Confused about universes

[BlackwolfK9]

If you have 3 pixel controllers in your show, does each controller need to be assigned its own unique universes. ie: if universe 1 is assigned to controller 'A',  then can universe 1 not be used with the other pixel controllers?  The confusion for me is in building the props in PE.

[SPaschall]

Each controller or pixels needs to be a separate universe. If you have your first controller starting at universe 1 and it has 16 universes then if all are used your second controller would start at 17 ect.

Hope this helps

SPaschall

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[BlackwolfK9]

Then what do folks mean by pixel packing?

[lkcubsrule]

40 minutes ago, BlackwolfK9 said:

Then what do folks mean by pixel packing?

Pixel packing is a way of maximizing the number of DMX channels while minimizing the number of universes.  You can't assign more than one universe to an output, but you can assign more than one output to a universe.   Because additional networks increase your data bandwidth (regardless of the number of pixels on it), some people like to use as few as possible.  

Let's say you have 6 candy cane props at your house.  Each one uses 25 pixels.  Instead of using 6 universes (the first 75 channels of each universe), some people would prefer to only use one universe, but send a part of it to each output.  So, it might look like this:

1. Channels 1-75
2. Channels 76-150
3. Channels 151-225
4. Channels 226-300
5. Channels 301-375
6. Channels 376 - 450

In this case, you're "packing" the pixels into the universe, and you'd simply configure your pixel controller's outputs to look like this.

[BlackwolfK9]

So if I have a horizontal matrix of 12 rows of 50 pixels each and each row has its own port on the controller, which would be the best way to configure it?

[Greyfox]

I keep it simple myself. So I would setup controller A with universe 1 -16. and therefore universe 1 will control port 1 on the controller. universe 2 will control port 2 etc etc.and in your case you only need to go to  Universe 12. but the controller can go to universe16 so you would have 4 ports not being used. That would be 13,14,15,16 and that's ok. So with that said. We talk about controller B now. Since Universe 1-16 are used up, you need to start Controller B at 17-32. Again the same as prementioned but the only difference is now port 1 on controller B is Universe 17. Therefore port 2 of the B controller is controlled by Universe 18 and so on. So you will end up to Universe 32. Controller C will start at 33 - 49 universe and again port 1 of Controller C is controlled by port 33.

As far as the pixel type in 50. It will multiply by 3 and the left column will show 150. you can go up to 512 or 170 pixels if you like. I hope this newbie was able to help you. These guys and gals on here are the best. Your in good hands.

[BlackwolfK9]

Should you start each universe at channel 1?

[lkcubsrule]

1 hour ago, BlackwolfK9 said:

Should you start each universe at channel 1?

You don't have to, but that's probably the most logical and most intuitive. 

[k6ccc]

lkcubsrule has given some very good answers, but I wanted to add to it a little.

One of the things to keep in mind is whatever combinations of limitations either your hardware and different software packages put on you.  For example, some pixel controllers allow you to have a single output of a the controller start in one universe and end in the next universe, and some don't.  Some pixel controllers allow a single pixel to start in one universe and end in the next (for example: Red = Universe 1 channel 511, Green = Universe 1 channel 512, Blue = Universe 2 channel 1), and some do not.  On the software side, the Visualizer used to not allow a fixture to cross from one universe to another, but there was a work around to that - and I just did a little test, and that appears to no longer be the case, but it does not allow a pixel to cross universe boundries.  I don't know what if anything Pixel Editor imposes as I don't use it.

This is generally not an issue if you are just making each output it's own universe, but can require some thought when pixel packing.

When running E1.31, from a network utilization standpoint, pixel packing makes sense since the show player has to generate and send the data for all 512 channels in a universe (even if only a single channel is used).  That puts about a quarter Megabit per second of data onto the LAN, and some amount of CPU load to generate the extra unused data.

 

[MattBrown]

7 hours ago, k6ccc said:

I don't know what if anything Pixel Editor imposes as I don't use it.

The Pixel Editor has a "Max Channel" field when defining a DMX prop. If you are "pixel packing" and your controller does not allow a pixel to cross a universe (like a PixCon16 or a E682) then you set Max Channel to 510. On the other hand, if your controller allows a pixel to span universes (e.g. F16V2), then you set Max Channel to 512.

Matt