The
Leprecon 624 board has 24 channels. With soft-patch you can copy a
board channel out to multiple
DMX channels, but those channels will get exactly the same data. There are uses for this capability, and running intels is one of them.
DMX-512 is a
protocol capable of transmitting data for up to 512 channels on a single cable. Nothing in the spec says a board manufacturer has to use all 512 channels. This allows room for a range of different consoles. The more channels a
console can control, the more complex (and expensive) it becomes. If all DMX-512 boards had to have a full 512 channels, there would be no such thing as an "entry-level"
system... and the
Leprecon 642 is just a step or two up from "entry-level."
I've run a pair of American DJ Pocket-scan intels (yeah, cheap, but it's what I could afford at the time) from a James Lighting 916 board. Each PocketScan needs 7 channels, but the 916 only has 16. Could be a problem, but I use the
softpatch. Board
channel 1 goes to the stage-right pocket-scan PAN,
channel 2 to the stage-left PAN.
Channel 3 goes to
both tilts, 4 to both color wheels, 5 to both
gobo wheels, 6 to both shutters, 7 to the pan/tilt speed controls of both units and 8 to the lasers on both units. Everything works in
unison except the pans, so I can compensate for the lights being on opposite sides of the
stage. It's kind-of limited, but it works, and leaves 8 board-channels for the conventionals.
John