LED Strips // Lumiverse Setup

[AcdNrg]

Folks, I have a question on setting up a bunch of LED strips. Apologies if my brain is just blocked or I didn´t find the right manual pages.

There are 16 strips of WS2815, organized in 16 universes, 450 addresses each. Yes, there is some loss by not using all addresses per universe, but that is on purpose (it´s a modular build and may grow to 32 strips later). Not super efficient use of address space, but easy to manage for physical rearrangements and addresses are cheap.

There are two controllers (will be two more later), which I address via unicast. Each controller, no surprise, handles 8 universes.

I can specify IP, subnet and universe tagging in the lumiverse settings, so currently I defined 16 lumiverses.

Is there any way to define the whole setup as a single "LED ceiling" fixture?

What I´m missing is an option to group the lumiverses to a single fixture. I can do this temporarily by CTRL-clicking them, but as soon as I select, say, the canvas, I have to CTRL-click each single fixture/lumiverse/strip again and sometimes accidentally move them while doing so. It would be nice to have some group function as in drawing software: select objects, CTRL-G (or something), maybe define a group name and then be able to easily select the group again.

If my setup had continuous addresses, I guess Auto Span could be a solution. But the way things are built, each universe has only 450 channels by controller settings and a gap of 451-512 at the end.

Any ideas?

[AcdNrg]

Aaaaaand after some fiddling around, things are easier than expected.


1. Forget about addressing multiple LED controllers in unicast - as there is only one target IP per lumiverse, this will not work. Either use a bigger controller or broadcast, so every LED pixel is sitting in the same lumiverse, which makes things much easier.

2. Autospan works as advertised, even if your pixel strips do not fill a whole DMX universe. In my case, I use 2 controllers with 2 ports each, every port can address 4 universes. Each universe has a 150 pixel strip attached to it, so 450 addresses. The gap between universe 1/450 and universe 2/1 is simply ignored, just set the start address for each strip to the right value (n times 512 +1).

I haven´t yet tested if broadcast versus unicast has any performance impact (all frames are received and processed by all controllers, so many don´t contain relevant data for that controller). But as my installation is rather small, I keep my fingers crossed that this is a non-issue.

[vejas]

In theory you should fine until 30 universe with broadcast.

I said in theory because I’ve never tested personally.

[AcdNrg]

I will test this later this year, since I first need to build and solder the next 16 strips Let´s see if 32 universes kinda work, if 30 is a theoretical limit.

Would you mind to share where that 30 came from?

[vejas]

I've reached 25 in broadcast (but it was only one time since I doing whatever I could to avoid it and going unicast)

The 30 "limit" is came from: https://resolume.com/support/en/dmx

"When you start hitting 30 universes or more, it's a good idea to stop using broadcast and using gigabit switches and unicast instead."

[AcdNrg]

Many thanks!

I´ll see how far I can drive this and will also start saving for a bigger controller, LED setups appear to grow like star trek tribbles.

[Zoltán]

Broadcast traffic will reach every network node.
Not all of them might have powerful hardware inside to handle that, so it's best to keep the "spam packet" rate as low as possible.

[AcdNrg]

Exactly. I´m currently using 2 (later 4) nebula controllers, let´s see how far they carry me.

If I need to go unicast, are there any options for a "meta lumiverse" or "group of lumiverses"? I find having everything in one object (= lumiverse) more comfortable, of course, but that leads to broadcast, as each controller handles 8 universes.

Ideally, I could specify unicast for a lumiverse and then have an optional setting where I can define multiple unicast IP addresses depending on address range. In my current setup, see above, something like:

1-4096 = 2.0.0.10
4097-8192 = 2.0.0.20

AFAIK that´s not an option at the moment, and that´s fine. I´m just concerned what happens if I add the next set of strips, as there will be 32 universes then, which may or may not conflict with broadcast induced controller load. If the setup grows even larger, say, 48 or 64 universes, I´d say that conflict is very expected - and could be avoided by allowing multiple unicast IPs within a single lumiverse.

Does that make sense?

[Zoltán]

Lumiverses can do Auto span, so you can have one lumiverse for channels 1-4096, and send that to one IP.
Then have another Lumiverse to send the next 4096 channels to the other IP.
https://resolume.com/support/en/dmx#auto-span

You can't send partial universes though, so you might have the gaps you mentioned.
I'd have each controller start at the first channel of a universe anyhow, so it's easy to manage.

[AcdNrg]

I´ll give that a try, thank you!