Controling Dimmers with Ethernet?

[SteveB]

Easy. Each device can serve as it's own hub with one or two (or more) outputs. That gives you the best of both worlds. You can daisy-chain AND jump out to star for accessories.

Until the power to the fixture, or the power supply fails, then nothing gets downstream, which is not currently a problem with daisy DMX.

And I cannot imagine the fixture manufacturers are going to want to build in reliable switches to ea. and every fixture.

Possibly installing a pass-thru that rely's on external PoE would work. Or get some 3Com IntelliJacks in durable handy boxes on c-clamps, as distro on the truss/pipe. Probably cheaper as well and have other uses.

SB

 

[Trimble]

Until the power to the fixture, or the power supply fails, then nothing gets downstream, which is not currently a problem with daisy DMX.

And I cannot imagine the fixture manufacturers are going to want to build in reliable switches to ea. and every fixture.

Possibly installing a pass-thru that rely's on external PoE would work. Or get some 3Com IntelliJacks in durable handy boxes on c-clamps, as distro on the truss/pipe. Probably cheaper as well and have other uses.

SB

You guys all miss the best part! With ethernet technology, you would eventually have the option of using a standard wireless network transmitter-receiver to bring movers to your system, as long as the movers had wireless capability (and why not?). We don't even want to care about cables getting there-- we want to think "no cables" AHHH I can see it now.... give them power... give them an address/network... start programming!

 

[JD]

You guys all miss the best part! With ethernet technology, you would eventually have the option of using a standard wireless network transmitter-receiver to bring movers to your system, as long as the movers had wireless capability (and why not?). We don't even want to care about cables getting there-- we want to think "no cables" AHHH I can see it now.... give them power... give them an address/network... start programming!

Have to admit, with Linksys (by Cisco) wireless network adapters costing no more than a good DMX cable (~$30), the concept becomes very interesting. I have some problems with the reliability of the data stream as I see these problems all the time in IT work. Still, even if you get it down to the point where you have a receiving router at the end of each truss / electric, the amount of set up wiring time saved would be dramatic. Good luck getting manufacturers to include a USB port or PCI slot on their movers

 

[SteveB]

You guys all miss the best part! With ethernet technology, you would eventually have the option of using a standard wireless network transmitter-receiver to bring movers to your system, as long as the movers had wireless capability (and why not?). We don't even want to care about cables getting there-- we want to think "no cables" AHHH I can see it now.... give them power... give them an address/network... start programming!

Go read the threads on the ETC forum about certain WiFi DMX systems stomping all over the radio spectrum and causing other useful devices like your $1700 Radio Remote Focus Unit to stop functioning.

I like the idea of WiFi DMX for certain applications, like when a battery powered LED unit needs wireless DMX, but if I can hardwire, I will.

SB

 

[Chris15]

Until the power to the fixture, or the power supply fails, then nothing gets downstream, which is not currently a problem with daisy DMX.

And I cannot imagine the fixture manufacturers are going to want to build in reliable switches to ea. and every fixture.

Possibly installing a pass-thru that rely's on external PoE would work. Or get some 3Com IntelliJacks in durable handy boxes on c-clamps, as distro on the truss/pipe. Probably cheaper as well and have other uses.

SB

The PoE idea has it's own issues. To do it, you'd have to also have a PoE source in every light to power up the PoE feed to the next device. It would be an extra expense and especially towards the lower end of the market that will be problematic in making sure all the manufacturers did it. I mean look at how many currently use 3 pin "DMX" connectors...

The ethernet idea also allows for really quick and easy isolation of rings via fibre... BUT one would need to go to fibre to be getting the same distances as you can currently get on an RS485 based DMX line... This then brings certain other issues in field repairs, terminations and rugged connectors (very few of which are easily field terminable or repairable).

The 3com unit referred to does not seem to inherently support QoS which might be alright for your lighting needs, but QoS is vital for audio or other such real time applications. A 100ms delay before a light changes is unlikely to be the end of the world, losing that much audio will be noticed...

Appropriately set up, sharing a LAN is possible. Possible and advisable are not the same thing. I know of some Cobranet installs that really did not appreciate sharing a LAN. We had some incidents, which I'm not sure we ever really found the cause of, where we were losing audio that was being distributed via ethernet during the papal mass in Sydney last year.

I just don't really see lighting getting to the point that high end audio has reached whereby you can run ethernet into the amps. Amps tend to be congregated much more than lighting and so you can run a switch in the rack without such a big deal.

Fortunately the IT boys have doen much of the hard work on Ethernet for us. This like RSTP can be an easy way of adding redundancy to our systems. Economies of scale also factor...

There IS a reason why Lenovo chose to deploy a sum total of zero wireless networks for anything that mattered during the Beijing Olympics. The exceptions were things like common rooms or the like in the athletes village. Convenience played and it would not have been the end of the world if it went down... Relying on a wireless network is not neccessarily a wise move...

Oops, looks like this has progressed from reply to dissertation...

 

[SteveB]

The PoE idea has it's own issues. To do it, you'd have to also have a PoE source in every light to power up the PoE feed to the next device.

The 3com unit referred to does not seem to inherently support QoS which might be alright for your lighting needs,

I believe the 3Com Intellijacks pass PoE, or can have a local wall wort, thus you don't need to have PoE in every fixture/device. My thought was a cheap Intellijack like device in the fixtures, something that is simple, with in, local tap and pass thru, and that uses no power from the fixture, and can pass PoE downstream from a remote PoE switch, with some sort of limits on how many fixtures can be daisy'ed do to amperage draw, etc... similar to how scrollers are powered from a remote PS.

Hopefully the smarter folks are working on all this, otherwise ACN may be a pretty standard with few applications.

And Audio will just have to figure out their own solutions !.

Steve B.