more than 32k channels?

[chrisatpsu]

so i'm looking at my profile for this year, planning on setting up all these channels... i'm part way through, and i look to see that i'm on channel 2190.

now i know that many of you guys totally dwarf my channel counts, and by reading some of the posts in other parts of the forum, it looks like Steve Gase is gonna be the Clark Griswold of smarts strings...    also, LSP's top tier software states "Control & Export up to 32767channels of any hardware protocol."

what do you do when you exceed this count?

[tbone321]

Purchase high end commercial software?!?!?!

[Mike Hill]

Throw in the towel and call it "GAME OVER"

You win!!!  One up on DMX universe.

[Steve Gase]

and by reading some of the posts in other parts of the forum, it looks like Steve Gase is gonna be the Clark Griswold of smarts strings...   

ha, ha, ha...   

With huge channel counts EtD is limited (for now) without the ability to have separate multicast configurations, and without conductor support... so I plan to mix USB and EtD. 

The bigger problem is the performance and memory issues with LSP -- even with a fast computer, the sequencing software does not do well.

Here are my plans... about 70% thought out:

• my tree SSCs will be configured for hybrid mode...
  
• Nutcracker will be used to showcase my megapixel tree with songs being played in the background, but not really sequenced to the music  (is that the first time anyone used the term megapixel tree? )
  
• when "sequencing to music" I will use the tree strands in "string" mode -- treating each string of 85 pixels as a single pixel
  
• the coroflakes will be the only items using individual pixel control from most songs
  
• the RGB capabilities of all dumb strings and SSCs in string mode will be used for all of the songs
  
• LSP transitions, with string mode smart strings, and 3channel dumb RGB strings will allow me to use Halderman effects
  
• xLights and Nutcracker will be the tools that pull everything together and allow this all to be scalable!!
  

[chrisatpsu]

i just meant, you seem to be buying up all the ssc's. at least it seems like 

i was just curious, aftert you get to lsp's limit, how do you sequence more channels? make another sequence for the song, and somehow merge them later? (like possibly a conductor and a slave) that way you could have more channels, and still use lsp as your sequencer.

does vixen or xlights have this high channel count?

[Steve Gase]

i just meant, you seem to be buying up all the ssc's. at least it seems like 

i was just curious, aftert you get to lsp's limit, how do you sequence more channels? make another sequence for the song, and somehow merge them later? (like possibly a conductor and a slave) that way you could have more channels, and still use lsp as your sequencer.

does vixen or xlights have this high channel count?

i do not use vixen for more than quick testing of controllers -- so i don't know its limit.  xlights consumes whatever is produced by the sequence editor and I have not heard of any limits in that software.

I think it might be possible to stitch xml sequence files together. if no one else does it i might -- but I suspect frankr has done something similar already...

but in answer to your question -- for me, the answer is more of a divide and conquer by adjusting resolutions during my song list: 

• Sometimes I might have 32k channels running in my megapixel tree showing it in fine resolution... and the rest of my display is doing little to nothing -- this uses nutcracker.   
  
• at other points in my show I would "convert" the tree from fine resolution to low resolution and have 4x16 strings all run in string mode using only 4x16x3 channels -- that I combine with the rest of my display in a huge collection of effects.  I'll use LSP for these songs -- and I won't be stressing LSP because the channel count will be ~200 for the tree and not 32k.
  

[RJ]

That is why i created the Conductor and Slave units.

Say you have a 40,000 channel setup.

You divide the show into two sections of ~ 20,000 channels each and you seqence them as two shows with the same music.

Then you create Conductor files out of them and one goes on the conductor and the other goes on the slave.

Now yuo only needed a seqencing software that could handle 20,000 channels. You did no additional work and you have hardware that can easily handle the 20,000 each you needed.

So in the future you may create the megatree of pixels with 12,000 + channels as a seqence all of its own using something like Nutcracker or tranistions in LSP ect. then it would go on a slave of its own, then the next items would be seqenced on their own maybe in a different package like vixen and be loaded to another slave, ect.  As long as the same music is used the different parts are alway in sync so it will not matter if they are created seperately. you can use the best tool for that part of the show without issues and it would not lock you into only using that software for the whole show. As long as it converts to run on a conductor or slave file. 

I'm breaking the enomous shows into small more managable parts to help on the software and hardware sides both.

RJ

[SteveMaris]

That is why i created the Conductor and Slave units.

Say you have a 40,000 channel setup.

You divide the show into two sections of ~ 20,000 channels each and you seqence them as two shows with the same music.

Then you create Conductor files out of them and one goes on the conductor and the other goes on the slave.

Now yuo only needed a seqencing software that could handle 20,000 channels. You did no additional work and you have hardware that can easily handle the 20,000 each you needed.

So in the future you may create the megatree of pixels with 12,000 + channels as a seqence all of its own using something like Nutcracker or tranistions in LSP ect. then it would go on a slave of its own, then the next items would be seqenced on their own maybe in a different package like vixen and be loaded to another slave, ect.  As long as the same music is used the different parts are alway in sync so it will not matter if they are created seperately. you can use the best tool for that part of the show without issues and it would not lock you into only using that software for the whole show. As long as it converts to run on a conductor or slave file. 

I'm breaking the enomous shows into small more managable parts to help on the software and hardware sides both.

RJ

And that's pretty cool.