Streaming DMX

[tpctech]

Dan,

With Streaming ACN becoming more popular. Is LOR going to have a "plug-in" to support DMX over network using Streaming ACN?

Just a thought. With all of us with growing displays this would b e just another way to distribute the data.

KEN

[LightORamaDan]

We will have an Ethernet solution in place next year. We are still investigating the best way(s) to go.

Artnet has been the way to go however E1.31 is starting to gain a little popularity.

One way or another, we will have both LOR and DMX on Ethernet and will be supplying inexpensive adapters/nodes.

Dan

[tpctech]

LightORamaDan wrote:

We will have an Ethernet solution in place next year. We are still investigating the best way(s) to go.

Artnet has been the way to go however E1.31 is starting to gain a little popularity.

One way or another, we will have both LOR and DMX on Ethernet and will be supplying inexpensive adapters/nodes.

Dan

Dan,

Thats great news. If you need a SACN test program or a commercial node to borrow let me know. I am a ETC and Pathway lighting dealer and trying to become a LOR commercial dealer!

KEN

[Ed Slonka Jr]

Gee, and I thought we spoke english in this forum! LOL

[gizmomkr]

Its funny to hear people say "DMX is the future" - having a background in technical theatre and Lighting Production, DMX is all I ever knew. DMX is verry much the past, present and future.

I imagine at some point we will start to see fixtures with ACN / E1.31 built right in. We will set IP's instead of chanel assignments, and everything is tied together with Cat-5/6 and ethernet switches.

I saw Ed Brysons EthConGateway a coule weeks ago, and was really excited about the potential it holds (but also a bit sad because I know I cant use it with LOR) Yet

I like Dan, I like LOR, and I especially like to see the attention that LOR pays to its customers. (no this is not a shamefull plug, or sucking up) Dan and others are constantly responding to posts of all kinds at all hours. I honestly dont know of another company that communicates so openly and frequently with its customers.

I know I made the right decison to invest in LOR products because the company continues to listen and grow its products

[dmoore]

I'm not fully understanding the advantage of having LOR add ethernet support to S2 (or something after it). High channel counts (in the thousands) are an off-shoot of a move to pixel based RGB displays for the most part. Right now, even with RGB support, it's just not "reasonable" to program several thousand channels. So major advances in RGB support (such as Madrix or LSP's transitions) would be a requirement to use that many channels. Otherwise, as Dan mentions in his post here (http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum75/22966.html) - that you can add several thousand channels without any ethernet business for under $120.

The biggest question I have is exactly how big and how fast RGB adoption (complete displays, not floods and a few CCRs) will be. It seems that LORs major focus is on the entry end of the market which wouldn't adpot RGB for several years.

[LightORamaDan]

dmoore wrote:

I'm not fully understanding the advantage of having LOR add ethernet support to S2 (or something after it). High channel counts (in the thousands) are an off-shoot of a move to pixel based RGB displays for the most part. Right now, even with RGB support, it's just not "reasonable" to program several thousand channels. So major advances in RGB support (such as Madrix or LSP's transitions) would be a requirement to use that many channels. Otherwise, as Dan mentions in his post here (http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum75/22966.html) - that you can add several thousand channels without any ethernet business for under $120.

The biggest question I have is exactly how big and how fast RGB adoption (complete displays, not floods and a few CCRs) will be. It seems that LORs major focus is on the entry end of the market which wouldn't adpot RGB for several years.

Some good points. As far as how to program lots of channels, there are a number of ways to "skin a cat":)... We have some cool things planned that will help make the jump to many 1000s of channels feasible. Much of this will be for next year, but things are in the works today. We will be making the releases in smaller chunks than you have seen in the past so you will see the changes coming this year and evolving.

LOR customers are both large and small. One of the challenges is to keep the software simple for the beginner but powerful enough for the "big guys" while not cluttering things up. We will continue to keep that as a goal and try to make it even simpler for the beginner with only a few channels while at the same time make it easier for users with 1000s of channels.

How fast will RBG be adopted? That is of course a question that cannot be answered however we have new products in the pipe line that may make the transition to high count RGB displays happen quicker than some think.

I think that for many if not most users, a single USB adapter (or maybe a couple) will handle their displays for the time being. But we have plans to go way beyond where even the largest displays are today. To accomplish this, it is going to take big changes and we are committed to making those changes. I have made the commitment to make the increases in the software and hardware engineering staffs required to make this all happen.

Computerized Christmas lights and LOR have come a long way since I started the company in early 2002... and today we are on a roll! Since day one, my philosophy has been to reinvest everything into making LOR better and that is what we are going to do.

Dan

[dmoore]

LightORamaDan wrote:

LOR customers are both large and small. One of the challenges is to keep the software simple for the beginner but powerful enough for the "big guys" while not cluttering things up. We will continue to keep that as a goal and try to make it even simpler for the beginner with only a few channels while at the same time make it easier for users with 1000s of channels.

How fast will RBG be adopted? That is of course a question that cannot be answered however we have new products in the pipe line that may make the transition to high count RGB displays happen quicker than some think.

I think that for many if not most users, a single USB adapter (or maybe a couple) will handle their displays for the time being. But we have plans to go way beyond where even the largest displays are today. To accomplish this, it is going to take big changes and we are committed to making those changes. I have made the commitment to make the increases in the software and hardware engineering staffs required to make this all happen.

Computerized Christmas lights and LOR have come a long way since I started the company in early 2002... and today we are on a roll! Since day one, my philosophy has been to reinvest everything into making LOR better and that is what we are going to do.

It seems that there would be a logical "split" in your software, both feature and price wise - several hundred for high end RGB and high channel counts.. much like you have today, just not focused on segmented hardware support but segmented software features based on the price point. Is this the case? At this point, I'm happy to pay $400-500 for stable, easy to use (Death of the Grid style) software that handled thousands of channels. I'm perfectly happy paying that amount because it's a small cost in a display that costs at much as a good, late model used car. I also understand that the market is limited for that feature-set.

And this device - it would be a centralized model like we have today or something more decentralized. Any plans to pull the signal over ethernet or powerline if it is de-centralized?

As I posted before... if it's using the LOR protcol... displays getting towards the 700+ channel range is getting dicey depending on the shimmers, fades, twinkles in use concurrently. I'm guessing if it supports the LOR protocol, you'll be putting in some "alert" when the bandwidth is being capped out?

So based on the commitments... there is more than you and John(?) on the development side of things? Is the software development being outsourced or done by someone else now?

I would say in the next year or two is a pivotal point - "regular" displays are getting bigger, more complex (DMX devices) and with RGB coming on strong in 2011, the days of the high-amp $200 controller are numbered. These displays are starting to look more like productions than christmas lights.

[LightORamaDan]

dmoore wrote:

It seems that there would be a logical "split" in your software, both feature and price wise - several hundred for high end RGB and high channel counts.. much like you have today, just not focused on segmented hardware support but segmented software features based on the price point. Is this the case? At this point, I'm happy to pay $400-500 for stable, easy to use (Death of the Grid style) software that handled thousands of channels. I'm perfectly happy paying that amount because it's a small cost in a display that costs at much as a good, late model used car. I also understand that the market is limited for that feature-set.

And this device - it would be a centralized model like we have today or something more decentralized. Any plans to pull the signal over ethernet or powerline if it is de-centralized?

As I posted before... if it's using the LOR protcol... displays getting towards the 700+ channel range is getting dicey depending on the shimmers, fades, twinkles in use concurrently. I'm guessing if it supports the LOR protocol, you'll be putting in some "alert" when the bandwidth is being capped out?

So based on the commitments... there is more than you and John(?) on the development side of things? Is the software development being outsourced or done by someone else now?

I would say in the next year or two is a pivotal point - "regular" displays are getting bigger, more complex (DMX devices) and with RGB coming on strong in 2011, the days of the high-amp $200 controller are numbered. These displays are starting to look more like productions than christmas lights.

It is too early to start talking about price point but affordability is always one of our criteria.

You said "and this device, it would..." Well there are a number of devices that are under development. One network topology will not cover all of our customer's needs.

As far as development team question (John and I...)... I just want to make sure you understand a little about LOR. LOR is a multi-million dollar business ( I only say this to emphasize that it is not just John and I). My main role is to run this company and see that we have production, order fulfillment and customer support. We ship many pallet loads of product every day and it is now to the point that UPS has requested that they keep a trailer parked at our dock so all they have to do is swap trailers in the evening (isn't going to happen because we do not have the dock space today but hopefully next year). Production and fulfillment and customer support are my number one priority. Developing new products is very important but delivery and support of the existing products in obviously number one.

Both John and I are engineers with electrical and software engineering backgrounds. John and I are the only share holders of the company and make the final decisions at LOR. Beyond being engineers however, John has owned his own software company for 20+ years. He has handed over most of the running of the company to a VP there and spends more than full time working engineering, procurement, vendor relations, etc here at LOR.

Of course Bob is full time and has always been lead programmer at LOR. At different times, in addition to Bob, we have had Tor (from John's company and Bill working on the code)... KC the author of Vixen software worked for about a year here on the S2 project. So currently we have Bob as the lead on S2 software, we have a new visualizer out being outsourced to a (US company), we have Alan (sourced from John's software company) working on a project and we have another company (that specializes in multimedia (video and audio) writing some custom code for us.

We have an engineer that does custom layout of our circuit boards and does a job much nicer than auto-routers (software based routing) will do. John does most of the new circuit design.. Both John and I do firmware (in our spare time;)). We are looking to get a fulltime firmware resource this year. We have a part-time electrical engineer that is working an a very special project for us in digital signal processing. And I am probably missing a few things here. We have a well stocked prototype lab with a reflow oven, X,Y,Z placement table with a high resolution camera and a lot of equipment that helps us do quick turn prototyping of our projects.

We plan a production staff increase of about 25%. A new person started working today and we have some others starting soon. We have resourced dedicated to setting up a dealer network. We are currently training a new agent who will be dedicated to international orders and dealer order fulfilment. This should actually give us more time for domestic support as we will offloading existing staff. We have a person that is dedicated to product repairs and is currently clocking about 70% of his time to repairs and the remainder goes to order fulfillment. We have multiple people dedicated to order fulfilment and a couple who work on customer support. Maintiance, etc... (someone has to keep the place clean!).

But anyway back to the original question of engineering, not counting John and I, we want to have 4-5 people running full-time on software, hardware and firmware. When we add up all the full-time, part-time and outsourced projects we are close to that number now but I want to get more full time people on board.

As far as the timing or pivot point of what equipment is used in displays or how computerized lighting will change in the future... I am not one to make public predictions but there certainly are changes on the way. I do have a good feeling about where things are heading and hope that the decisions we make are good ones.

[Steve Constantino]

LightORamaDan wrote:

We will have an Ethernet solution in place next year. We are still investigating the best way(s) to go.

Artnet has been the way to go however E1.31 is starting to gain a little popularity.

One way or another, we will have both LOR and DMX on Ethernet and will be supplying inexpensive adapters/nodes.

Dan

Dan,

Sounds great! Artnet is the way to go. At the show I work on in Vegas we have 46 DMX universes over a few Artnet network and it works grate.

I think it is a good idea to sell LOR DMX nodes. Because the ones used in the entertainment industry are very pricey. But other nodes should still be able to work too.

Also the nodes should have 512 "smart channels" not 128 like the iDMX1000.


Steve

[LightORamaDan]

Steve Constantino wrote:

LightORamaDan wrote:

We will have an Ethernet solution in place next year. We are still investigating the best way(s) to go.

Artnet has been the way to go however E1.31 is starting to gain a little popularity.

One way or another, we will have both LOR and DMX on Ethernet and will be supplying inexpensive adapters/nodes.

Dan

Dan,

Sounds great! Artnet is the way to go. At the show I work on in Vegas we have 46 DMX universes over a few Artnet network and it works grate.

I think it is a good idea to sell LOR DMX nodes. Because the ones used in the entertainment industry are very pricey. But other nodes should still be able to work too.

Also the nodes should have 512 "smart channels" not 128 like the iDMX1000.


Steve

Steve,

The iDMX is a special case and is the only solution we will have with limited "intelligent channels". This whole intelligent thing had to do with making the iDMX a bridge between a LOR network and a DMX universe. This works great with the DC-MP3 controllers but with PC based shows we will move to a native DMX solution where DMX universes are defined in the sequence file. In a native DMX solution all addresses in the DMX universe will be addressable and support all features simultaneously.

Dan

[Steve Constantino]

LightORamaDan wrote:

Steve Constantino wrote:

LightORamaDan wrote:

We will have an Ethernet solution in place next year. We are still investigating the best way(s) to go.

Artnet has been the way to go however E1.31 is starting to gain a little popularity.

One way or another, we will have both LOR and DMX on Ethernet and will be supplying inexpensive adapters/nodes.

Dan

Dan,

Sounds great! Artnet is the way to go. At the show I work on in Vegas we have 46 DMX universes over a few Artnet network and it works grate.

I think it is a good idea to sell LOR DMX nodes. Because the ones used in the entertainment industry are very pricey. But other nodes should still be able to work too.

Also the nodes should have 512 "smart channels" not 128 like the iDMX1000.


Steve

Steve,

The iDMX is a special case and is the only solution we will have with limited "intelligent channels". This whole intelligent thing had to do with making the iDMX a bridge between a LOR network and a DMX universe. This works great with the DC-MP3 controllers but with PC based shows we will move to a native DMX solution where DMX universes are defined in the sequence file. In a native DMX solution all addresses in the DMX universe will be addressable and support all features simultaneously.

Dan

Dan,

That's what I was hoping for. Cool!!

Thanks

Steve

[gizmomkr]

Just wondering now that we are into the new year - is there any official word on some type of ethernet support ?

I read a lot about the new CCB's, and how those can be connected, but that doesnt really answer the e1.31 question.

[LightORamaDan]

We will have have enhanced DMX support. Both via inexpensive USB dongles and over Ethernet.

Dan

[Denis Chaput]

Can we repeat this in french please:P

[LightORamaDan]

Denis Chaput wrote:

Can we repeat this in french please:P

Nous devrons avoir un meilleur soutien DMX. À la fois via les clés USB bon marché et sur Ethernet

Dan

[Denis Chaput]

A fully bilingual support service

Merci Beaucoup LOL LOL

[gizmomkr]

I am still holding out hope to add some RGB Pixels this year, but wont do it with an idmx. too much $$ V.S. chanel count for pixel strings. I hope we hear more on streaming DMX support soon.