i have a question from a console operator that i cant answer

they want to know why the eos is the only console that doesent have a dmx port on it. i told her that etc is looking forward to a time when those arent needed. she then just looked at me funny. what can i tell her?

Off the top of my head, I know that the Wholehog 3 (the full console, not Road Hog) does not have DMX ports- it uses outboard DMX processors.  Not sure about the GrandMA.

I can't speak to ETC's plans, but distributed DMX processing is one way to help deal with large shows and greater DMX channel counts.

Or another way to look at it - laptop computers have a built-in screen, while desktop computers require an external monitor.  Is either way better?

-Todd

Eos was designed with the idea that it would be a large networked system.   You'd probably have a backup.  If you network your output, there is no hardline DMX switching required when changing from primary to backup.  Networking requires much less hardware and is less complex.

Does that help??

a 

yup, thanks i will pass this on....

Also tell your operator - would they rather have all the DMX in the rig terminating in their workspace? Or back in dimmer beach where it can be wired without interfering.

To expand on both Badgers and Anne V's comments, having DMX at the console was useful when the console had 1 or 2 outputs and that was the total number of universes you had to run.   Once you got up to 4 or more, it was a lot of DMX cable to run somewhere.  Most of the data ends up backstage, with the console in the FOH somewhere and network is the most efficiant method of getting it out there, so you end up with nodes to break out the DMX to devices needing DMX, or Net2/3 direct to the Sensor rack CEM+'s, and pretty much no DMX needed directly at the console.  This is more typical setup with an Eos then with an Ion, that does have DMX outputs on the console.

Steve B.

Jason,

That is a really good point.

As I have said befor, and I know it is not really possible or feasable, but if the switch that is in the EOS was really a 4 port gateway that enabled usere to get the output/input combination that they needed for the applicatoin; it would be amazing. It would also make a potential port failure easier to deal with in a touring applicaiotn.

 

Yup.  Historically, this is really no different than when DMX (and similar obsolete protocols) replaced analog wire-per-dimmer connections.  Those were just fine when you only had 12 dimmers.  Once dimmer racks started being dimmer-per-circuit and hardpatches disappeared, DMX was necessary to reduce cabling & complexity.  Now we're having the same problem again: got 10,000 channels of movers & LEDs to control?  Network cable is far superior to 20 DMX lines, both in cost and simplicity.