slipperyclam Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 I have been looking for some time now and could not find the answer I was looking for so I thought I would post it here. I am looking at purchasing some strips and controllers from Holiday Coro along with there acti dongle. what I am wondering is how many full length ( individual pixel ) strips can I run with one dongle? do I need a dongle for every strip and if so is it easy enough to do or do I bite the bullet and buy plug and play from LOR? Hoping to get into RGB strips and make a ribbon tree within my budget this coming year Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Benedict Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 One DMX dongle supports 512 channels, or no greater than 170 pixels. Then you'd need another dongle. If you're running your show from a PC, consider the E1.31 type of approach; you can run LOTS of pixels off the smarter boards out there.You plug into your Ethernet jack on your computer, tell LOR S3 about it and start installing E6804 type of controllers until you run outa money. The E6804 is just one example of several brands out there. There's many discussions on this forum, so search away and have fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlowe Posted January 4, 2014 Share Posted January 4, 2014 The holidaycoro pixel controller can handle one DMX universe (512 channels). Since every pixel takes 3 channels (rgb), that means each controller can control up to 170 pixels (510 channels). If you want to go with those, yes, you would need a DMX dongle for every universe and a controller for every 170 pixels. I'm sure you can see how this quickly becomes difficult to scale upwards. I think a better idea is to use the e6804 (for 4 universes) or e682 (for up to 16 universes) from sandevices instead. Then, you setup e1.31 in S3 to talk to it over regular Ethernet. You can add more controllers as your pixels grow. This is a much better idea if you plan to run a fair amount of pixels (such as in a pixel tree). http://www.sandevices.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slipperyclam Posted January 5, 2014 Author Share Posted January 5, 2014 I was looking just looking at the e682 and it stated on the wed sight that it only supports 6 universes I see 16 pug ins on the picture of it so I am wondering if it is a typo also how dose the pix strip from Ray compare to LOR's CCR as far as brightness and look of the color Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted January 5, 2014 Share Posted January 5, 2014 The E682 supports up to 16 strings of lights and 12 DMX universes (in unicast mode) which is just over 2000 lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heffo Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Hi all I was just wondering how many dumb strips dose the CMB16D RGB DC controller support am I right in saying that I can plug 16 ribbons of dumb RGBs to it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msjones2452 Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Slipperyclam, there may be a little bit of confusion here. The ActiDongle from HolidayCoro is what is called a "dumb" RGB controller. It will not control individual pixels or "smart" pixels. It will only control "dumb" RGB nodes/pixels. As was mentioned before, it will only control one DMX universe or 512 channels/170RGB channels. HolidayCoro does sell a "smart" pixel controller, it will also only control one DMX universe/512 channels/170RGB channels. If you want/need multiple "dumb" universe, you would need multiple ActiDongles or you can use the Sandevice and set up "smart" pixels to act as dumb ones and have multiple universe with a single controller. Dave at HolidayCoro is extremely knowledgeable and extremely helpful, just shoot him a message on his website and he'll go out of his way to help you out. Also, if you peruse through his site for videos and articles you will learn a ton of information. As far as a comparison between RayWu and LOR CCR, I cannot attest. I only have RGB stuff from HolidayCoro and am very pleased so far. They are very bright and the colors are pretty vivid, but as I said I do not have anything else to compare them with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zman Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 (edited) I was looking just looking at the e682 and it stated on the wed sight that it only supports 6 universes I see 16 pug ins on the picture of it so I am wondering if it is a typo also how dose the pix strip from Ray compare to LOR's CCR as far as brightness and look of the color The E682 supports 6 universes with multicast and 12 with unicast. As far as pixel comparison, most of them are going to be comparable in terms of color & brightness. LOR CCR is a 6804 I believe, that they are able to get to perform like an 8bit via software extrapolation. Edited March 7, 2014 by zman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis Laff Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Heffo the CMB16d board has 16 channels when used for rgb "s you use 3 channel for each strip so you can run 5 dumb strips off this board with one channel left over. Also the actidongle is not a controller its sends a dmx signal to either a dumb pixel controller or to a smart pixel controller.just like if you use theE682 it also gets a signal from E1-31 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heffo Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 So the CMB 16d controller I am looking at is from creative lighting displays so it will only run 5x dumb strips is that right I already have a lor 16 Chanel controller 12x cosmic color ribbons linked to that and I was going to link the CMB 16d controller to that but I was not to sure on how many dumb RGBs I can hook up to the CMB 16d controller sorry but I have only done two lor shows and I am new to RGB set up thanks for your help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KStatefan Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 (edited) Slipperyclam, there may be a little bit of confusion here. The ActiDongle from HolidayCoro is what is called a "dumb" RGB controller. It will not control individual pixels or "smart" pixels. It will only control "dumb" RGB nodes/pixels. The actidongle is not a controller. You can use either smart or dumb controllers with the actidongle up to one universe or a combination of either. I have one tinypix controller and three three channel controllers hooked up on mine. Edited March 7, 2014 by KStatefan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zman Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 So the CMB 16d controller I am looking at is from creative lighting displays so it will only run 5x dumb strips is that right I already have a lor 16 Chanel controller 12x cosmic color ribbons linked to that and I was going to link the CMB 16d controller to that but I was not to sure on how many dumb RGBs I can hook up to the CMB 16d controller sorry but I have only done two lor shows and I am new to RGB set up thanks for your help Heffo, so you already have 12 LOR CCRs which mean you have 6 LOR CCR Controllers and you are now adding to that? I know you said it, but I want to check. The LOR CCR's are not dumb, rather they are intelligent. Did you need to add 16 more strings is that why you asked? It does not matter who's DC controller you add. If they are dumb pixels, each strip will require 3 channels to drive it, one for R-G-B for every strip. The other thing you have to ensure, is that you have a power supply that is adequate to power your dumb strips, that is powering your DC Controller. You could plug 16 strings into a DC controller. If you only wanted to do one color per strip, at a time. You would then be able to make them red, or green or blue, but you cannot blend colors to get say purple. Power is still a consideration too in this. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msjones2452 Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 KStatefan and Dennis, yea, I'm not sure what I was doing when I said the ActiDongle was a controller. In my head I knew what I was trying to say, but after reading what I typed - not what I had in my head!!! The lesson here boys and girls: If it's late, your at work, tired and periodically are afflicted with rectal-cranial-inversion syndrome - wait until you get some sleep before you put something in writing! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grump010 Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 "rectal-cranial-inversion syndrome" Hee hee, I'm seriously going to steal this one. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heffo Posted March 7, 2014 Share Posted March 7, 2014 Sorry zman I have worked it out now all I needed to know was how many strings I could hook to that controller because I am going to bye the 24c controller with 8x DUMB strips to add to what I already have Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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