ELC Lighting, DMX control specialist unveiled at last the LDI show, its latest innovation, developed to enable the creation of fully redundant DMX networks. For the first time, a faulty cable will no longer risk interrupting a show.
Until now, redundant DMX networks could be built right up to the ethernet-to-DMX node. However, the DMX cable, last link in the chain of lighting data remained vulnerable as a single point of failure. With the new Redundant DMX feature, lighting crews can rely on ELC Lighting’s dmXLAN nodeGBx system to provide automatic, seamless take-over in the event of damage or disconnection of the DMX cable, or even of partial network failure.
“The lighting industry asks for more and more redundancy, to ensure that the show always goes on,” says Henk-Jan Blok, ELC Lighting’s support and application specialist, . “In today’s production environment, it should be inconceivable that a system should fail simply because a single item or DMX cable fails, but this was not possible with DMX before now.
ELC-Redundant DMX from ELC lighting on Vimeo.
ELC Lighting’s dmXLAN nodeGBx system offers complete system redundancy. To get that, the user simply connects the last fixture from the DMX run back into a nodeGBx unit and configures this port as a ‘DMX backup’ via the standard dmXLAN software interface. This ensures a smooth and seamless takeover in case of failure in the DMX run.
“In this way,” says Henk-Jan Blok, “the last remaining vulnerable part of the lighting data distribution chain is now also failsafe. The lights will keep working, even when a DMX cable is unplugged by accident or damaged in any way.”
The nodeGBx system is capable of extremely fast takeovers in the event of failure, with virtually zero glitches visible in the lighting rig. In the case of a DMX cable breakage or unplugging, the backup port will take over the DMX output within 50ms. In case of a partial network failure, takeover will occur directly after the set DMX hold time.
When the ‘fault condition’ has ended, the recovery time is less than one DMX frame. Together with the dmXLAN software, the system also provides early detection of failure. ELC Lighting’s Redundant DMX feature is available as a firmware upgrade to the dmXLAN nodeGBx system.
More on ELC Lighting website
