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    pjveltri
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Dealing with many many LEDs

I am in the process of purchasing about 300 feet of LED Strip lighting. We intend to, in the end, purchase at least double this amount, which puts us in the range of about 4k dmx addresses for LED tape alone. I will be posting some of these questions over on the ETC forums but help here would be appreciated as well. 

I am looking for a "simple" way to control it over the in house lighting network. Sadly, Artnet isn't really an option as it would require a total overhaul of the network as it is set up to ETC standards (http://www.etcconnect.com/Community/wikis/products/knowledgebase-etc-network-ip-addresses.aspx) in the 10.x.x.x range rather than the Artnet allowed 2.x.x.x range. 

So, the house console is an Ion with 3072 outputs, about 500 of them are used up with the lighting so there isn't really enough room for the intended expansion of the LED installation. However I really like how this system works. The ability to turn on only specific pixels or to grab a group and edit only those, while still having the virtual media server is really really cool and allows for everything I want the system to do.

As far as consoles go, if I were to add another Ion (or Gio or Eos) to my system, or an rpu for that matter, would that increase the outputs I could use on my system? Or would I still be limited to the 3072 allowed by the Ion? 

If the Ion limits the total outputs I could have within the system, if I were to add Chamsys setup to my system, would there be a way to fire the Chamsys cues off of the ion?

Thanks

PJ

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    My first question is...
    Do you really need to have unique individual control over 600'+ of LED tape?
    Is it split up in some sort of mirrored layout (i.e. 300' of LED tape down House Left and House Right?)

    If the answer to this is yes, then that makes your channel count more reasonable.
    If you can make it into smaller groups (4 groups of 150', all able to do the same thing,) it keeps reducing your channel count. What I mean is that if you don't need each LED to be uniquely controllable (like for a video matrix,) then repeating segments make much more sense, and allow you to still do chases and such, but they will repeat around the room.  This may mean it's possible to fit it into your existing ION setup.

    If you need unique control... From the ETC side of the product world, and cost aside, I'd look at the Mosaic line. You can link several of them up together to get the 4000 channels of control you want, they can speak over the sACN/Net3 network, and once you have the Timeline (a sequence of events affecting the LEDs) programmed that you want, you can fire them off using either a DMX input from the ION into the Mosaic device (DMX 1 at full triggers Timeline 1, DMX 2 at full triggers Timeline 2, etc,) or you can send Serial over UDP network commands from the ION to the Mosaic (Timeline 1 start, Timeline 1 pause, Timeline 1 release, etc.)

    Downside is, you have to program the Timelines first, and it isn't a "console" that you can grab things on the fly and change it up, you have to use Mosaic Designer to make the changes. Upside is, it is independent of your show files, and you can, within the limits of it's memory, have as many Timelines as you would ever want. Plus it has some interesting onboard effects that can simplify your programming time (2 color crossfades, twinkle effects, rainbow effects, etc.)

    Hopefully this gives you one option to look at. Also crossposted to your query in the ETC User Forums.

     

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  • 0

    My first question is...
    Do you really need to have unique individual control over 600'+ of LED tape?
    Is it split up in some sort of mirrored layout (i.e. 300' of LED tape down House Left and House Right?)

    If the answer to this is yes, then that makes your channel count more reasonable.
    If you can make it into smaller groups (4 groups of 150', all able to do the same thing,) it keeps reducing your channel count. What I mean is that if you don't need each LED to be uniquely controllable (like for a video matrix,) then repeating segments make much more sense, and allow you to still do chases and such, but they will repeat around the room.  This may mean it's possible to fit it into your existing ION setup.

    If you need unique control... From the ETC side of the product world, and cost aside, I'd look at the Mosaic line. You can link several of them up together to get the 4000 channels of control you want, they can speak over the sACN/Net3 network, and once you have the Timeline (a sequence of events affecting the LEDs) programmed that you want, you can fire them off using either a DMX input from the ION into the Mosaic device (DMX 1 at full triggers Timeline 1, DMX 2 at full triggers Timeline 2, etc,) or you can send Serial over UDP network commands from the ION to the Mosaic (Timeline 1 start, Timeline 1 pause, Timeline 1 release, etc.)

    Downside is, you have to program the Timelines first, and it isn't a "console" that you can grab things on the fly and change it up, you have to use Mosaic Designer to make the changes. Upside is, it is independent of your show files, and you can, within the limits of it's memory, have as many Timelines as you would ever want. Plus it has some interesting onboard effects that can simplify your programming time (2 color crossfades, twinkle effects, rainbow effects, etc.)

    Hopefully this gives you one option to look at. Also crossposted to your query in the ETC User Forums.

     

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