I posted this on another site, but someone suggested I repost here, because there's more experience on this forum with 240V equipment.
I want a "50% duty cycle limited, 240v Renard"!
But why??
So I can run 110V lights directly off a Renard in a 240v environment
Uh. Why not just run 240V lights?
Because 110V is a quarter of the price of 240v lights, so I can have more of them! It also opens more options.
So just get a 240V/110V transformer...
The math doesn't work out. Will spend way more in transformer capacity than lights.
Why not just output only 50% in Vixen?
It's difficult for things like Nutcracker, so eventually I will make a mistake and burn out a bunch of lights. I want a value of 255 to always mean 127 at the hardware level.
Pretty sure this whole idea won't work...
Well, it works conceptually using Light-o-Rama controllers - I can run 110V lights for long times, just need to duty-cycle limit them manually. I have no hope of getting a automatic hardware solution running on LOR though. Hence the look at Renard.
So what are my options here?
Unfortunately I've never Renard'ed before - so far all my AC stuff is LOR controllers. But it always requires going through physical wiring hoops in my setup to make the 110V lights work - generally by wiring 2 strings or substrings in series. Works great, but takes time.
Series-wiring outlets or extension cords makes things easier, but doesn't work well for arches (ends up with too many lights per segment). So I would prefer if I can just do this at the controller side - by simply halving all duty cycle values given to it by Vixen and friends.
One snag... I may want e.g. 12 Renard output channels on 50% duty cycle limited and 12 channels on 100% duty. (Mix of 110v and 240v).
Here is what I considered so far:
* Have a board in front of the Renard board (on the RS485 inbound side) that takes Renard (or DMX) input and halves all the input values as they come by. I can have jumpers (or something) on it to specify 110v/240v on a per channel basis. Elegant, but lots of work. But it will actually work on LOR boards as well, which is a plus.
* Modify something like a E1.31 bridge to output half values. I think though a E1.31 bridge is closed sourced firmware. Is there an open source firmware equivalent?
* Modify the Renard firmware itself. Similar to the E1.31 bridge, but I prefer leaving the Renard firmware alone and have it be updatable.
* Use a special Vixen controller plugin type to limit the duty cycle. Danger Will Robertson - someone is going to screw this up the next year and use a wrong controller setup, and it will seem to work until the lights go out. If going that way, I would still want to pair it with a Renard firmware update so that I can at least tell the Renard - "Hey, I'm using the right plugin and values - ok to listen to me". (e.g. use a non-existing output with a magic value (42 of course) that tells Renard - everything is A-OK). However, if I do that, then I may as well just update the Renard firware to do the halving to start of with.
* Use different SSR's for the 110v outputs. That would be nice, but I think this doesn't work. You have to duty-cycle limit things at the logic level.
I want it to be fool proof, but it doesn't necessarily have to be perfect. Sending 240V full duty to a 110V incandescent or LED string generally doesn't have disastrous consequences. It shortens the span of the lights (significantly so - but if you accidentally do this for a few seconds, it's actually not a problem). So if it sends out 240V for a few cycles during bootup due to some output that doesn't have a pull-down, I can live with that.
I want a "50% duty cycle limited, 240v Renard"!
But why??
So I can run 110V lights directly off a Renard in a 240v environment
Uh. Why not just run 240V lights?
Because 110V is a quarter of the price of 240v lights, so I can have more of them! It also opens more options.
So just get a 240V/110V transformer...
The math doesn't work out. Will spend way more in transformer capacity than lights.
Why not just output only 50% in Vixen?
It's difficult for things like Nutcracker, so eventually I will make a mistake and burn out a bunch of lights. I want a value of 255 to always mean 127 at the hardware level.
Pretty sure this whole idea won't work...
Well, it works conceptually using Light-o-Rama controllers - I can run 110V lights for long times, just need to duty-cycle limit them manually. I have no hope of getting a automatic hardware solution running on LOR though. Hence the look at Renard.
So what are my options here?
Unfortunately I've never Renard'ed before - so far all my AC stuff is LOR controllers. But it always requires going through physical wiring hoops in my setup to make the 110V lights work - generally by wiring 2 strings or substrings in series. Works great, but takes time.
Series-wiring outlets or extension cords makes things easier, but doesn't work well for arches (ends up with too many lights per segment). So I would prefer if I can just do this at the controller side - by simply halving all duty cycle values given to it by Vixen and friends.
One snag... I may want e.g. 12 Renard output channels on 50% duty cycle limited and 12 channels on 100% duty. (Mix of 110v and 240v).
Here is what I considered so far:
* Have a board in front of the Renard board (on the RS485 inbound side) that takes Renard (or DMX) input and halves all the input values as they come by. I can have jumpers (or something) on it to specify 110v/240v on a per channel basis. Elegant, but lots of work. But it will actually work on LOR boards as well, which is a plus.
* Modify something like a E1.31 bridge to output half values. I think though a E1.31 bridge is closed sourced firmware. Is there an open source firmware equivalent?
* Modify the Renard firmware itself. Similar to the E1.31 bridge, but I prefer leaving the Renard firmware alone and have it be updatable.
* Use a special Vixen controller plugin type to limit the duty cycle. Danger Will Robertson - someone is going to screw this up the next year and use a wrong controller setup, and it will seem to work until the lights go out. If going that way, I would still want to pair it with a Renard firmware update so that I can at least tell the Renard - "Hey, I'm using the right plugin and values - ok to listen to me". (e.g. use a non-existing output with a magic value (42 of course) that tells Renard - everything is A-OK). However, if I do that, then I may as well just update the Renard firware to do the halving to start of with.
* Use different SSR's for the 110v outputs. That would be nice, but I think this doesn't work. You have to duty-cycle limit things at the logic level.
I want it to be fool proof, but it doesn't necessarily have to be perfect. Sending 240V full duty to a 110V incandescent or LED string generally doesn't have disastrous consequences. It shortens the span of the lights (significantly so - but if you accidentally do this for a few seconds, it's actually not a problem). So if it sends out 240V for a few cycles during bootup due to some output that doesn't have a pull-down, I can live with that.