Real World Sub-Devices - E1.20 RDM (Remote Device Management) Protocol Forums

ericthegeek · April 23rd, 2013

Definitely something to be aware of. This is the kind of knowledge that falls in the realm of "Best Practices". Hopefully most RDM developers will find and read this forum at some point in their development cycle.

One related issue I've run into that we haven't discussed in this thread is how to differentiate between multi-port responders that allow the same element to be controlled by two different inputs, and a responder that uses more than one input to control different elements.

For example, if you discover a dimmer rack with two responder ports and each responder port advertises 48 sub-devices: Is it a 48-way dimmer rack that can control each dimmer from two different consoles, or is it a 96-way rack with half of the dimmers controlled by each input (or some other more complex mapping)? There's no reliable way to tell the difference.

owaits · April 23rd, 2013

I think things would fall apart very rapidly if you allowed a device to have the same ID across multiple ports. How would you know when you received the DeviceInfo that it was not an update, change or movement of the device to that port. I can not see how it would work unless they have different IDs for each port/line.

My implementation certainly does not allow a device with one ID to have multiple DeviceInfo states. Not sure whether it should. It will allow the same device to be on multiple ports though.

I also have to allow for the device to be across multiple transports. You may get the same device on DMX, ArtNet or RDMNet. We have added a software router which works out the best way to send the RDM message with each transport getting a different weight.

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April 23rd, 2013	#1
ericthegeek Task Group Member Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 390	Definitely something to be aware of. This is the kind of knowledge that falls in the realm of "Best Practices". Hopefully most RDM developers will find and read this forum at some point in their development cycle. One related issue I've run into that we haven't discussed in this thread is how to differentiate between multi-port responders that allow the same element to be controlled by two different inputs, and a responder that uses more than one input to control different elements. For example, if you discover a dimmer rack with two responder ports and each responder port advertises 48 sub-devices: Is it a 48-way dimmer rack that can control each dimmer from two different consoles, or is it a 96-way rack with half of the dimmers controlled by each input (or some other more complex mapping)? There's no reliable way to tell the difference.

April 23rd, 2013	#2
owaits Member Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 32	I think things would fall apart very rapidly if you allowed a device to have the same ID across multiple ports. How would you know when you received the DeviceInfo that it was not an update, change or movement of the device to that port. I can not see how it would work unless they have different IDs for each port/line. My implementation certainly does not allow a device with one ID to have multiple DeviceInfo states. Not sure whether it should. It will allow the same device to be on multiple ports though. I also have to allow for the device to be across multiple transports. You may get the same device on DMX, ArtNet or RDMNet. We have added a software router which works out the best way to send the RDM message with each transport getting a different weight.