over this count, you’ll need a device that can provide the next universe (another set of 4096 channels) Each universe is a separate set of 4096 channels but are both still numbered 1-4096. 

The DMX hardware works similar to the pixelnet universe except in blocks of 512 channels. (Instead of 4096) Each universe is a separate set of 512 channels but are still numbered 1-512.
The hardware channel is dependent on the device. For example the Lynx Express uses 16 channels, and the Lynx Freestyle use 128 channels!

The most confusing part for most people is how it all lines up. Using the above information, we know that DMX channel numbers can only be from 1 to 512. Every time we count past 512, we need to add a new universe. So channel 513 is actually channel 1 on the next universe. Important to note is you can’t have a device cross the boundary of the DMX universe. If you used a device like the Lynx Express and set it for channel 511. Only the first 2 channels would respond to channels 511, and 512. (The remaining 14 channels either won’t respond, or might act erratically.

Good practice is to set aside a chunk of channels for you DMX gear, then determine how many channels that takes up (which helps you reserve enough channels or DMX universes) then you can start planning where you want to start your Pixelnet range. Be sure to add enough growing room if you want to add DMX channels later. Some to prefer to use songs from year to year without having to re-sequence songs. A chart is provided to help with planning future gear.
DLA DMX GearMax channels used
SSR44
Express16
Freestyle128
Aether (Aether II)4

Pixelnet gear should be very similar to the DMX gear except we’re working with chunks of 4096 channels. Once again we don’t want to cross a boundary of 4096 channels. As the extra channels may not light up, or behave erratically. Ok, assuming we only used 1 block of 512 channels for our DMX gear. We can start our Pixelnet stuff on channel 513 (actually, we can start our Pixelnet stuff after the last used DMX channel, but to make this article simple, we can assume we’re either using up the entire 512 channels for DMX)

Pixelnet gear comes in many different channel counts, but usually comes in multiples of 3. (most pixelnet “nodes” consist of a separately controlled red, green, and blue channel) also strings can be setup for string, pixel, and hybrid modes which provide for different channel counts. 

As you run out of channels in a particular universe, just restart the counting of the universe and add 1 to the universe.

At channel 4096, you at the last channel in a pixelnet universe, and/or the last channel of DMX universe #8. To move onto channel 4097, you need to move to a new Pixelnet universe (#2) and DMX universe (#1 – the first block of the new Pixelnet universe)
« Last Edit: January 14, 2015, by chrisatpsu »
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