Gilderfluke&Co Z-Brick - Manual (Page 13)

Since it is unusual to have more than 50% of the outputs on at any one
time, you can usually assume the system has a 250 ma output current ca-
pacity. If you are going to be turning on lots of heavy loads at the same
time, you should derate this to 150 ma.. This is sufficient to drive the majori-
ty of loads which will be directly connected to the outputs of the animation
system. If additional current capacity is needed, or if you need to drive
higher voltage loads, you can connect relays as needed to the outputs of
the animation system. Coincidentally, boards for doing this are available
from Gilderfluke & Company. These include:
DPDT relay board: A set of eight electromechanical relays with dou-
ble pole/double throw contacts rated at 5 amps each.
Reed relay board: A set of eight small electromechanical relays with
normally open contacts rated at 150 ma each.
I/O module: A set of eight small solid state relays with normally open
contacts rated at 3.5 amps each (AC and DC relays available).
Solid State Relay Fanning Strip: For connecting up to eight popular
‘hockey puck’ style relays to a 1/4 J-6 output cable. These are
available with capacities of up to 75 amps each.
DMX-512 Data In/Out: Ten pin Male header connector. The Z-Brick will
stop listening to the Z-Buss whenever there is a DMX-512 signal present on
this input. DMX-512 reception can be disabled by moving the ‘DMX-512
Disable’ jumper to the ‘disabled’ position. You will want to disable the DMX-
512 reception if your installation will normally feed the Z-Bricks from the Z-
Buss, and is only temporarily using DMX-512 during programming.
The DMX-512 standard was developed by the United States Institute for
Theatrical Technology (USITT) for a high speed (250 KBaud) asynchronous
serial data link. Although it was originally designed for controlling light dim-
mers, it is now supported by hundreds of suppliers throughout the world for
controlling all kinds of theatrical equipment.
Even though the DMX-512 standard calls for 512 channels of data, the
DMX transmission from PC•MACs is limited to 256 eight bit wide channels.
You can address your DMX-512 compatible output devices to respond to
any address between 00 and 255. Addresses above the 256th are used in
PC•MACs for transmitting a checksum. The BR-ANA can use this to verify
that the data received from PC•MACs has no transmission errors in it. If you
address a light dimmer or other DMX-512 device to addresses 256 or 257,
you will see this verification data displayed as a flickering pattern. Note that
at frame rates higher than sixty FPS, not all 256 channels can be transmit-
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ILDERFLUKE
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