Dealing with many many LEDs

I deal with large LED counts every now and again.  A couple things come to mind - 

1) There is a limit to how much processing your ION is going to be able to handle.  We are currently retooling the performance side of the console line to specifically address this issue - but the ION is the low end of the processor spectrum so it's hard to say.   A GIO is going to be leaps and bounds faster than an ION - especially if you are overlapping Pixel Maps and traditional channel effects

Last week I did a small-ish LED wall (1.2K) on an ION (not by choice :-) - and it held up pretty well on the 2.1 software.  There were some large movie files in my default library and those caused the system to basically stop working.

2) If you have ethernet distributed through the house - 4 strategically placed 4 port gateways would take care of the data.  You can enable Artnet on your desk and it will send it out using the 10.XXX IP - from there it's just getting a device to recognize it and convert it over if the lights specifically need 2.XXX.  I use Series 400 Nodes to "Sanitize" my Artnet stream all the time.   So a setup like Console > Node > Media Server works fine whereas Console > Media Server doesn't because the server wont recognize the IP.   

3) Adding a console to the system is possible - but you'll probably end up using midi to fire cues.  To my knowledge there is no way to currently connect multiple ETC consoles together so that they increase the total output of the system and yet operate like 1 console.

- P

Thanks Dennis and Patrick.  PJ - Ion as you know taps out at 3K outputs.  If you add a higher capacity machine (Gio and Eos RPU) to your system, and you are using Ion as a backup, you'd still be limited to 3K (we use the lowest output count between the primary and backup to determine system capacity).   There is a little known potential solution for you - but it would involve controlling the excess LEDs only through the pix map engine.   If you have reached max capacity on your hardware, you can buy (for a really low cost) a 3K "phantom" upgrade.  This will extend the capacity of Ion to 6K - but anything over the 3K threshold can only be patched and control via the pix map engine.

This concept was conceived as a "get out of jail" for almost free card for situations - primarily rental - when capacity had been exceeded.   But only you can make the judgement as to whether this will work for you.

Does that make sense?   You can contact ETC technical services for details on this.

Thanks much!

a

Thanks Anne!

Do you have any more information on how the different artnet modes on the console work? I really don't understand them, and am pretty unclear on how to implement them, as far as network setup goes, both settings and hardware.

Thanks

PJ

Hi PJ,

Okay, here is a rundown of the settings:

• Directed Broadcast - the console will send to the broadcast address of its subnet. That is, with a default address for an Ion (10.101.100.101, subnet mask of 255.255.0.0), the console will output its ArtNet traffic to 10.101.255.255.
• Limited Broadcast - the console will send to a broadcast address of 255.255.255.255. This is limited because routers will not forward broadcast traffic sent to this address.
• Primary Art-Net - the console will reconfigure its network settings to be compatible with the Primary Art-Net broadcast address (2.255.255.255). This will cause incompatibility in systems where the console has a single network port and other devices are in the ETC standard range. On a multi-NIC (network interface) console like Gio, you can use the second network port to transmit ArtNet data in this configuration, and have your Net3 devices on the first NIC. Keep in mind that this requires two separate networks. The console cannot be connected with both ports to the same network.
• Secondary Art-Net - the console will reconfigure its network settings to be compatible with the Secondary Art-Net broadcast address (10.255.255.255). This still can cause incompatibility in single-NIC consoles. On multi-NIC consoles, this can still cause issues as the subnets for the ETC default range (10.101.255.255) will overlap with the wider 10.255.255.255 range. In this event, readdressing the other Net3 devices to a 255.0.0.0 subnet mask will be ideal so everything is in the same subnet.

Generally speaking, we've had success with newer ArtNet devices listening to Directed or Limited broadcast, but the additional options are available in the event you need them.

Hans

Hi PJ,

Okay, here is a rundown of the settings:

• Directed Broadcast - the console will send to the broadcast address of its subnet. That is, with a default address for an Ion (10.101.100.101, subnet mask of 255.255.0.0), the console will output its ArtNet traffic to 10.101.255.255.
• Limited Broadcast - the console will send to a broadcast address of 255.255.255.255. This is limited because routers will not forward broadcast traffic sent to this address.
• Primary Art-Net - the console will reconfigure its network settings to be compatible with the Primary Art-Net broadcast address (2.255.255.255). This will cause incompatibility in systems where the console has a single network port and other devices are in the ETC standard range. On a multi-NIC (network interface) console like Gio, you can use the second network port to transmit ArtNet data in this configuration, and have your Net3 devices on the first NIC. Keep in mind that this requires two separate networks. The console cannot be connected with both ports to the same network.
• Secondary Art-Net - the console will reconfigure its network settings to be compatible with the Secondary Art-Net broadcast address (10.255.255.255). This still can cause incompatibility in single-NIC consoles. On multi-NIC consoles, this can still cause issues as the subnets for the ETC default range (10.101.255.255) will overlap with the wider 10.255.255.255 range. In this event, readdressing the other Net3 devices to a 255.0.0.0 subnet mask will be ideal so everything is in the same subnet.

Generally speaking, we've had success with newer ArtNet devices listening to Directed or Limited broadcast, but the additional options are available in the event you need them.

Hans