Hardware ideas

[SleepyElec]

Hi Everyone,
As I mentioned in my intro, I've recently decided to shift my home spun setup to a Lynx compatible / pin compatible design and I'm looking for some hardware projects that I can contribute. Obviously, most of the obvious needs have been met but I'd like to solicit ideas for additional hardware that could make things easier.

My first order of business will be to get a dongle design  that uses the Enttec DMX Pro plugin done. This might seem superfluous to some given we already have a dongle but the decoding of the serial stream from the computer and encoding of DMX are fairly important building blocks for doing pretty much everything else.

The next question is what else could we use.

Ideas that come to mind are tester type devices. A powered box that just turns everything on. Broadcasts all 0xFF or all 0x00 on all 512 channels. I definitely found myself wanting one for being able to turn all the lights on or off. Also nice for testing boxes one at a time. Comments? How does everyone else deal with this? A laptop running Vixen?

The next step would be to display the output through an LED matrix and also toggle individual lines. I know that someone has done the 8x8 LED matrix, I built one myself on perfboard and found it pretty useful, but people here didn't really seems to bite at it.

Another interesting problem people seem to encounter is getting the signal from a computer on the inside, to the display on the outside. Wireless which is already being worked obviously would address this. What do people think about just doing an LED/Laser Diode & Photodiode type design to go through a window.

There's a good possibility this could be an all in one device. For instance, having the photodiode on the same board as the LED matrix would actually be useful since we could have the matrix light up with the DMX feed which would help with aiming the LED/Laser Diode.

Are these things that people need and or want?

Ideas don't necessarily have to be broadly applicable. Just interesting enough for me to want to try it and if you're the only person who wants it, you can just have my proto.

-Allen :-)

[n1ist]

My LED test matrix is 256 channels with dimming.  You can find it at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login.

I would be interested in a wireless solution that is DMX in and out myself.
/mike

[rrowan]

Hi Everyone,

My first order of business will be to get a dongle design  that uses the Enttec DMX Pro plugin done.


-Allen :-)

HUH??

I have no idea what you are talking about. The lynx dongle DOES use the Enttec DMX Pro plugin in Vixen to control dimmers.

Can you explain this to a non-engineer type that had lights blinking in December with the Enttec DMX pro plugin.

Also

RJ has already announce plans to release two types of wireless devices this year. One that works off of a wifi router and another version that has a wireless dongle transmitter and receivers that are either inside a lynx express or a plugin for the other boards (ssr4-dmx, FS)

Allen, there is nothing wrong with new ideas for hardware, I am just confused about redesigning hardware that is working fine (lynx dongle in this case).

Rick R.

[knguyen916]

how about a dedicated one for megatrees. Looks like a lot of ppl do 48 channel mega trees. just a thought.

[kylec]

My first order of business will be to get a dongle design  that uses the Enttec DMX Pro plugin done. This might seem superfluous to some given we already have a dongle but the decoding of the serial stream from the computer and encoding of DMX are fairly important building blocks for doing pretty much everything else.

I'm with Rick.......Don't we already have this?

As for Ideas............I think a small, battery powered device that could turn on a channel of your choice. Kind of along the lines of your tester idea.  Where I see it being really useful, for example, when up on the roof hooking up lights to controllers,  you could just turn on channel 173 (or whatever) to make sure you are hooking up the correct channel to the right string of lights.  The way I did this this year was with a pocket pc using LogMeIn to control the Vixen computer.  This worked ok, but after a while, I found it much easier to have  my wife sit at the computer on the cell phone.

If it would be possible to add dimming to this device, it could also be used to set start channels on RJs controllers in the field easily.  I am guessing I spent about 3 hours total this year walking into the house to set up vixen to program a start channel.  Then walking back out, setting the channel, walking back in the house to test  the channel I just set as the start address, walking back out to see if that channel was actually on............

Thanks for your willingness to contribute,

Kyle   

[memphislights]

For testing, why not just throw the controller PC on a wireless network and remote desktop into the box while you are testing.  You can disable the wireless interface when not testing.

[cmorda]

Re: Tester box:
I do like the idea of a 1 channel DMX "console" with maybe a single fader and bump button. Maybe a little LCD could read the current channel and intensity in %. Maybe you could fade the selected channel then scroll up or down to another and have it hold the channel you were on at the set intensity. Then I suppose a "blackout" or reset button and "all on" button? I don't know what it would take to code this... Just dreaming out loud I guess. 

Re: in a pinch heatsinks:
Buy a piece of .75"x.75" aluminum angle stock (Home Depot?) and mark and drill the holes then use machine screws/washers/nuts to attach. If fitment or accuracy of the holes became a problem either switch to smaller screws for the same holes or drill the holes bigger. This is similar to a lot of folk's SSRoz heatsinks that I have seen. I also thought about notching the non-drilled part to make fingers to add to the surface area.

Another possibility might be a single to-220 fingered heatsink for a particularly heavily loaded channel. ie:
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I have to respectfully disagree on the epoxy idea mostly because of the hindered repairability after epoxying the triac. The traces on these boards should withstand some rework as especially since the holes are thru-plated.

[tpctech]

I like the idea of the small dmx tester.  I come from the theatrical world and there are several pro units made that are kinda expensive.  A company call Fleenor designs has a unit called the "Gizmo".  It allow to turn on one channel at a time and dimmup/down or turn on groups it is pretty cool.  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login Another manufacture is american dj they used to make a dmx tester but have discontinued it You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

So with this all said a small hand unit like these that we all can afford with rg45 dmx out would be great. 

KEN

[scharbon]

If you really want something that will help - the DMX single channel Gizmo is a good idea, but I think lots of us using minilights still would like the light strand checker.  its something you plug the light strand into, and it sends a current that causes burnt out bulbs to hum.  Makes it easier to find and replace bad bulbs in strings that don't respond to the $20 lightcheckers.  Someone posted a link to the commercial version in TidBits or the Porch, can't find it right now though or I would have attached the link.

Steve

Found it: make this thing
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[REM]

Okay, I have a couple of ideas. However, I have yet to assemble my first board so take this with a grain of salt. 

1.  How about a handheld SSR4 start channel programmer?  Seems like I recall someone posting about the amount of time spent running back and forth to the PC to do this?

2.  A Lynx Blade System.  Similar to a computer blade server, the main board is obviously a Freestyle with SSR boards that plug in using some sort of backplane or bus - all in one enclosure. It might even be able to do something like 8 channel full size SSR boards or 4 ch 'half-width' cards - autodetected by the host. 

Ron

[MrChristmas2000]

Afford is the key point. That Gizmo product is $1,200!

[WWNF911]

Allen,

Not to jump on the bandwagon here, but why would you want to re-invent the wheel?

Just because you can?

Sorry,.... 2 cents


EDIT - Sorry, should've been more specific, I see you've got several recommandations. This post was about dongle.  Oops.

[RPM]

How about an inexpensive (around $30-$40) handheld battery powered DMX analyzer that can also be used to set your start channel?
I have a past project that was a DMX analyzer with a 16X2 LCD (HD44780) display that I did a breadboard of that would work for this idea with some changes to the code (ATMega8 processor based).

It could also be something simple like a PIC processor and an RS485 chip on a board with a couple of BCD dip switches to set the start code with.  Something like this could easily be built for under $20.


  RPM

Okay, I have a couple of ideas. However, I have yet to assemble my first board so take this with a grain of salt. 

1.  How about a handheld SSR4 start channel programmer?  Seems like I recall someone posting about the amount of time spent running back and forth to the PC to do this?

Ron

[RJ]

That would be nice but remember that the express sets the start channel on the front panel already and the upgrade module we are look at will add this to the Freestyle at a point so don't want to ham string anyone after they work hard on a project.

RJ

[RPM]

True... this would be of more use to someone who is using the DMX SSR4's without an Express or Freestyle.
The DMX analyzer is pretty cool as it measures the timing and can output a test signal, but it's more of a techie thing then for the average user   I use mine mostly for checking DMX dongle timing.

 Robert

That would be nice but remember that the express sets the start channel on the front panel already and the upgrade module we are look at will add this to the Freestyle at a point so don't want to ham string anyone after they work hard on a project.

RJ