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mtongnz / ESP8266_ArtNetNode_v2

ESP8266 based WiFi ArtNet to DMX, RDM and LED Pixels
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Feature request: ad-hoc #8

Open irpyc opened 7 years ago

irpyc commented 7 years ago

Hey Matt,

First of all, really great job!

For my use, which is more mobile (shootings), I'll love if it was possible to use it without the need of establishing a network first, and use it directly with a DMX/Artnet soft on a tablet. Even using one device as AP with the others connecting to it seems not so reliable, since if the AP disconnect (like running out off battery), all the others will then start a network at the same time.

Do you think there is any way to use Artnet on ad-hoc mesh such this project does? (working version) https://github.com/sfranzyshen/easyMesh (original and dependencies) https://github.com/Coopdis (new fork of it) https://gitlab.com/BlackEdder/painlessMesh/

This would simplify a lot the deployment, and even extend the range. So I'm not sure if it's at all possible, my programming and networking skills are way to low... This easymesh project use TCP while Artnet seems to use UDP (on top of TCP ?). And easymesh doesn't use the Arduino libraries, so I guess they will be no native UDP support in it. Maybe the fact that all the node get the same IP adress could be a problem somehow, but if only one node send the "sendArtNetReply", and then all of them get the same Artnet signal back, why should it not work?

What do you think? Thanks, Kind regards

mtongnz commented 7 years ago

The mesh network idea is a good one but I fear it would be extremely hard to implement and I don't know how good the performance would be. I haven't done any mesh networking with the esp yet. As for using one device as an AP with other devices connected, this doesn't work due to a limitation in the esp core files which doesn't allow packets to be forwarded properly from one client to another. I haven't tried it with this project but spent weeks trying to get it to work on another one before giving up. The devices shouldn't start a network when they disconnect unless you restart them. I will be making it so each unit had a unique ssid soon and also adding the ability to change the hotspot name and password. How have you found the stability and performance a far? And do you have RDM fixtures? If so, is the RDM working as expected? Thanks heaps for the feedback. Id's much appreciated