Show Cue System

Hi all,

I am considering using a 4 port usb self powered hub off a standby laptop to run Showcue, audio to a Behringer X32 XUSB card, also a Roland UM-one Midi interface, and also Lightfactory with a USB Enttec DMX interface.

Has anyone used a hub for this or similar, are there any known issues with a hub and with Showcue and Lightfactory?

Geoff
Garrick Theatre.

Hello

I have used a powered USB hub as you have described on my last show. My laptop only has 3 x usb ports

Laptop usb to X Air XR18,
Laptop usb to Enttec DMX interface,
Laptop USB to powered hub. The hub had wireless mouse and Xkeys 24 plugged into it. Everything worked as expected and no latency with Xkeys.

Testing before the show with the Enttec plugged into the hub did result in some issues. Lost the DMX device and thus SCS ques failed during the test scenarios. I decided to keep Enttec and XAir on their own USB. Everything else could go into the hub

Hope this helps

Simon

Geoff, is there any reason to use Lightfactory rather than the lighting cue facilities of SCS?

Like Simon, I plug high bandwidth devices such as the sound interface into separate USB ports so as to minimize the chances of interrupting the data stream to them; Everything else shares an external hub.

MIDI devices don't use much bandwidth, and I would think they would be OK sharing a hub with other devices.

If your Enttec DMX interface is the Pro version, my understanding is that it has an on-board processor to generate the DMX signal so it uses a lot less USB bandwidth than the non-Pro version. I would think the Pro version would be OK sharing a hub, but I would tend to give the non-Pro version its own port.

Sadly this isn't an exact science - for a start, many/most computers have internal hubs so your devices might be sharing a single USB data stream even if they are plugged into separate ports. The best thing I know to do is to test your configuration under the most extreme conditions you can throw at it - send sound to as many channels as you can while running complex lighting fades at the same time.

Tim.

I haven't gone into the DMX features in Showcue yet, they may suffice, but Lightfactory is fully featured, ideal for LED and analogue lighting fixtures.

Thanks for the input, I will of course fully test the system, it is only being used in this configuration on a laptop if the main PC fails.

regards

Geoff.