Hardware > Lynx EtherDongle

EtherDongle and older hardware compatibility

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CourtBard:
So this may be an ignorant question, but I am not making the connection. I understand that the new etherdongle is designed for pixelnet protocol, and that on the main hub, there is a DMX out. I know (think) that the SSR4 and Express use DMX, so my question is this. The etherdongle can handle ~16000 channels, but is designed mainly for RGB string type sequencing. If (in theory) you had ~16,000 strings of regular old LED lights and wanted each string to be controllable seperately, is this possible? I realize it is kind of a crazy idea, but just in theory, would it work? My understanding is that there is only a dingle DMX out from the hub, so that would only output a max 512 channels (1 DMX universe).

The reason I am asking this is because I do not have the money to invest in RGB strings, so I am going to be stuck starting off with the plain old LED strings. I don't want to buy/build an older lynx dongle because I would eventually like to be able to take advantage of the features of the etherdongle. If I use the etherDongle, am I limited to a single DMX universe?

I have been following along with light animation for a while, but have never been able to get the hardware to get into it, so please be kind to an excited newbie >.d9

mokeefe:
No, a single EtherDongle cannot control 16,000 "standard" LED strings.  If you are not planning to run Smart Strings you can load a DMX-Only version of the firmware on the board which will give you 4 universes of DMX (2048 channels total).  You would not need the SS Hub, instead you would use the passive combiner (wired in reverse) to break out the feed from the EtherDongle to 4 cables (universes) of 512 channel DMX.

If you have not invested in the regular Lynx USB Dongle, I would highly recommend the EtherDongle.  The cost will be minimally higher, but you will have the capability of 4 USB Dongles in one unit and all the future developments planned for the EtherDongle. Of course, timing may be an issue.  I don't want to speak for RJ so only he can say when units would be available via an EtherDongle Coop.

-Mike

CourtBard:
I figured that the full 16K would not be available. I am assuming that you would use a bunch of SSR4's or expresses? You would need a ton for that many channels, so I think the cost would be prohibative.

If I understand then, you would take an ether dongle, re flash it for strictly DMX, and 4 DMX universes would come out. That would go to the combiner/splitter and the 4DMX universes over pixelnet would be split into 4 individual DMX universes. What would you do from there, dasiy chain a bunch of ssr$'s etc together to fill up all of the channels within the seperate DMX universes?

Just out of curiousity, why are you limited to 4 DMX universes with the etherdongle? My understanding of the pixelnet protocol is that it uses 4096 channels which I believe is 8 DMX universes? So why not have access to at least the 8 DMX universes of one of the four pixelnet universes available on the etherdongle?

RJ:
Because their is only four channels of data and DMX is limited to 512 channels per channel. 4 channels of pixelnet(4096) is 16,384 channels. This why I use pixelnet and not DMX for RGB pixels.

RJ

CourtBard:
I see. So the etherdongle has 4 pixelnet universes worth of channels, but we are in effect changing those pixelnet universes to DMX universes, so since there were 4 pixelent universes, now we have 4 DMX universes instead. I was thinking that we were gaining access to the DMX universes within a single pixelent universe rather than converting the four pixelnet universes into DMX universes. Do I have that correct?

Another question if I may. What would people use at the other end of the etherdongle when you have 2048 DMX channels to play with. I noticed in one of your light show demo videos RJ, that you pointed out quite a few expresses in boxes on posts. Is that the "suggested" way to handle the channel counts? I know that I am  opening up a big can of worms as far as the "suggested" way, but I am just thinking that if I have 2048 channels to play with, that means I need 128 expresses or 512 SSR4's with DMX. That's a lot of boxes spread around the yard and at about $70 for the express for mouser parts (plus XX fo the PCB) or $26 (plus XX for the PCB), that means we are talking around $13,300 just for enough SSR4 parts (plus however much the PCBs run and cost for the boxes, cords, shipping, etc.) or $8960 for the express parts (plus PCB, boxes, cords, shipping, etc.) to run all those channels.

I know that coops bring the prices down a bit on that, so those numbers will definitely be high. Now, looking at SmartStrings with those figures in mind, we are looking at about $85 for the smart string controller parts (plus the cost of the PCB) and a 128 Node smart string. Again coops should bring the price down proportionally, so if my numbers are right, you could get about 105 smart strings for the same cost as the express parts for 2048 channels, or 156 smart strings for the same cost as the SSR4 parts. That equates to 13440 RGB nodes for 105 strings or 19968 RGB nodes for 156 strings. Of course one etherdongle has 16,348 channels, so you would not be able to run all those nodes on one etherdongle, but, as RJ pointed out, you could simply add another etherdongle...

I realize that with 2048 DMX channels you are able to get a lot of the regular old led strings per single channel, so your light count will be much higher than with the RGB nodes. On the other hand, if you were to take almost 20,000 RGB nodes, and spread them around, you could do some amazing things. If I understand correctly, you could space each RGB LED node out 4-6 feet from the previous one, so you could spread them around better in things like bushes or trees. Alternatively, you could take those 128 node strands and wire tie them up to look like icicles, and now you have fully controllable collor changing icicles. Just some thoughts and some figures that are probably way off because I do not have the figures for the boxes, PCB's etc. Not to mention all of the soldering that would need to be done for all of those boards  <fp.

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