DMX Signal Protocol and Programming

I am trying to make a way to increase the channels on a standard single three-pin XLR high/low/shield three conductor cable without converting the signal to another protocol.

Somehow this hits me as a contridiction. Have you researched the DMX512-A protocol? From my reading:

An Ethernet-based protocol can distribute multiple DMX universes through a single cable from a control location to breakout boxes closer to fixtures. These boxes then output the conventional DMX512 signal.

Consequently, your application of two Ethernet-based controllers having access to the same DMX universes should be possible as long as only one at a time is active. Then again, maybe all you really would need us one Ethernet-based controller and a Webex access or remote login.

Why don't you want to use ethernet? Cabling is cabling right?

Also with ethernet you have the option of going wireless (provided it is really ethernet and not a proprietary protocol using UTP cabling and RJ45 connectors).

512 is a lot of individually controlled devices. Where might you need more than this? I can see where you might have more devices than this but a lot of those will have the same address (DMX is a one way protocol so no data clashes)

Thanks for the replies -

Let me clarify the issue - Yes I am very much aware of wireless ethernet and there are (probably) 50 manufacturers of DMX-Ether-Cat5-Ether-DMX systems.

Wal - We routinely use devices - Intelligent lights like this one from Robe that use as many 32, and many use more, channels of dmx - per light. So, when you go to see a large concert with 200 or more moving lights - that's relying on as many as 12 to 16 DMX universes. A show like the olympics or superbowl runs out of universes and has to use multiple consoles to control everything - sometimes more than 20,000 channels.

And frequently there is a large amount of wasted space because the 512 is not evenly divisible by the DMX footprint. For instance, channels 485-512 are wasted because the next light won't fit in the space.

Moreover, 98% of the existing lights in the industry already recognize DMX on the standard XLR connector - not on Cat5 / RJ45.

I want to make a DMX-enhanced protocol that would allow existing lights to run on the first 001-512 channels, but allow creation of new 11 or 12 bit lights (or decoder boxes to put on 10 bit instruments) that can "understand" the signal that includes the new 1028 or 2056 protocol. This would allow me, and most of the rest of the lighting industry to use existing inventory of lights and cables, while reducing weight (some shows will carry as much as twelve, or more, - 500 pound trunks of nothing but DMX cable to string all over the show to get all the universes everywhere they need to be strung. Cutting the time to run cable, the weight to carry in the truck, the ability to develop new lights with even larger DMX footprints without concern for "address collisions" - these are all things that an expanded channel protocol would allow.

There are very reliable wireless dmx systems, but they are limited to the 10 bit 512 channel protocol also.

Thanks for any ideas or suggestions.

TxMedic

If you are going to go to the trouble, why not just go 16 bits. Chances are that by the time you finished with the 10th or 11th bit expansion, you will think of things you want to do and have to start again. Besides, a 10 or 11 but address buss is just going to end up being a dumbed down 16 bit piece of hardware in most cases.