Have I got this figured out? (Oh god, not him again!) :)

Ok, bear with me guys... I just want confirmation that I have at least this channel stuff figured out

Ok, lets start with leaping arches. As I understand, moste people make them out of PV-Pipe (electrical conduit) and divides them up into 8 sections, each section they wrap one string of LED's and attaches a plug (DC). To have the arch "leap" each section needs one channel on a DMX controller, hence, one arch uses 8 channels of the controller.

So, say I have one of Daves AVD48, I could run 4 arches? Is that correct so far?

Or, I have three arches AND on the roof I have 8 LED-string "stars" that I just want to be able to turn of or on, I could run the three arches AND the 8 stars off one AVD48?

Now, we come to the tricky parts... Say I want to "outline" a window, but here I want to use ohhh, say "dumb" strip which as I understand it takes three channels, but I can NOT use an AVD48 to drive it, Instead I need something like a SAN E681 (which has 16 channels I think)

Now, if I wanna just have all 4 sides of the window outline do the same... Fade, blink, change colors etcetc, that would require 4 cables, and three channels of the E681, yes?

But, say that I want all 4 sides to work independetly of each other, I would need to use 4 cables and three channels for each section, thus hogging 12 channels of the E681?

Am I making sense this far?

Now, for the tricky part... The smart strips.

These I havent figured out yet... But I'm getting there. Feel free to educate me with an example like I have outlined above

so far I figured out you need something like an E681 to run them (IF you want E1.31 which i definitly do!)

 

I dont use PVC conduit - it gets the droops with the weight I use 40mm pvc pressure pipe sits up with no support I just slide it over 2 pieces of RIO that I hammer into the ground


No not correct 48 channels on the board divided by 8 channels per arch gives you 6 arches per board.


If you have 3 arches you have only used 24 channels which leaves you with another 24 so you could run the 8 stars with 16 channels to spare.


You can run "dumb" pixels off David's Boards I used 4 of then last year -but they will run most likely on 12 V and the stars & arches will probably be between 28 & 32V depending on brand so you will need a 2nd AVD board.


I have no idean on E681"s I stick with AVD's & J1sys stuff it is supported a reliable


Yes it will be 4 cables & 3 channels


Yes it will take 12 channels

Are you making sense yes but I am starting to get confused lol - oh no it gets trickier


If your using smart strips use the j1sys pixad8 or pixad12

 

as Beacy says .. you could run 48/8 = 6 arches with that setup and configuration.

There are a couple of aesthetic things to think about (beyond whether conduit will hold the lights up)

- An even number of arch elements does not make it easy to 'cross' movement of the arch (with lights moving from the left and right at the same time). This may not be a problem... or it might. Think about what happens when the 2 lights get to the top of the arch...

- Some people use multiple colours on their arches (channel count goes up accordingly of course)

3x 8ch arches and 1 set of 8 roof stars = 32 channels... you'll have 16 channels left!

why cant you use an AVD 48 to drive this? Unless there is a current constraint on David's board? In which case could you use higher voltage strip light (say 24v) and halve the current compared to a 12V strip?

For windows you might also want to consider the 3ch DMX controllers (around 6$/window 2A/channel?)

The difference between the AVD 48 and the E681 is that David's board works with 'dumb' strips and strings(with no embedded chips) and the E681 talks to smart pixels (with their own chips). So the E681 can address each individual pixel in a string wheras the AVD 48 can 'only' turn all the lights in the string the same colour.

You'd use these controllers with completely different types of lights. They are not interchangable.

wouldn't normally use an E681 to do this. yes ... you would only need 3 channels of the controller you did use to do it.

If the problem is current, you will need 3 channels for each cable from the controller.... in which case you will end up with your next example!

An e681 can support 4x512=2048 channels... so 12 channels is not hogging it at all! (but again... an E681 cannot drive dumb strip... its a protocol convertor that lets you talk to smart pixels)

BTW I use j1SYS and E680/1 gear in my show. Its all good... but E680 is DIY. Depends how interested you are in the building of gear as opposed to just buying it.

With smart pixels and strips you usually have a universe (512 channels or around 170 individual pixels to play with) per connection (if using a j1sys or E681). Its really flexible but uses a lot of channels and requires regular 'injection' of power to work properly (for pixels say every 50 or so). Imagine having every led around your window being individually controlled for brightness and colour.. thats what an e681/pixAD8 gives you. The controller can also be configured to group pixels so that 3 channels control a set number 1,2,3,10,20 etc.... to reduce the channel count (but at some point its cheaper to go back to dumb strips!)

 

What no-one mentioned is that the dc48 is designed to be able to run 2 different dc voltages on the 2 halves of it. You can run 24V on 1 half and 12V on the other half. You can actually do a lot more than that providing you're of at least moderate intelligence
I know next to nothing about strips as I am yet to buy any but basically you need to allocate 1 channel to each item that is to be flashed independently. The only proviso is that if the current rating of a channel would be exceeded then the load would have to be split between channels and the sequence made so that the 2 channels always came on at the same time.

 

Wow... it's actually starting to make sense now!

Now, I just need to go rob someone so I can afford all the blinky, flashy, shiny thingys I want to have up for xmas this year

 

Slite.. and the really good news is that if you need any help it looks like Steve can be in Sweden in about 1 second (according to his avatar!!!)

 

If I remember correctly the general decorating rule is to do thing using odd numbers. They just tend to look much better than using even numbers. That said 7 or 9 for arches tree and the like work well except for how the channel counts come out with controller placement