The Plug-ins are coming! The Plug-ins are coming!
What are Plug-ins ?
Plug-ins are a way for us to take advantage of the staggering amount of computational power in the ODE.
We wanted to make the ODE a very cost-effective product, and bring it out at unprecedentedly affordable prices,
so it has simple and easy to use controls for a straight-forward primary purpose.
But there's so much more it can do, that to exploit that capability we are now going to start offering these plug-ins to users who need the ODE to perform specialized tasks.
Our first two plug-ins will serve as a good example of what they can do. We have one called DMX Detour , and another called Crossover Merge .
The Detour plug in lets you shift the address of your DMX output from that which is being sent with Art-Net input.
Crossover Merging has to do with taking two sources of Art-Net data and merging them into one DMX output by defining a crossover point,
and data from input A for what's below it, or Input B for the higher numbers. See the screen-shots in the sidebar to study these in greater detail.
Later on, other unique DMX chores may be performed by other plug-ins to be announced, but these two represent a great start to a new trend. Contact Enttec to suggest one you might need.
What can they Do ?
Let's look at some practical examples of Plug-in deployment. A certain LED fixture manufacturer wanted to work with us to make large scale installations of their products as a sort of low-res video wall.
The problem was that each power supply which controlled a string of 50 RGB nodes would start at DMX Address 1. No other option was available, not by dip-switch, not by RDM, nothing.
So you'd use the first 150 channels of control and waste 151-512 because you couldn't address anything to those numbers.
With the Detour Plug-in and an ODE, each power supply can be fooled into thinking it's hearing DMX Address 1-150,
while the controller is combining that information into one universe for 3 supplies. (1-150, 151-300 & 301-450).
And the obvious advantage of signal distribution over Ethernet is a bonus that shouldn't be forgotten here, either!
Now the Crossover Merge. We developed that for use in a system where fixtures on the same network were meant to get their Pan and Tilt
information from a lighting desk, and their pixel-based data come from a media server or pixel mapping program.
A custom firmware plug-in solved that problem for the fixture developer, and now we are offering it for others to use also.
How much will they Cost ?
Finally, pricing will be up the dealers out in the field, to some degree of course, but we are suggesting a list price that is about 20% of the purchase price of the hardware itself,
for at least the first couple of plug-ins we'll launch. If we develop one that is far more complicated or involved, don't expect it to be quite so affordable,
but right now we're concentrating on small charges for simple tasks.
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