Catalyst Artnet Input...

Having Trouble with the artnet input into Catalyst. Using a ELC DMXlan node4. As far as I get it the ELC only supports broadcasted artnet and no direct talk - it seems that is the reason why I can´t select the Node as DMX input. I only get the choices of artnet 0-3 syaing "this mac - 2.0.0.1 - Port 1-4" and Artnet 4 media server - 2.1.1.202 - Port 4 - But this is an output port...
On the HUD in the DMX Artnet window I see the node as "Media Server (91) 2.1.1.202 and it gives me the Artnet Universes that the node is listening to on DMX side and sending on artnet and the universes the node is transmitting on DMX... - But I can´t select these universes as input for catalyst.

Looks like catalyst does not want to listen to artnet broadcasts...

Any ideas - or I am doing something wrong?

Cheers,

Olli

can you post me some screen captures showing what you mean?

ELC devices have always been very strange to work with.
their software is wierd, and the documentation is incorrect.

Hi Olli,
can you please add the Catalyst software build you are working with?
This helps Richard and the community. ;-)

As talked on the phone the CIB to make your show run is on the way to you for tomorrow morning delivery.

Ruediger
ARCUS GmbH
Germany

Quote:

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Originally Posted by samsc

can you post me some screen captures showing what you mean?

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I could not take any screenshots - was a little short on time. Using the CIB as DMX input solved my problems.
I used Catalyst V4.05 m50UB running with Catalyst HD Dongle.
Hardware: Mac Book Pro 17" (seemed to work fine - but you should remember to not allow the hard drives to go to sleep...)

LED fixtures to deal with: 18 ELP60 Powersticks, set up as RGB20 devices
4 universes in total: Universe 1 + 3 having 8 fixtures each and 2 + 4 having one fixture each.

Pixel area was something like 140 x 120 pixels because of the spacing between the units...

The Artnet device window (on HUD) does show the ELC lannode4 either as "MediaServer" or sometimes as "Node". Anyway it also show the correct universes the ELC is receiving on DMX side (and braodcasting on artnet) and the universes it is listening to an artnet side.

On the catalyst artnet output I can only broadcast Artnet to the selected universes - direct talk is not possible as I believe the ELC device is not correctly responiding to the poll - so I can choose either broadcast 255.255.255.255 or 2.255.255.255 ( with Catalyst on 2.0.0.1 and the ELC manually set to an Artnet Ip starting with 2.1.1. )

The output works fine. But it seemes to drop some packets for the last artnet output especially when blacking out the LEDs - The one fixture that was connected on the output #4 did not totally black out. So I think it did not receive the last packets with the zeros on all DMX channels and as catalyst does not see any changes it is not sending new values...

For the catalyst control input I could not select any working artnet input. The option in the pop-up menu were universe 0 - 3 connected to "This mac 2.0.0.1 port 0-3" and one more artnet universe on "Media Server 2.1.1.220" but this choice was greyed out and not selectable. The universe shown was always the same as the universe setting for the ELC´s output port D (which I used to output artnet to DMX)

So my conclusion was that the ELC is only capable of broadcasting artnet data and it seemed to my that catalyst wants to listen on a specific IP adress for incomming DMX values.

The funny thing is that I know that Flashlight in the Netherlands equiped their Catalyst servers with an ELC dmxLAN node2 for artnet input. If they do so I suppose that these devices do work - or at least have been working with some software version.

At the end of the week I might be able to reproduce the setup with the ELC dxmLAN Node4 and check again for the input connection. At that time I will be able to take some screenshot and forward them to you.

I hope I could fill in on the problems I have been seeing...

The ELC devices are quite popular here in Germany and in Benelux so I believe sooner or later someone else might have the same difficulties..

i dont have any ELC devices, to test with.
i dont know exactly how they work, or what things they do - or how they have to be configured.