Thread: Breaking VSA's 128 Channel Barrier

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As usual, we're looking at adding new animated props and probably a few more DMX devices. Currently we're very close to VSA's 128 channel limit.

We're using all 32 channels on our SSC-32 board to control servos.
and we use DMX devices on most of the remaining channels available in VSA. I think we might have 15 channels left

I've been told that the only way to exceed the 128 channel limit of VSA is to create multiple VSA files and use Phoenix's VSA masher and DMXorcist. That change, as I understand it would require we move all of our servos over to DMX control boards since Masher won't address anything but DMX devices.

Our haunt runs as a show that repeats about every 7 minutes. It's all currently in one VSA file. There are no external triggers or interactive elements. So, I'm trying to figure out the easiest and least expensive way to expand our ability to add servos and DMX devices. BB wants to add a new prop that will use 4 servos and I'm wanting to add some more DMX lighting.

Have you mentioned this to Jon at Brookshire? I wonder if there's any plan to expand. He did recently add video support.

Are all of your channels active, or do you have a lot of DMX channels being eaten up by lighting fixtures? (with features you don't need consuming channels you don't can't afford to give up)

The only thing I can think of to directly attack your channel # problem would be to partition the show into sub shows, each using <=128 channel. Each sub show would trigger the following one. You could do this using VSA controlled relays, and either DMXorcist or Helmsman. Each sub show would start the next sub show by triggering the appropriate relay, which would close the contact on the DMXorcist or Helmsman input board. Obviously, there'd be drawbacks to this. You would have to have a short pause between the sub shows, without sound/motion. And of course, you couldn't have all the fixtures running in any sub show. But if you could partition the action so that some characters would have short timeouts, while others continued to talk, then it just might work.

Just an idea...
- Hook

Wouldn't exorcist or dmxorcist be able to help with this?

Originally Posted by Hooked_on_Scares

Have you mentioned this to Jon at Brookshire? I wonder if there's any plan to expand. He did recently add video support.

Are all of your channels active, or do you have a lot of DMX channels being eaten up by lighting fixtures? (with features you don't need consuming channels you don't can't afford to give up)

The only thing I can think of to directly attack your channel # problem would be to partition the show into sub shows, each using <=128 channel. Each sub show would trigger the following one. You could do this using VSA controlled relays, and either DMXorcist or Helmsman. Each sub show would start the next sub show by triggering the appropriate relay, which would close the contact on the DMXorcist or Helmsman input board. Obviously, there'd be drawbacks to this. You would have to have a short pause between the sub shows, without sound/motion. And of course, you couldn't have all the fixtures running in any sub show. But if you could partition the action so that some characters would have short timeouts, while others continued to talk, then it just might work.

Just an idea...
- Hook

I should probably send a note to Brookshire. Expanding VSA to 256 channels would make life easy.

We do have a lot of channels for our DMX devices that are not used at all by those devices. For example I have a number of DMX lights that take up 7 or more channels. I typically use only 4 of those channels for Red, Blue, Green and overall brightness. The problem is that if I set the address of say a 7 channel device it takes the first address and the next 6 channels. It would be really cool if I could somehow get that device to ignore signals over the unused channels.

I talked to Jerry Jewel at Skulltronix yesterday and I think I can use a Board Of Chuckee or perhaps a Medusa board to add more servos to the haunt. I'll have to change the address of a number of devices to eliminate those orphaned channels I have here and there in VSA between those devices that take up blocks of addresses. One thing I figured I could do as well to conserve DMX addresses is to put DMX lights that do the same thing on the same DMX address.

I've wracked my brain and talked to Nelson Barios about Helmsman trying to figure out how I could take advantage of how Helmsman will play VSA routines in some order. The biggest problem is that our key props all join in and sing Grim Grinning Ghosts and that part of our show involves pretty much every channel.

We have Exorcist, DMXorcist and VSA Masher. I experimented them last year and couldn't get it to work. Phoenix analyzed our VSA file and determined it had over 66,000 events in it. At this time, that exceeds Masher's capabilities. A closer look at why there were so many events showed that TrackSkull was the culprit. I had used TrackSkull to program most our 32 servos. TrackSkull is super easy to use and really does a nice job at recording up to 4 tracks of servo movement on the fly. It just creates many many many events which trips up VSA Masher. Phoenix said he will eventually increase the capacity of VSA Masher. If Nelson can modify TrackSkull to remove unnecessary events that might do the trick too.

It's like SNL's Roseann Rosanna Danna used to say, "If it isn't one thang it's another!"

Originally Posted by Hooked_on_Scares

Have you mentioned this to Jon at Brookshire? I wonder if there's any plan to expand. He did recently add video support.
- Hook

Do you know when version 5 will be availible to buy on there website, I would like to use the video this year, but it still list version 4 for sale?

Also Will ipod remote in helmsmen still work with version 5?

Thanks

Joshua,
I think ver. 5 is the demo download now. I just DL'd it a while ago to see if a DMX bug was fixed. The demo version I DL'd had the video playback capability.

Buckaneerdude,
If you're looking to max out on DMX servos, a BoC would be the most cost effective. A Medusa board might be able to help in other areas. I've been doing some experimenting with making small (1.25") spotlights using 0.5W (100mA) LEDs (RGB + UV). The one I used a couple years ago put out a little less light than a DMX LED PAR fixture, but was very useful, even at distance. If you made one of these, you could hook these LEDs up to the Medusa board, and consume only one DMX channel per color. This might help you with reducing the unused channel overhead. Also, as an added benefit, you'd get 8 servos and 8 relay-control outputs too. Just an idea - I know you've got a really complex system, so I'm not sure how best to help.

- Hook

I don't know how complex my system is, it just has a lot of stuff on it. We ordered a skull from Skulltronix today which comes with a BOC. The only thing is that it is mounted inside of the skull. I'm going to order a Medusa board and maybe use it instead of the 8 channel relay board I have on the DMX chain. It looks like the Medusa is like other dip switch DMX devices where you select the first channel and all others addresses for that device follow in order. I'd probably use 4 of the servo slots and 4 of the relay slots. The unused ones I may be able to assign to other devices, depending on how many slots are available in a row. BOC I learned allows you to set individual DMX addresses for each device it is connected to as long as there is no address lower in the chain than the first address. After the first address is set, the second is the first address + a number that equals the next address and so on. This will be helpful as I may not have to move tracks around and re-do DMX device addressing to reclaim orphaned tracks. What I'm calling orphaned tracks are where I may have an unused channel or two together between used channels. BOC will let me just set a device to any of the orphaned channels. Some of the DMX lights in our routine have different addresses but the events are exactly the same. I should have just set the addresses the same when I built the routine but I'm not sure I knew I could do that then. What I did was copy the routines from the tracks for one of the DMX lights in VSA to the tracks for another. Once I consolidate, I'll probably recover 20-30 channels.