Couple of noob questions.

[Crypted1]

Hail all, I've been doing my research up in the wiki. Which leads me to a couple of questions...
For me it seems like Renard family of controlers is what I want to do. First question, I understand that the comms. to computer to board is serial, but what about board to SSR's? Is that serial or done with cat5?
Is it generally better to use intergrated SSR's or to have seperate SSR's?
If you use two controllers with intergrated SSR's then how do you run the serial to each board? Is it daisy-chainable or do you add serial ports?
What is the difference between the Renard 16 and the RenardSS16 and is that the same difference between the Renard24 and the RenardSS24?

Sorry for all the questions that you guys must answer to death. The wiki is very over welming for us noobs. Thanks is advance for your support.

[Trip]

Controller to SSR is Cat5

integrated vs seperate SSRs depends on your display layout. seperate SSRs is good for low channel counts spread out all over your yard, like roof lights and such. integrated SSRs is good for high channel counts in a small location like Mega Trees. Both have their pros and cons, I have a mixture of both.

Controllers will daisy chain one to the other using Cat5 integrated or seperate SSRs doesn't matter. You are limited to a certain channel count per serial port depending on baud used.

Renard24SS vs Renard 24 is just controller design, both are 24 channel integrated SSR boards using Renard code. Different people sell the PCBs and they look/designed different.

[deplanche]

The Renard "SS", or Standard Series, boards come in 3 varieties, the 8, 16, and 24 channels. They all use the same type of parts, it is just a different number of them.

Other Renard boards were not necessarily designed by the same people, so the parts may be different parts for different channel counts.

[dmcole]

Is it generally better to use intergrated SSR's or to have seperate SSR's?


I'm taking this as a stand-alone question, as I think it's a really important lesson I learned, Year One (last year) vs. Year Two (this year):

Last year I divided up the house: everything on Stage Right was handled by integrated controllers/SSRs and everything on Stage Left was handled by a centralized controller and remote SSRs (I won't be naming the devices here; my point is universal).

Last year I was futzing with everything on Stage Left -- some channels weren't dimming properly; I had a couple of channels that would spontaneously exchange what they were supposed to be doing (a red channel, for instance, would suddenly act as though it were a green channel, even though they were no green channels in the SSR box at all); in a number of SSRs, three of the four channels would work, but that fourth one was dead no matter what I tried).

Then there was an underlying problem with the central controller -- it didn't play well with the other controllers.

Adding to this pain was a legacy metal tree that we had used for years in the static display -- turned out that when it was connected to a GFCI (new for 2008) and it rained, it knocked out the GFCI, which in turn took out a couple of other circuits.

Pretty much every night last year I was babysitting something or another.

As I was taking last year's show apart, I started counting up stuff and realized that with some more extension cords, a willingness to get closer to 1 amp per channel and building just a handful more integrated controller/SSRs, I could eliminate the central controller and the remote SSRs from the show entirely.

Which is what I did. I have had three -- count them three -- problems in the week I've been running this year's show (one controller/SSR went haywire one night and turned on all channels -- I disconnected the data cable and plugged it back in and all has been fine since; Vixen crashed with a router/com port error twice on Tuesday night). I attribute this to my new totally decentralized design.

In my opinion, there are just too many places where things can go bad in a centralized design -- the controller could be at fault, either end of the data cable (or somewhere in the middle) could be at fault, the SSR could be at fault.

Under my current setup, if an integrated controller/SSR goes down, I plan to just reprogram a spare (for nine controllers, I have two spares) for the correct channels and swap it out. No muss, no fuss.

Now, I won't attempt to say that the decentralized setup is the cheapest setup -- I'm running $5/$6 a channel here -- but it gives me more piece of mind that the show is actually going to work as planned every night.

YMMV/offer not valid outside continental U.S.

\dmc