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Thread: Could Pixelmad control up to 60 Universes of DMX?

  1. #1

    Could Pixelmad control up to 60 Universes of DMX?

    I just got the specs for a big LED installation in autumn 2005 on my desk.

    I am working quite close with the developer of the LED panels and we came to the discussion how to control such a big LED setup.

    I put pixelmad in the game not really knowing if it could handle an installation of that size (given a maximum of 40 Universes on the pixelmad-website) - but anyway I would not know any other control application to handle this...

    Requirements for control software would be approx. 60 Universes of DMX and a pixel array of at least 200 x 200.

    Question: Would pixelmad be the right software to control this? And what would be the hardware requirements for the mac running pixelmad...
    Or would it help to have an array of pixelmad servers all getting the same commands but controlling other parts of the LED matrix... - if so what about syncing...

    In my personal opinion there is no other way to treat an installation big as this other than as video data... Talking about preproduction in Aftereffects rather than programming content on site...

    You could not come close to the same results using generic matrix effects - even given you have a console capable of controlling 60 Universes...

    As said above all of this is in an early projecting state - this is just a technology check to see what is possible...

    Olli
    --
    Oliver Ranft, Aachen, Germany
    Olli
    ------
    Oliver Ranft, Aachen, Germany

  2. #2
    Im doing 25 universes right now on a show.

    My guess is that 60 universes is not impossible.

  3. #3
    How many fixtures?

    I have up to 5000 tested fixtures working at the moment.

    ---

    I just built a 60 universe version.
    Seems to work.

    If you output gigabit ethernet to a switch with your 10BT artnet nodes, you will minimise your dmx latencies.

  4. #4

    Fixture count and specs...

    It will be an area of around 400 square meters lit by LED tiles 20 cm by 20 cm.
    That makes 25 fixture per square meter and a total of 10000 fixtures - if you consider each tiles as a single RGB fixture - would be 2000 fixtures of you consider a row of five tiles as a fixture. Anyway it results in 30,000 channels of DMX that would be about 60 universes...

    The pixel array size is still important as it will not be compact like a square but the fixture will be more distributed... My guess right now is an image size of 200 x 200 would be fine...

    For now I will pass on the info that 60 universes are possible - that sure is a winning point :-)

    I will get back to you as soon as I know some more...

    Thanks so far,

    Olli
    Olli
    ------
    Oliver Ranft, Aachen, Germany

  5. #5
    I can do a demo build for you -and we can see what problems emerge.

  6. #6
    show i just did works fine at 25fps with around 28 universes - in one continuous viewable image.

  7. #7
    Olli.

    I just posted a version with 30 universes.

    I have another one ready with 60 universes?
    Would you like to test it?

  8. Has anyone already used that many universes in real situation?
    Will the ArtNet nodes be able to cope with all the broadcast data?
    If been doing test with our units up to 30 universes running fine without hickups. But actualy I did not had a good opportunity yet to test it with much more universe at high refresh rates. I did with 60 universes (8 x Ethernet-DMX8 boxes) but only at a refresh rate of 18 FPS. The software and system I was using at the time could not do more.
    I can imagine that some uProc devices won't be able to read all broadcast data.
    I would advise to check this when going for that many universes. I'll see if I can do some more decent test on our Luminex boxes.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by bswinnen
    Has anyone already used that many universes in real situation?
    Will the ArtNet nodes be able to cope with all the broadcast data?
    If been doing test with our units up to 30 universes running fine without hickups. But actualy I did not had a good opportunity yet to test it with much more universe at high refresh rates. I did with 60 universes (8 x Ethernet-DMX8 boxes) but only at a refresh rate of 18 FPS. The software and system I was using at the time could not do more.
    I can imagine that some uProc devices won't be able to read all broadcast data.
    I would advise to check this when going for that many universes. I'll see if I can do some more decent test on our Luminex boxes.
    i added a routable data - rather than broadcast - option to the current version in january - so you can use a switch to route the data to to each box individually.

    Which g5 where you using - what speed?

  10. Great. So you actualy can talk to individual IP addresses?
    That's good to know. At least this will not overload the nodes, however with 300Mhz processing power in our boxes we do have some margin
    About G5: I do not have a PixelMad. We did some test with a PixelDrive and that one only broadcast data. We only use it to test our nodes to real live situations.

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