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    rsvde
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free universe patching for a better assignment to the existing lighting positions

Hello EOS friends,

we are very lucky to open a brand new theater in Dresden next year with four stages. That also means a whole new thinking about the configuration for our network.

We have on every position, for example galerie, lighting bridge, stage and so on and so on, a sACN code with 3 outputs.

That's in a dimmer system included with 6 outputs.

Normally starts a position with a own channel number for example, on the first lighting bridge with 300, secound 400, third 500 ...

We will Patch for a cool Source Four LED on the left side on the first bridge: channel 301 with 300/1 (Universe/DMX Channel)

and for a MAC Viper on the secound bridge: channel 400 with 400/1

and so on ...

Now you can only patch within from 1 to 128.
We want to patch free, within from the possible 128 universes.
sACN allows us up to 64000 universes to label.

That allows the same logical allocation with the postion allocation of the channels. 

I hope you want also this feature in eos software. We hope that this feature in eos comes.

Thank you for reading and understanding.

  • Hello,

    You can already assign any address to any unit, so you can already almost do what you're asking.

    At the moment the limitation is 256 universes however and this has only just increased from 128. Going much beyond this isn't really necessary at the moment, although sACN has a technical limitation of 63999 universes.

    What about using universe 30 for channel 301, so 301 @ 30/1, 401 @ 40/1 ?

    All the best

    Dan

  • in reply to dsmurfin

    hi dan,

    i have edit my entry because i have forgott the limitation of 128 Universes.

    Your idea is good, but we had also this idea.
    The limitation of 128 universes is conditioned by the cable and the switch. That's ok.
    But you have not a real freedom to configure a network. But the protocol can do it.

    In the past said people: "Nobody need 512 Channels."    ;)

    Sepp Voigt

    Staatsoperette Dresden / tjg. theater junge generation

    kkmitte.de - all links here

  • in reply to rsvde

    I would like to better understand your idea.

    I will often skip addresses for a string of fixtures. 1, 11, 21, 31, 41 or other offsets as needed. Only very crowded systems must conserve every address. But here there is no universe value to consider. A DMX string stands alone.

    The universe assignment comes where the network translates to DMX, rather than at the console. At that point there is a plain wire with no association to any other element in the building. Certainly each network translator/node/gateway (terminology seems to vary) can set any universe you choose but only one at each device. Also once a fixture is patched it's DMX address is no longer relevant to programming.

    Many designers arrange the console channels to match how they think about the lighting. They might use location, color or other concept but there is very little limit on what numbers to use, only on how many in a show. My understanding is they don't even need to be below the channel limit of your console. 

    What benefit are you looking for with-in the console?

  • in reply to RickR
    Richard: it's a common problem in continental europe. most theatres have a huge rep plot. mainly because they don't do long runs but something i like to call heavy rep. every night another show. there is no tech week but tech mornings, and in the evening you have one of the many rep shows on stage. some theatres produce 15 shows each season and bring back up to 40 shows out of their repertory of 250 shows, some of which haven't been on stage for 5 years. never the same show twice in a row. this of course creates lots and lots of challenges. the solution to many of them is a quite extensive rep plot.
    to keep it manageable we use numbering schemes. everything front of house could be channel numbers from 100 to 199, front of house movers would be 1001 to 1999, the hundreds indicating which type of light it is), stage right maybe 400 to 499. so everybody knows where to look for a channel starting with a 4. so the idea is to use this numbering scheme also for your dmx ports. it's not about the dmx-addresses for the dimmer channels, but rather for available dmx-ports. so because everybody already knows that 4s are stage right, why not use universe numbers starting with 4 for the dmx-ports. so just like you know that channel 413 can be found somewhere stage right, you would also know where you find a certain universe just by looking at its number.
    i know we would certainly never need a full 512 dmx addresses on each individual port, it's a quesiton of comfort. never worrying anymore if the dmx-range of two fixtures overlap or not... they're plugged to different ports, each port is it's own universe, you basically have a guarantee that there's no overlap. and with notoriously short change-overs between shows, sometimes as little as 1 hour to bring the next show back on stage and hang 30 movers and place another 40 somewhere in the wings, it saves a show when you don't have to renumber fixtures...
    since we can't have universe 400, maybe the solution would be to use 2 digit universes, so stage right would be 41 to 49.

    Sepp:
    ich stand im sommer in bayreuth vor dem gleichen problem. unsere lösung (noch nicht fertig, wegen vermischung mit älteren hardware-generationen) waren zweistellige universen. bühne rechts (800er kreise) waren dann universen 80-89.
  • in reply to ueliriegg

    I see, a nomenclature issue. Numbering a universe by location is certainly common. Learning new names for old things is always a challenge.

    On some equipment the universe limit is the number of universes addressed rather than the highest number universe available. Much as a 1024 address limit is not restricted to 2 universes. If the limit is the network system as Sepp implies, then removing the numeric label limit while keeping the flow limit may be useful. I'm sure the network card(s) of a fully loaded Ti is very busy.

    Thanks for the information.

    FWIW: Fixtures like the B-Eye will fill those 512 pretty quickly!

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