Las Vegas, USA – ELC Lighting, the innovator in DMX control tools and communications for the professional entertainment production market, will present its revolutionary new ELC GBX Distribution System at the LDI exhibition in Las Vegas this month.
The Netherlands-based company is also the creator of Green-GO, the renowned, multi-award winning, digital intercom over Ethernet system, which itself revolutionised communications for major live events, multi-function performance venues, houses of worship and leading broadcast facilities.
The new GBX Distribution System, which utilises standard Ethernet protocols and DMX, has been specifically tailored for live entertainment applications, where the variety of data protocols would overload and saturate commercially-available network switches. When connected, and loaded with ELC’s advanced dmXLAN software, the system transforms how DMX can be distributed from an Ethernet network.
Key to the innovation is ELC’s new nodeGBx8 Slave node unit. This serves as a substitute for a DMX splitter rack, with all DMX ports fully programmable as output, input, merge, backup and more, as node ports. The result is a significant saving in hardware cost for productions using Ethernet/DMX systems.
The Slave node unit forms an important part of the ELC GBX Distribution System, of which the dmXLAN switch (GBx10 or GBx18) forms the backbone. With the switch as master, up to 15 slave nodes can be daisy-chained via the Ethernet ports, giving a system rack with 120 fully programmable DMX/RDM ports. Supporting all open protocols including sACN, Art-Net and ShowNET, the system revolutionises Ethernet/DMX network distribution, and delivers major new efficiencies to the event production market.
ELC’s Sales Manager Silvio Cibien explains, “This new system allows the user to have a splitter that offers all the features and flexibility of a node. This means that each port can again be programmed as if it was a node, because, in essence, it is now a node.”
“And because the nodeGBx8 Slave node is priced at the same level as a good splitter, for the price of a splitter rack (1 switch, 1 node, and perhaps 10 splitters) you will have a rack where all DMX ports are node ports.”
The GBX Distribution System was first seen at the PLASA Show in London in September, where it was nominated for a PLASA Award for Innovation. It can be seen, along with the Green-GO comms system, at LDI 2018 (Las Vegas Convention Center, 19-21 October) on booth #345, where ELC Lighting will exhibit alongside its US distributor, JAC Specialty Distribution.
All ELC’s product ranges, including the GBX Distribution System and Green-GO digital comms systems, are manufactured by ELC in Gemert, The Netherlands.