I saw some discussion about the Stardust having better output when plugged into Edison power and I was totally intrigued.  Had I been missing this fact the whole time?!?  Fortunately, my friend Sean McClellan is always down for a science experiment.  These are the details and results of our testing.

To start- the Stardust is set to 280mW output.  I can’t imagine anyone caring, but I was testing with Eos and the protocol was set to sACN.  We selected two Hydrapanels to be our fixtures.  We were at a storage facility in an urban business area. We viewed a relatively consistent RF environment as a plus.  Oh- and we’re using CRMX2 for those that have strong feelings about that.

For the first experiment, the Stardust was powered by a Netron NS8 as it has plenty of power and is one of my two favorite switches.  The Stardust was set about seven feet above the ground and had the standard antennas that came with it.

I put the Hydrapanels in a fluid RGB color chase.  When testing RF, I prefer to have a smooth effect since the percentage of signal shown on Astera units doesn’t tell the whole story for me.  I consider a working range to be the distance I can deliver any effect that is called for.

Moving on.  With the effect running, I started to walk away.  I could walk about 175’ before I had to turn (the storage facility is fenced in).  I kept walking about another 125’ (which was now through a large metal building with concrete from the transmitter’s beams) and that’s when one of the lights stopped chasing.  Interesting that the other continued for another ten feet.  If I turned around at that position so my body was not blocking the signal from the transmitter, they would be resume working.  I turned with my back to the transmitter and Sean unplugged the Stardust, switched the ethernet directly to my console and powered the unit with 120v.  After a reboot…nothing changed.  We still had no signal.

Next, I theorized that maybe a lower-powered switch might be shortchanging the power requirements.  The lowest power switch we had at the storage place was a 60w Zyxel.  It maxes out at 30w possible per port.  We ran the same test and yielded the same results.  No difference.

So we plugged in an EN12, and EN4 and an RDM10 and ran the test again.  (We were hoping taxing the power a bit might induce some misbehaving.)  No changes- the same to within about 8 feet.  When the chase stopped, Sean replugged the network port into the port that doesn’t have poe power and plugged the Edison power from the Stardust into the wall.  No change.

Obviously, I’m not claiming to have tested for everything.  But I wanted to know for myself if I felt I should start running the Stardust with an ethernet/edison HOD.  I feel that there is no benefit to that.

I’m super interested to hear from any of you that have experienced a change by powering your Stardust with 120v.  What were the circumstances?  What switches were you using?  Please comment, as I’m terribly curious.

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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film and television based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE, an ETC Eos trainer and an enthusiastic trainer of many other platforms and subjects.  He offers Zoom console training as well as in person.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.  

Photo by Louis Reed on Unsplash