I do believe it works fundamentally the same way, but with UIDs. Data comes to the board from the secondary pair of data pins. And the data to the fixtures are over the primary pair of data pins with a different start code. Data collisions are avoided by having the console start communicating per device. (There console will request data from fixture z, but only fixture z can respond because that was the fixture being requested.) This means that data can't be pushed from fixtures to the console. Googling more about it will yield some results.
There was at least one very early protocol that used the second pair in this manner, but I believe it was a proprietary thing and is no longer around. RDM communication is done on the first pair, as @sk8rsdad said. The RDM data is requested using a different set of start codes.Data comes to the board from the secondary pair of data pins.
Good Morning!
Gordon Pearlman promoted the full duplex concept at Entertainment Technology. His method was absolutely the right way to go. The industry saw things differently and so the half-duplex standard got codified and so that is what we have to work with today. That is very regrettable (my personal opinion) because there is so much more that could have been done - and that designers and users are asking for these days - with RDM, and half duplex interpacket can't take us there.
Have a great day!
Van Rommel
Director Business Development
Pathway Connectivity
ACN is the answer to that. But don't get me started on the entertainment technology industry's standards development.
IPs per device, and maybe a UDP based protocol like OSC? It would also allow for MUCH finer control than what DMX can provide.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.
I believe there is a home security system that uses your home's AC lines to transmit data and get power. Although when you're running lots of fixtures with many parameters it'd become quite noisey.Yopu guys may be too young to remember, but there was a time when college radio stations (back in the AM days) 'broadcast' to their own campuses via carrier current. The RF from the transmitter was coupled to the power lines in the dorms. How about a lighting control system that's multiplexed on the power system? Every lighting instrument needs power; why not a system that controls the instrument via the conductors already going to it? Sure, there would be problems of filtering out dimmer "hash" but these could possibly be solved by parity and an FM carrier.
Dirk Epperson's thesis at Yale in 60s was just that - dimmers on the yoke with power line data. Built a working model iirc. There were and I believe remain some issues that manufactures apparently thought/think unsolvable, though the power line Ethernet links seem to work well. I seem to recall that there is too much noise in large buildings with so many motors and power supplies as a reason.Yopu guys may be too young to remember, but there was a time when college radio stations (back in the AM days) 'broadcast' to their own campuses via carrier current. The RF from the transmitter was coupled to the power lines in the dorms. How about a lighting control system that's multiplexed on the power system? Every lighting instrument needs power; why not a system that controls the instrument via the conductors already going to it? Sure, there would be problems of filtering out dimmer "hash" but these could possibly be solved by parity and an FM carrier.
Those systems exist in the install world - Lumenpulse's Lumentalk system uses this.How about a lighting control system that's multiplexed on the power system? Every lighting instrument needs power; why not a system that controls the instrument via the conductors already going to it? Sure, there would be problems of filtering out dimmer "hash" but these could possibly be solved by parity and an FM carrier.
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