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Multiple Controlers By Same Channels


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Posted

My system for this year is using Windows 7, LOR S3, LOR controllers in 485  Light Link mode, and J1Sys P 12s (and 4s) in, of course, in E-1.31 mode (wireless). I have everything up and running perfectly in unicast mode and everything works as it should. BTW, the show computer has 2 network cards; one for regular networking/internet (which I disconnect when the LOR show software is going to keep the DMX listener from overwhelming my normal network) and a second for the show E-1.31 network (wired and wireless). The card for the show network is setup as 10.10.10.1. The controllers range all over the place as 10.10.10.xxx.

 

I have 1 controller (10.10.10.21) with 11 universes on it. And of course it works great in unicast mode. However, I have run into a problem. I want to duplicate everything on this controller (it is actually an RGB sign, 56x33) in another area (a second sign on the other side of the street). I was hoping that I could just duplicate the settings on another controller and they would both see the data for 10.10.10.21 (since DMX is one-way only). However, that won’t work. I assume that it is because the controllers are answering the network and whichever controller gets access first is the only one that will work. Realizing my error I decided to try multicast, but I really do not know much about it.

 

The thing that I do know is, even though I changed several of the universes to multicast in LOR, those universes quit working completely. I do note that LOR uses a default of 239.255.0.30 for the multicast address and port 5568. I can’t even figure out how my computer would know how to route that address to the proper card the 10.10.10.1 card).

 

Can anyone give me some suggestions on how to proceed? I there a way in LOR to send channel information to more than 1 DMX controller at the same time? Is multi-cast the answer? If so, how do you make it work?

 

I welcome all suggestions.

Posted

Just a guess: can you define the same universe numbers on the two controllers, while keeping separate IP addresses?

 

10.10.10.21 with universes 1 - 11

10.10.10.22 also with universes 1 - 11.

 

This would work if the LOR listener was created with the ability for duplicate mappings of a universe to an ip address. 

Posted

Thanks. That is the setup that I am currently using (I changed my original setup). However, I can't seem to get multicast to work at all.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Did the duplicate universe idea work?  I may want to use that in the future, since I've got a neighbor who it looking into joining in the fun. 

 

I gave up on multi-cast, though I do only have 1 controller.  It was much easier to keep the show traffic off my wireless network that way and task manager shows at even at full tilt I'm using less than 1% of my bandwidth. 

Posted

As a humble suggestion, the problem might be found in your controller documentation.  I had a similar problem trying to do multi-cast.   I read in the documentation that I was limited to 7 universes for multi-cast then had to use Uni-cast for addresses after that, but it didnt click that it was the FIRST 7 universes meaning only universes 1-7 could use that protocol.   In my excitement to get started, I failed to read closely enough to catch that one word.   I thought I had a bright idea to leave universe gaps for future expansion in a logical manner so that I could remember all the key addresses in my head by elevation and geographical location.   

 

Once I abandoned the idea of all the expansion room and hand jammed the programming to push control of all the multi-cast strip controllers back into the proper range (1-7),  it was a magical evening.    You should find that you can get multiple controllers to easily mirror in multi-cast if you program the same universe for both controllers.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

To answer the original question, the only way to do mirror universes across controllers is to Multicast, with the J1SYS hardware this is easy, just leave it all standard and configure it to listen for the correct universes for each output. The IP address of the controller in this case is purely a management address.

 

As for the PC, the OS will send the multicast traffic to each available network interface, hence why wireless connections got hammered. Now some software lets you configure which interfaces are used for sending the multicast stream, though as a non LOR user i'm not sure if LOR can specify which connection (fixed v wireless) gets the multicast traffic. As i said by default it goes to all interfaces.

 

Multicast if limited to your wired network or vlan'd off is a no brainer to use, we have 61 universes being multicast this year with no issues.

 

If your network hardware is fairly standard home use gear then multicast will just work, even though it will be sent everywhere. :)

  • 1 year later...
Posted

This is a bit of an old post.

 

Has anyone tried this with success? 

 

Can I setup 2 different SanDevice E682 controllers with different IP's but the exact same DMX Universes/Channels in a UniCast setup to mirror each other? I rather not broadcast with Multi-Cast and I dont want to dup the actual sequence into their own as the channels would go from 5K chs to 8K.  

 

Plus my sequence file size would be around 1.5G.

Posted

This is a bit of an old post.

 

Has anyone tried this with success? 

 

Can I setup 2 different SanDevice E682 controllers with different IP's but the exact same DMX Universes/Channels in a UniCast setup to mirror each other? I rather not broadcast with Multi-Cast and I dont want to dup the actual sequence into their own as the channels would go from 5K chs to 8K.  

 

Plus my sequence file size would be around 1.5G.

yes I have done this and it works,

I only do it for testing my pixels though for the actual show I run everything on separate universes.

Posted

yes I have done this and it works,

I only do it for testing my pixels though for the actual show I run everything on separate universes.

Great!! 

 

I have 2 identical Matrix's and want each to mirror. I rather sequences one and have the other copy than create separate universes. 

 

Kevin

Posted

Great!! 

 

I have 2 identical Matrix's and want each to mirror. I rather sequences one and have the other copy than create separate universes. 

 

Kevin

 

WHAIT! I just realized that I need to tell you this:

 

I should mention is that I run everything off the Falcon pi player were I can enter all my universe data, start channels and everything else manually, I attempted just now to do this in LOR and can not so it actually cant be done directly in LOR however it can be done in the falcon pi player (FPP) so if you are comfortable getting a new piece of hardware running with your show this close to show time you can get a raspberry pi.

 

The only other option I can think of to do this in LOR is run both your matrixes in multicast however you said you did not want to?

 

Anyway hope this helps!

Posted

WHAIT! I just realized that I need to tell you this:

 

I should mention is that I run everything off the Falcon pi player were I can enter all my universe data, start channels and everything else manually, I attempted just now to do this in LOR and can not so it actually cant be done directly in LOR however it can be done in the falcon pi player (FPP) so if you are comfortable getting a new piece of hardware running with your show this close to show time you can get a raspberry pi.

 

The only other option I can think of to do this in LOR is run both your matrixes in multicast however you said you did not want to?

 

Anyway hope this helps!

 

Thanks for that!!

 

I have a PI B+ that I purchased last year for trial reasons. It running the 1.0....not the new 1.5. But did run a live test about 2 months ago and did great first time. I didn't mess with it long enough to figure out all the extra stuff like wireless, slaves and scheduling show times. Also believe you can login remotely with your smartphone and control. Pretty cool little device.

Posted

Your network will go all wrong if you have two devices with the same IP address. It will cause an IP address conflict and neither will get signal, actually nothing on your network will.

 

Why not duplicate the sequence for different channels?

Posted
Your network will go all wrong if you have two devices with the same IP address. It will cause an IP address conflict and neither will get signal, actually nothing on your network will.

 

Why not duplicate the sequence for different channels?

Because the LMS file is getting pretty large which is causing SE to run slow....sometimes crash. Right now I'm at 800M on some songs...adding 3K in channels will push them to the 1G+ range.

I wasn't going to use the same IP....different IP's, same Universes/Channels.

Posted

Oh. I see.

 

 

 

Are the controllers connected wirelessly? If not you could split the data connection to both.

Posted

This is a bit of an old post.

 

Has anyone tried this with success? 

 

Can I setup 2 different SanDevice E682 controllers with different IP's but the exact same DMX Universes/Channels in a UniCast setup to mirror each other? I rather not broadcast with Multi-Cast and I dont want to dup the actual sequence into their own as the channels would go from 5K chs to 8K.  

 

Plus my sequence file size would be around 1.5G.

2 PixCon16s in ELOR mode with identical UIDs could do this :)

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