.....
EDIT: I see now that EDMX is a
DMX over ethernet protocol and has nothing to do with the ports on the back of the
console. I know I patched the way I posted above, so now I'm even more confused. Thanks for the help everyone, but I'm calling
ETC tomorrow and have somebody walk me through this and explain my
system to me. I know it's just the learning curve that makes it painful, but I almost miss my Innovator.
My head hurts...
Tex, I am sorry that Emphasis has made your head hurt. I would still encourage you to give us a
call tomorrow if you would like some additional assistance. I will attempt to help
clear some of the confusion here for you and other readers who may be following this topic.
First, derekleffew is correct when he says that you can use the
RFU chip to replace the
DMX chip if you need to in a pinch. He is also correct when he says that the hardest part of that swap out (or simply just replacing that chip with a brand new one) is the reassembly. The inside of an
Express CPU is particularly sensitive to electrostatic discharge (
ESD) and getting it back together is something that many of our factory trained technicians will still leave to us to do at the factory because it can be that tricky.
However, since you were able to load the
console software and confirm that the second
DMX port does indeed output, that is not the issue you
face. When an
Express/
ion console is running as an Emphasis facepanel, the local
DMX ports on the
console are actually no longer standard
console outputs, but instead act as nodes outputting the EDMX that is being sent on the
network. The primary source of that EDMX being the Emphasis server.
By default, port 1 will output EDMX 1-512. Port 2 will output EDMX 513-1024 by default.
If your Emphasis server is connected to your Sensor+ racks, they too can get their
level information from EDMX on the
network. As those seem to be working in their
current setup, I would not recommend changing the
current configuration at this
point.
For your moving lights, you will indeed need to use EDMX to patch your fixtures instead of just
dimmer numbers. The other
bit that is a common
tripping point with Emphasis patching is remembering to assign a spot number in the data
screen. A multi-parameter
fixture needs to have both its starting EDMX
address and a unique spot number assigned for the Emphasis server to output data to the
fixture.
As for the data getting to the
fixture from the port on the
console, the
DMX ports on the
console will always output data starting at 001 (because that is the way
DMX works). The translation from a
softpatch assignment (either in the
console (stand alone) or from the Emphasis server (facepanel mode)) happens within the
console and is directed to the appropriate assigned output.
If I run the output from port 1 directly to the rack and leave port two connected to the splitter, I've then isolated the two universes and I should be able to
address the first
fixture at 001, patch any
channel to EDMX
dimmer 513 and be in business, correct?
With the above explanation, the short answer is: yes.
