Stupid DMX Newbie Question

[magish01]

Okay, new to this DMX thing and want to try and understand DMX, Universes, etc. My first question is about channels. If an intelligent pixel node string (6803, 2811 etc) has 100 nodes, will individual control take 300 channels and is the string considered 1 of possible 32 fixtures or are each node considered a fixture. Just trying to get a handle on what equipment I might need if I were to switch over to pixel strings (16 strings of 100 nodes). Hope this makes sense........cause I have no real clue what I am talking about.
Any help would be appreciated. Have a laptop using 1 RS485 to control my 48 channels of LOR plus 1 16 channel LOR DC board.
Dave

[bdeditch]

magish01 wrote:

Okay, new to this DMX thing and want to try and understand DMX, Universes, etc.  My first question is about channels.  If an intelligent pixel node string (6803, 2811 etc) has 100 nodes, will individual control take 300 channels and is the string considered 1 of possible 32 fixtures or are each node considered a fixture.  Just trying to get a handle on what equipment I might need if I were to switch over to pixel strings (16 strings of 100 nodes).  Hope this makes sense........cause I have no real clue what I am talking about.
Any help would be appreciated.  Have a laptop using 1 RS485 to control my 48 channels of LOR plus 1 16 channel LOR DC board.
Dave

If I am not mistaken each Node is one channel. I haven't done much with the smart strips yet. So that string of 100 would use 100 channels.

[Donny M. Carter]

Each pixel is 3 rgb channels. So yes it would be 300 channels. It's 300 channels of a dmx universe, which is 512!
Go in to a sequence and right click on a channel. Then select insert device below. Then in the channel drop down select 512 channels. Now open the group and right click on the first channel and select convert to rgb channel. Click the box that says, also do this for the following channels and type in 170 (because 512/3 is 170). Now you will have 1 dmx universe worth of rgb channels. Keep in mind this is all just for practice until LOR releases support for E1.31. The only way at this time I know of to control pixels with S3 is the ELOR from SanDevices.

[Ponddude]

To answer your question, it is considered one device. The device isn't actuality the individual pixels it is the controller for the pixels. I would assume you have some sort of DMX based pixel controller so that is your device.

With RGB pixels in a DMX network you will most likely never hit the maximum allowable amount of devices in your network.

Greg

[Donny M. Carter]

There's also info here http://seasonalentertainmentllc.com/downloads.htm to help you learn more! Bottom of the page.

[zman]

Happy Easter all.

Even when LOR supports E1.31, which is just DMX over ethernet, driving pixels, Dave, you will STILL need a pixel bridge of some sort, as alluded to by Greg and Donny. Whether that be the ELOR or some other Pixel Bridge out there.

The unknown here is LOR S3 and what they will be doing to accomodate the huge channel count explosion that is going to happen. The issue that I still see is the supported speed of which LOR outputs, and the significance of thousands of channels.

The last comment is for color only and not meant to step on the original topic. However, Dave you will still need to think about how you will sequence the pixels. Whether that be with SuperStar, Nutcracker, Madrix or something along those lines. Individually attempting to do control that many pixels with pure S3 is possible, but not very practical.

[Steven]

magish01 wrote:

... and is the string considered 1 of possible 32 fixtures ...

The "32 fixture limit" is a soft limit that you will probably never reach when using pixels. It's an electrical limit rather than an addressing limit.

Its reason is that the source of your DMX signal (RS-485, Enttec, ELOR, iDMX1000, etc.) has a limited amount of signal strength, and each DMX fixture uses some of this signal.

I say it's a "soft" limit because it depends on other things, like how the controller is manufactured, power supply voltages, cable attenuation, termination, even temperature. If you exceed this limit, your DMX fixtures may start acting "weird." Problems with this limit can be solved with a "DMX booster."

[Ponddude]

Within the DMX network you can also boost or extend the network. An example is the MultiPort Blender. It allows one DMX network in but each of the 4 outputs can handle 32 devices. So in theory you could have 128 devices within 1 DMX network. Again, you most always are going ot reach the maximum DMX channels before you reach your device limit.

Greg

[magish01]

Thanks for all the input everyone. One more (or at least next) question. To run native DMX out from LOR using another dongle, it would go into an Enttec Pro or some other device. Does the device decode which chipset the pixel strings are on or do you need and additional item inline somewhere to talk to the specific chipset (6803, 2801, etc? (Starting to get the lingo, just need to know what to do with it to setup)

[Ponddude]

The dongle will only "speak" DMX. It is up to another device to interrupt that data into something else.

In the case of a pixel string the DMX data is sent to a controller which will in turn take the data is receives and create the SPI protocol to control the pixels. The device needs to be able to handle the pixel shipset it is controlling.

Greg

[Ken Benedict]

Now there are new 2811 strips that have the control logic built directly into the 5050 rgb chip: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/4m-WS2811-LED-digital-strip-60leds-m-with-60pcs-WS2811-built-in-tthe-5050-smd-rgb/633124138.html

both in waterproof and non-waterproof versions.