I'm sure this must have been asked before but a search returned nothing...

[Eben]

I've watched the intro videos to RGB lights and controllers. in the 4th video there's a mention of cheap controllers for RBG strings. The video shows how to use Cat5 to connect to them. My question is related to how do I connect all of these (if they have power injection) to my computer? I think these might have been DMX devices, not sure if you can get E1.31 devices of this nature.


I'm in the very early stages of planning (I tend to over do everything). I'm trying to work out how to connect up a very large pixel network all over the face of our house. I'm only doing RGB pixels for the first year and would like to do it properly which would avoid issues down stream. I'll likely have between 2000-4000 pixels to start off with.

 

[BradsXmasLights]

I've not watched the video recently - but they I think they'd be talking about the cheap DMX to RGB Controllers You give them a DMX signal, and they have 3 DC dimmers onboard for dumb
"Red"/"Blue"/"Green" channels.

You're probably going to need a pixel controller (eg: P12 / PIXAD8) as well as a DMX controller (like a ECG-DR4 / D2 - or just a USB to DMX adapter). The ECG's have ethernet on them too - but a long DMX cable probably won't be an issue anyway. Having said that, distances between pixels is a big factor too and will need to be planned very carefully. The J1SYS PPX extenders will probably also help you out here.

Also the pixel strips are extremely fussy when it comes to voltage drops - so you'll need extra power cabling in maintain a consistant voltage across the pixels.