Arena practical limits / RGB Strips

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AcdNrg
Hasn't felt like this about software in a long time
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Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2013 20:46
Location: Frankfurt, Germany

Arena practical limits / RGB Strips

Post by AcdNrg »

So I´ve owned Avenue for a while and lately have fallen in love with wire, output was via projector so far.
Then again, I´m currently playing with RGB strips of the 5m/30 pixels/m variety, which leads to a decision between Arena and Madrix.

As a more or less standard, Madrix is a no brainer, setups are scaling to 1k, 4k, 15k, 65k, 256k and even 1m DMX channels. Not that I could afford anything beyond a 16k license though, but Madrix seems to be enabled for crazy big installations.

Which makes me wonder: How well does Arena scale (and what are the systems requirements) when looking at artnet setups in the range of 20-50 rows of 150 pixels, so 9000-25000 DMX channels?

Not sure if Arena would handle that well, as I perceive all the DMX / Pixelstrip stuff as an add-on to a software aimed at VJ-ing vs. alternatives that started with LED matrices in the first place. I may be completely wrong (and I hope so).

I´d LOVE to stay in the Resolume ecosphere and extend VJing to a ceiling LED matrix, just not sure whether that makes sense or not.

Thoughts?

Menno
Team Resolume
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Re: Arena practical limits / RGB Strips

Post by Menno »

Coincidentally i'm working on this as we speak. What do you mean by scaling? Just performance?
I'm currently working on getting 65k channels to run smoothly. This runs fine with a 2.59GHz cpu.
The performance problems start when i open the screen setup, that's when it drops to 10fps. I am still working on this so i'm trying to improve that. The screen setup is supposed to be closed during shows though, so i would say it's workable already.
Scaling up to 256k and 1M for a single panel is not going to happen for this update at least. Resolume is still using ArtNet 2 and thus only supports 256 consecutive universes=131k channels. You could go beyond that but then you'd have to send to a different ip, so if you want to address one panel you'd need a merger of sorts.

Zoltán
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Re: Arena practical limits / RGB Strips

Post by Zoltán »

only supports 256 consecutive universes

Yes, per any destination IP address ;)
You can have up to 1024 Lumiverses / outputs currently

Why not just try it with the Arena demo on your current hardware?
You can send either to an existing IP, or Broadcast to test the performance.
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AcdNrg
Hasn't felt like this about software in a long time
Posts: 74
Joined: Sun Jan 13, 2013 20:46
Location: Frankfurt, Germany

Re: Arena practical limits / RGB Strips

Post by AcdNrg »

Thanks to you two, I read this as: For what I need, Arena is already there today and will get even better with coming releases.

As much as I´d love to test on hardware, this hardware is just being designed (and it will take me a little longer to get stuff soldered and mounted). While 40 strips are currently in shipment, I only got a single 5m strip of WS2815 to test for now.

Also, physical arrangement is not final yet - I started with the idea of a simple grid: 8x5m strips vertically, 10x4m strips horizontally, pitch around 50cm, similar to the fifty club installation, but in a bonsai version. Installation will be a hanging ceiling in a 4x5m room. Can´t get my head around a proper addressing scheme though. Probably it´s easier to just mount those 18 strips (maybe a few more) in parallel and do any perpendicular lines only software, much like a LED panel/display is organized. Will also need to play around with pitch, so I could end up with a few more strips or only partial coverage of the ceiling.

The original Idea of 18 strips would mean 2460 Pixels at 30/m density = 7380 DMX channels. If that doesn´t look good enough, I can add more strips, currently up to twice the number, so getting closer to 16k channels. Even if I jump to 60/m density for a v2, I´d still be well under the current 65k limit mentioned by Menno.

TLDR: For what I´m aiming at, Arena is well suited in it´s current state, which doesn´t make my decision easier :)

Merci!

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