Jump to content
Light-O-Rama Forums

E1.31 Questions [Beta Released 6/8/12]


LightORamaJohn

Recommended Posts

Jeff,
From what I understand, Fabian Gordon did exactly what you mention using SMS and Madrix.. allowing people to text in a message and it would show up on the matrix. I think after a while he did end up disabling it for fear of what people would do.

Dave

Link to comment
Share on other sites

heystew wrote:

Jeff,
From what I understand, Fabian Gordon did exactly what you mention using SMS and Madrix.. allowing people to text in a message and it would show up on the matrix. I think after a while he did end up disabling it for fear of what people would do.

Dave

As neat as it would be to see people say Hi to thier familys on the matrix, you know it would go down hill real fast!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Now don't bash me for trying to bring this back on topic -
the thread started with good information on LOR - upgraded S3 and E1.31 and the function of that combination. Quite a number of us are working at pulling our head around what it takes to bring this combination together and I thank LORJohn for bringing as much to the table as possible, as well as others who bring the technical experience of this combination into the discussion as well. This topic is about LOR - the owner of this forum - let's stay on THAT topic and take the philosophical differences elsewhere - please!

John, would you keep us apprised as to the testing and release dates of S3 in regards to E1.31 . I have a vested interest in this combination.
Thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Papa-LF wrote:

Now don't bash me for trying to bring this back on topic -
the thread started with good information on LOR - upgraded S3 and E1.31 and the function of that combination. Quite a number of us are working at pulling our head around what it takes to bring this combination together and I thank LORJohn for bringing as much to the table as possible, as well as others who bring the technical experience of this combination into the discussion as well. This topic is about LOR - the owner of this forum - let's stay on THAT topic and take the philosophical differences elsewhere - please!

John, would you keep us apprised as to the testing and release dates of S3 in regards to E1.31 . I have a vested interest in this combination.
Thank you


Beta release scheduled for Friday 6/8/12
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any way I can get on that list? Im taking a week off mid month for other reasons anyways and I already have a few 1.31 ready tools

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just my dos centavos as I have been watching this and other related threads.

I still do not understand a lot about the interactive input, but in Fabian's case, I believe he had sole control over the matix, not his visitors, by how he was driving that display element (or that was my understanding). It was done with a separate computer altogether. He did this last year out of necessity to make it work for him and his display logistics. I guess the point here, for clarity is that it was done outside of an LOR environment.

As far as separating networks. This WILL be a must for E1.31 and pixels, given that some of the solutions are multicast and our families are entrenched in FB and the internet in general.

Somethng to consider is to have your show computer talking to your show network and your home network by leveraging the LAN and wireless.

Right now in my experiments, my show laptop is using the LAN port to drive my pixel universes. The wireless is tied into my home network. I do not yet see any pitfalls in this set up. The advantage, for me, is that I tweak sequences constantly during the season. This allows me to easily do a modification on my "build computer" (my regular home computer) to a sequence, and push them via wireless to the show computer, while the show is running. Then naturally, the USB is talking to my traditional LOR and DMX networks.

Thanks for the info, I continue to try to skim off the important data to leverage the knowledge base within this community.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unless something changes, this year I will running 2 E1.31 boards for a total of 8 universes. I will run 1 board off of the built in ethernet connection on the computer. I plan on running the second board off of a usb to ethernet controller. I might possibly add a ethernet card to the computer also. My show computer won't be on my home network at all. If I need to copy stuff to that computer I will do it via USB memmory stick.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Doug,
You could also use an eternet hub or switch rather than two network ports on the computer. Will keep the ip addressing a little simpler

Dave

Link to comment
Share on other sites

heystew wrote:

Doug,
You could also use an eternet hub or switch rather than two network ports on the computer. Will keep the ip addressing a little simpler

Dave


From what little I have read on the hub/switch thing. It was my understanding that a certain type of switch was necasary, something about UDP maybe. I figured for right now 2 ethernet ports on the computer might be easiest. I guess I will stay tuned :)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jeff Millard wrote:

LightORamaJohn wrote:
Beta release scheduled for Friday 6/8/12

In case you were wondering... we didn't miss this post John. The entire sphere is a buzz!

Jeff



Is this a release to beta testers? Or can we all beta test it. I hope everyone becomes a beta test for this.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

dougd wrote:

heystew wrote:
Doug,
You could also use an eternet hub or switch rather than two network ports on the computer. Will keep the ip addressing a little simpler

Dave


From what little I have read on the hub/switch thing. It was my understanding that a certain type of switch was necasary, something about UDP maybe. I figured for right now 2 ethernet ports on the computer might be easiest. I guess I will stay tuned :)


Doug,
I believe those comments came about when talking about very large networks where the E1.31 devices were receiving so much data that they were getting overloaded. Smarter switches can help at that point to segregate the multicasts. Interestingly, S3 sounds like it will support unicast and multicast so that may help if the end devices support Unicast
( from what i understand some of the current E1.31 devices currently support multicast and some do not yet).
Again probably not an issue for the size of most displays.
Dave
Link to comment
Share on other sites

dougd wrote:

heystew wrote:
Doug,
You could also use an eternet hub or switch rather than two network ports on the computer. Will keep the ip addressing a little simpler

Dave


From what little I have read on the hub/switch thing. It was my understanding that a certain type of switch was necasary, something about UDP maybe. I figured for right now 2 ethernet ports on the computer might be easiest. I guess I will stay tuned :)


For what most will be using a simple network switch will do, i used an old 10mbit switch last year with 5k channels and suffered no issues. So you dont need a fancy 1000mbit switch, a cheap 100mbit switch will work perfectly for our needs which can be picked up for around $30.
The bandwidth requirements for E1.31 is very minimal and E1.31 is designed to be able to handle much more load than what anyone of us will throw at it. Where the issue may come is when you have many many controllers (20+)on the same network using multicast, this may flood the controllers with data as each controller will see all the network traffic, this is where unicast helps as the controllers will only see the data directed at them. But the reality is for our hobby we dont have to worry about this, maybe this may start to become an issue in a few years time for some but definetly its not an issue for anyone at the moment.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jeff Millard wrote:

Has anyone noticed actual ill effects from the usual network traffic, while using the same home network for a show?


Generally this shouldnt be an issue unless someone gets on the computer and starts doing some network intensive downloading/uploading or if they use the show computer at the same time the show is running and load up the CPU or your virus protection decides to start running in the background.

I always use a seperate computer that is isolated from the network, not because I have to but because it eliminates any extra potential issues whilst the show is running including getting a computer virus.

I also just turn my controllers and network switch off whilst the show is not on. My solution will definetly not fit everyone, but there are things that people can try to do if they are worried about people trying to hack into their computer through the E1.31 network cable which i would find extremly surprising as they would have to know its connected to a computer and its not just using Cat5/6 cable to run power instead. Someone hacking into a computer would be done by someone with inside information on the network and show setup. Our wireless computer networks basically have a similar potential for being hacked (if they get past the password) as we are sending a signal outside the walls of our house 24/7.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I can't imagine the downside to releasing the beta to everyone, after all it is June. Not to many of us are running shows right now to do any damage. I guess licensing could be a bit of a problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the topic of network congestion due to E1.31 traffic. The theoretical saturation point for multicast e1.31 on a 100mb network is about 350 universes. So a 2,000 pixel display would use up about 4% of your network capacity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been thinking about the deployment of the new hardware when it comes, and hooking up the LOR/DMX controllers via an ethernet network, I'm probably going to use a dedicated switch to separate this network from the home network - not REALLY for security of my own network, but just for isolation/separation of the two networks.

I had a thought - has anyone considered POE to provide power for the strings? I know some POE switches put out some pretty high wattages, wouldn't that be simpler and cleaner than having to run separate power to each string?

Or am I off the mark here?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Beefer wrote:

I've been thinking about the deployment of the new hardware when it comes, and hooking up the LOR/DMX controllers via an ethernet network, I'm probably going to use a dedicated switch to separate this network from the home network - not REALLY for security of my own network, but just for isolation/separation of the two networks.

I had a thought - has anyone considered POE to provide power for the strings? I know some POE switches put out some pretty high wattages, wouldn't that be simpler and cleaner than having to run separate power to each string?

Or am I off the mark here?


A single E681 board can handle 50A of 5VDC pixel strings. I'm pretty sure we are beyond what POE can handle, let alone what the cat 5 will handle.

My understanding is that unless you have a multicast aware switch, multicast traffic gets handled as broadcast traffic, getting forwarded to all ethernet ports. With unicast E1.31 a separate switch is plenty of separation. With Multicast, you need some form of simple router to separate the broadcast domains if you want to separate the multicast traffic.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

yep, most POE switches can only do around 30A (a little bit of attenuation across long CAT5 runs), then you'd have to think about which copper pair is allocated to power and not used by LOR already...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

GoofyGuy wrote:

heystew wrote:
Jeff,
From what I understand, Fabian Gordon did exactly what you mention using SMS and Madrix.. allowing people to text in a message and it would show up on the matrix.   I think after a while he did end up disabling it for fear of what people would do.

Dave

As neat as it would be to see people say Hi to thier familys on the matrix, you know it would go down hill real fast!


Right you are. We limited the "personalization" to times I was standing across the street (which is typically an hour or two per night on average), where I could use my Android tablet to remote into my Madrix computer, which was also being remoted-controlled by LOR on another computer. I spent a substantial amount of time "taking requests". It was a riot (not literally).

The concept came to be quite by accident, and was an amazing hit. It reminded me of how some of the simplest things you can do can become the most memorable for others.

Fabian
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...