Most PLC’s have the ability to send ArtNet or sACN packets, however, they aren’t necessarily designed for sending constant streams of data with 1000’s of discrete channels of constantly changing data to send to your pixel controllers.
A PLC is one way to control a system, although the majority of users opt for a specifically built designed especially for this use case that can interact with a PLC or building management control system.
The reason being that the level of data required to drive pixels is fairly high. For example: each RGB LED requires 3 bytes of data to control its colour. To run a smooth animation, we typically recommend refreshing the value of each LED at least 30 times a second. Each of ENTTEC’s OCTO pixel controllers haves the ability to control up to 1360 RGB LED’s worth of data (regularly you’ll be wanting more than one per project). This often leads to a high CPU load for the majority of PLC’s – along with having to determine a way to create eye catching effects.
To stop users having to face this daunting task, we created the S-Play. This product allows you to record Art-Net or sACN from lighting control software or manually create your different looks within the web UI of the device. It can be triggered from a PLC using simple triggers i.e. (OSC, UDP, HTTP, RS232, Contact Closure et) or has its own internal clock for scheduled or standalone events.