Control/Dimming who uses RDM?

[RonHebbard]

The issue with that is all NICs require power, so if you lose A/C to a device in the middle, you lose the rest of the chain. PoE 'af' standard is only 25w. You wouldn't be able to support many NICs on that.

Please pardon my uninformed query: What if POE was only depended upon to power devices which weren't powered? I'm suggesting all devices would routinely be provided with line power and POE would only be required to sustain units which were temporarily sans power?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

 

[RickR]

Please pardon my uninformed query: What if POE was only depended upon to power devices which weren't powered? I'm suggesting all devices would routinely be provided with line power and POE would only be required to sustain units which were temporarily sans power?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

System design standards for these things are still forming. My guess is that POE will be passed through but only power the NIC. POE will shortly be increased to about 90W per line. That could be enough for interior architectural lights, but probably never for stage lights. It would easily power several dozen mini-NICs, but no AC no light.

I do see 'NIC on a chip' being very common and cheap once the architectural market is putting hundreds and thousands in every building.

 

[tyler.martin]

Please pardon my uninformed query: What if POE was only depended upon to power devices which weren't powered? I'm suggesting all devices would routinely be provided with line power and POE would only be required to sustain units which were temporarily sans power?
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard.

Ron: A device has to "ask" for power from a network switch. Since there are different classes of PoE power requirements a device must identify itself and its power requirements before a switch will send a full blast of PoE power. That being said, PoE injectors will just send the 48v down the line regardless of who is on the other end. The biggest issue with power requirements is the carrier cable, with CAT5 we can get a maximum electrical limit of 36w, and at 100m that drops to 31w. The PoE+ class 4 devices allow for 25.5w of power. From my understanding even using CAT6 we are still restricted to these wattages.

As for the OP. I use RDM on almost a daily basis, but in the Install market. I'm currently working on an install with 400+ fixtures that have been RDM addressed and configured. It's a great tool to use especially when configuring DMX houselights or fixtures that have limited access.

 

[derekleffew]

hey, guys. I'm wondering who uses RDM and what console do you use? I've never used it and I've never seen it used on a gig. can someone explain to me how it actually works and what consoles/fixtures support it?

Perhaps visit http://www.rdmprotocol.org/forums/ .

 

[MikeJ]

I would love to see a daisy chainable RJ45 connector that supports ACN (or similar network protocol) integrated into the fixtures themselves. I know that would mean essentially putting a switch in each device and sending the cost sky high. But I would love to have a single cable run from the switch through all the devices (just like we do with DMX currently.)
Then you get all the benefits of IP based, with the convenience of the single cable run.

Probably won't happen till the network hardware becomes cheap enough but it would save me a lot of issues now.

Actually these are more common then you think, especially for pixel mapable fixtures. Even Look at Chauvets new Maverick line and many other LED panel and strip fixtures. Most use Art-net, acn, and Kling-net. There is a switch in each fixture, and yes powering down one fixture will disrupt data to the rest. The solution is to run a second line to the last fixture, and create a ring network while implementing Rapid Spanning Tree or similar protocol, to block the redundant link. This can be done using most managed switches. Also Pathport Switches have a proprietary Spanning Tree setup in their switches that is incredibly fast at rebuilding the network, usually faster than the refresh rate of DMX, so you don't even know a change to network topology has happened.