Pixcon16

[Aussie Andrew]

Hi all

With my current setup I'm running a few Pixcon 16 boards and they are all run back to a router and all is working fine, my question is can I daisy chain, loop my pixcon16 boards (loop in loop out) instead of running my cat 5 leads back to the router, if this is possible it would save me running a lot of cat 5 leads

 

Thanks

[Mr. P]

2 hours ago, Aussie Andrew said:

Hi all

With my current setup I'm running a few Pixcon 16 boards and they are all run back to a router and all is working fine, my question is can I daisy chain, loop my pixcon16 boards (loop in loop out) instead of running my cat 5 leads back to the router, if this is possible it would save me running a lot of cat 5 leads

 

Thanks

The Pixcon can be daisey chained if run on LORs RS485 network but not on a E1.31 network. In order to daisey chain on an E1.31 network the controller must have a built-in switch which only one or two controllers out there do.

[k6ccc]

What you can do (this all assuming you are running the Pixcon via E1.31) is install a small switch at the same location at each Pixcon.  Then have your Ethernet cable come in from wherever it came from, into one port of the switch. Then a short cable from the switch to the Pixcon, and another cable from the switch to the next location.

 

[TheDucks]

35 minutes ago, k6ccc said:

What you can do (this all assuming you are running the Pixcon via E1.31) is install a small switch at the same location at each Pixcon.  Then have your Ethernet cable come in from wherever it came from, into one port of the switch. Then a short cable from the switch to the Pixcon, and another cable from the switch to the next location.

Back in the early days of Ethernet, there was the 3 Hop rule (3 switches/repeaters max between the client and host), the 2.5 meter rule. (minimum cable between devices).  I have never seen this mentioned since the switch to twisted pair.   I think a primarily Star (with the Show Central on this one) and minimize multi-deep (switch) branches.  Star-Star(s) would be more robust

 

[k6ccc]

18 minutes ago, TheDucks said:

Back in the early days of Ethernet, there was the 3 Hop rule (3 switches/repeaters max between the client and host), the 2.5 meter rule. (minimum cable between devices).  I have never seen this mentioned since the switch to twisted pair.   I think a primarily Star (with the Show Central on this one) and minimize multi-deep (switch) branches.  Star-Star(s) would be more robust

Damn, that brings back some old memories!  For you young whipper snappers, ethernet originally ran on coaxial cable with taps for each device.  The cable (about a half inch in diameter) would snake through an office from desk to desk.  Next step was to use smaller cable.  Finally the move to twisted pair and that largely eliminated the distance issue that TheDucks mentioned.  Multi-switch daisy chaining is far less of an issue than it was when we used hubs instead of switches.  Of my five E1.31 controllers, three run through two switches, and the other two are three switches away from the show computer.

You all remember Token Ring?

 

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by k6ccc

[k6ccc]

Because I figure someone is going to ask why three switches, I took the AutoCAD drawing of my home LAN, and extracted just the stuff that one way or another relates to my E1.31 network.  I then "printed" that to a pdf file, and also captured it as a graphic file.  I know that the graphic below is pretty hard to read, but if you want to be able to read the details, click the link for the pdf file (unfortunately the forum software does not know what to do with a pdf file).

http://newburghlights.org/images/E1.31_extract_2017-11-02.pdf