Distance

[surfersteve]

Any ideas what the max distance can be from the Par. Port of the PC and the LEDTRIKS board. I am running the allegro chips which seem to work better for longer distances. My sign will be in my front yard a few hundred feet from my house, and trying to avoid putting the stand alone pc out in the cold if I dont have to. I have an enclosure to put it in if I have to, but for me to remote into it and make changes will be limited bc it will be too far away to be on a wireless network, and pushing it with a wired network. Any ideas

[ben]

I am going to use this on all the cat5 cables or my LED tricks.

http://computerchristmas.com/christmas/link-how_to/HowToId-30/How_to_build_a_High_Speed_Differential_Line_Transm itterReceiver

I made one on a breadboard and I need to order the parts to make them on my PCB. They should work if you mount the LED tricks near the computer and then use those on the Cat5 cable in an enclosure outside I do this for my sign since I house most of my contollers and both of my show computers under the house. I also use a wireless network but those 2 are connected using an AC line ethernet box.

Ben

[Ronp]

Maybe RJ would chime in about using that for the ledtriks Ben It was designed to work with the 595 .the ledtriks uses all 8 pins from the printer port and the 595 only uses 3
don't think the ground need it...If that will work you may need 3 of each for the cat5 to the ledtriks since there is 7 pins that would need to be transmitted not counting the ground pin.
using 3 may cause other problems timing and so on.but like i said one of the overworked smart people here would have to look at it.


Other than that i have run 50-100 ft with no problems with the ledtriks .
But some cant run 30 ft. depends on the pc.....

[ben]

Maybe RJ would chime in about using that for the ledtriks Ben It was designed to work with the 595 .the ledtriks uses all 8 pins from the printer port and the 595 only uses 3
don't think the ground need it...If that will work you may need 3 of each for the cat5 to the ledtriks since there is 7 pins that would need to be transmitted not counting the ground pin.
using 3 may cause other problems timing and so on.but like i said one of the overworked smart people here would have to look at it.


Other than that i have run 50-100 ft with no problems with the ledtriks .
But some cant run 30 ft. depends on the pc.....

I totally skipped on that. I forgot that the LED tricks wasn't the same olsen/grinch wiring. I am sure you could make it work or use a larger chip.

Ben

[Ronp]

One more thing to think about you need to power the ledtriks.The cat 5 cable does no power the ledtriks...Either you run the power from the control pc to the panel,or you put the power at the panel,you still need to run a ground wire back to the control pc from the power supply...