Lanbox

[Hughesie]

hey people

our lighting tech has just bought a Lanbox

what do you guys know about these things

easy to use

can it be used with a wireless network?
any body used one for a show?

[Footer]

Originally Posted by Hughesie89

hey people

our lighting tech has just bought a Lanbox

what do you guys know about these things

easy to use

can it be used with a wireless network?
any body used one for a show?

I have never used one in a show, but have demoed them. If you have an ethernet version they can be used with a wireless network. Also, you can use them with a wifi PDA (last I heard it was palm only, though this might have changed). From the looks of them they looked like they were rather stable and easy to work with. As you might know you can download the software for free on their website to play with it. Which model did you end up with?

[Hughesie]

Lanbox LCE

im the sound tech i have just heard the lighting guys talking about it i know we have bought it i have seen the packaging but as yet i haven't seen it in action we are still using our old LSC axiom 36

[bdesmond]

Never used one of the things, but if you've got a technical question at least on the networking side I can probably help you with that. Not sure what 295 Euro's works out to but it sounds reasonable for a box that looks like theirs...

[Hughesie]

hey i have a important question

we are setting up the lanbox and am wondering what we need to do to setup the lanbox on a network

we have a network throughout the school there are a few network jacks around interconnected

what do we have to do to get it to work

i know we can't just connect it

[JSFox]

We'd looked at this very briefly some months ago. A major concern was that the manual apparently hadn't been updated since June 2004 and the latest news item on their site was from early 2005 (though they've since added a software upgrade in April 2006). We are also skittish about ordering anything of theirs to try since we couldn't find out about any kind of return policy. The overall impression that we got was that they were not very serious about things and weren't (aren't?) sure how long they'd remain in business. For that theatre we ended up buying a Widget for $900 and running HOGII.

All that said, intriging product. With some software improvements and some outboard controllers (DLW version of audio's DAW?) they could give some much higher priced products a good run for their money. I would love to see a market where you can choose your interface, software, and control surface from various vendors, all of it interoperating, allowing piece by piece upgrading. If you look at it from a pure cost/economics standpoint the only reason lighting controllers such as HOGIII, Virtuoso, MA, etc. cost as much as they do is lack of good lower cost competition. Mfring, programming, and support costs do not in any way justify current console costs.

[Footer]

Originally Posted by JSFox

. Mfring, programming, and support costs do not in any way justify current console costs.

Think about it though, how many hog pc's do you reall think they sell, or any other component. A console is considered successful if it sells 500 or more. A pretty high percentage of each console has to go to pay off its devolopment, where with most consumer hardware only a very small fraction of a percent goes to pay off the development.

[JSFox]

A few years ago I'd agree with you, but not today. The control surfaces are extremely simple and there is little to no R&D required. There is some R&D still being expended on the interface side, but this is tapering to a moderately low level. The bulk of the expense is in the software. Software dev can certainly be expensive, particularly if you have good QA, but it doesn't justify current costs imo.

I'm all for capitalism and companies should continue to charge what they can, but I believe there is very substantial margin in these products now and alot of room for very significant price reductions.

[bdesmond]

Originally Posted by Hughesie89

hey i have a important question
we are setting up the lanbox and am wondering what we need to do to setup the lanbox on a network
we have a network throughout the school there are a few network jacks around interconnected
what do we have to do to get it to work
i know we can't just connect it

Hi Alex,

You're going to need to get static IP addresses and a subnet mask at a minimum from your school's network administrator. Tell him how many addresses you need (one per device), and what each one will goto and he should be able to assign them. If you can get the MAC Address of the device and it supports DHCP your admin may opt to give it a DHCP reservation (this is a better option if offered). You may also get a gateway address from him/her. It's possible the VLAN of the switchport may also need to be changed. Bottom line your network admin will have all this info and if nothing else it's common courtesy to tell the admins that you're plugging something new (e.g. not a computer) into their network.

[Hughesie]

yeah, we just gave up and your tech is using just the usb it doesn't matter we have dmx points all around our theatre