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Status monitoring of projectors using cat5 cables


ranvier

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Hi all,

 

would like to seek your advice on anyone who has encountered the same type of issue before.

 

Essentially, I have a few projectors of the same model that allows monitoring of their status and remote controlling through their proprietary software.

 

In order to do that, all projectors will have to be linked up, along with the PC/laptop with cat5 cables to a router.

 

In a small show, it is not an issue as I can always walk up to the projectors and control them with a remote. The problem comes when I have to fly all of them up and they are quite a distance away from each other...To shut them down or turn it back on is always a hassle.

 

Is there any dongle that can plug into the cat5 outlet of the projector so it can act as a "wireless" cat5 cable? Haha, apologies I'm not well versed in this area so really appreciate any suggestions or solutions. Thank you!

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Put a wireless router on the truss with the projectors, obviously not so easy if they are on different trusses but still possible. Have also utilised spare cat5 lines on multi's to run from projector to control. Seeing fewer cat5 multi's on jobs though with it fast being replaced by fibre.

 

Edit: As Rory's link suggests, what you are asking for is a wireless bridge.

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You could put a simple WAP/switch/DHCP all in one thingy on the truss, and connect your laptop to this wifi. This however puts your master switch up on the truss where its inaccessible and hard to reset and without bodging makes it hard to add another truss also on wifi.

 

A better solution would be to have your all in one box on the floor, and the wireless bridge units on each truss. As ever with good solutions though, this will cost more!

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wireless = more problems, if only you could plug a wireless dongle into each projector...

however whats the problem with running cat 5 when you run the signal cable? , you can put a switch where you put your DA and its the same route from FOH to each projector we have started putting cat 5 on all our looms for this reason. you need power and signal to each projector as a minimim and ive allways run them both back to the same central point, so its just another cable running the same way, loom them together and it wont take any more time...

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The route I have tended to follow is to set the projectors to turn on after power failure, set them to always select the source I need eg VGA for the event as a default and to power off after no source for 5 mins. I have never found the software to be much use for nec at least. The only real use I have found is to monitor the filter/lamp hours on all the projectors in a large installation.

 

 

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What are the projectors you are intending to control??

 

I run a set of 4 Panasonic DW6300, and have attached a buffalo wireless access point to each.

 

Then have a simple linksys gateway to create a wireless network.

 

Once the projectors and access points are all configured with ip's etc they talk to a laptop across the wireless network.

 

I run this in various venues, large and small and so far it seems faultless!! http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif

 

Hope this is of help.

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