Damn... I was worried about that. Quietly hoped that the hub would simply pass on the data without trying to interpret it (The hubs I'm thinking of are a good 10 years old at least).
The assembly hall rig is effectively a larger version of what I have in the Studio Theatre here. :-
an ancient set of parcans and fresnels controlled by a DMX dimmer pack. Old skool Gels and clamps agogo
8x Stairville PAR64 LED Parcans
2x Stairville MV250H moving heads mounted to vertical bars halfway along each wall
The hall itself is the "traditional" 2 badmington courts wide x 1 long with a raised stage at one end and a 5 row deep balcony at the other. I'm intending to have the control point at the centre front of the balcony overlooking the floor and stage.
![Image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/DollarAssembly.jpg)
Apologies for the crappy old photo. Only one I have to hand.
With the lack of splitters, I'm thinking of running the daisy chain anti-clockwise around the room as you see it there.
Leave a long loose coil on the balcony (that can be packed away from mischief makers during the day), across the top of the curtain rail and cutting down at the vertical bar, back up and along to a disused speaker grille I can poke a hole through to get back stage. Can be less elegant backstage but need to get the Dimmer pack (Massive old Strand thing with retrofit DMX) at ground level and then back up into the ceiling for the the LEDs. After that, back out the other Grille then curtain rail and opposite Vertical bar on the way back.
To me, that's one helluva run for a single line and there's the risk of a single bad connection or fixture killing the entire rig. I also have to allow for hired equipment that occasionally gets linked into the same system for larger shows and the like (a REAL High School Musical for instance.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
). In a perfect world, I would have a splitter connected directly to the interface and then run a backbone line along either wall to meet roughly in the middle backstage. Maybe use splitters to divert DMX physically up or down to reach the fixtures themselves.
A signal break on one side would hopefully be covered from the opposite side. A 2 pronged attack rather than a long lap of the room.
In the grand scheme there aren't a massive number of fixtures but we're talking maybe 150-200+ metres of cable once all the detours are accounted for. The network hubs were previously used to provide data for the boarding houses on the edge of campus so I know they would be capable of getting a signal that distance. I've also been busy soldering together DMX terminators after realising my mistake before...
Unfancy but reliable equipment preferred here. Very much a Thomann junkie since I started working at the School.