Q Light Controller+

Hi All,
I've just downloaded and installed the latest Buster release onto an older pi B2. I have a Chauvet DMX-AN 2 artNet/sACN ethernet interface that I'm able to connect to using the provided interfaces (set to unicast mode), and can load programs I've created on my mac into the pi. I've set the QLCpi configuration to use an EDImax usb wifi adaptor on boot. It connects to my router, I can log on to the web interface and control my DMX-AN 2 which is physically connected to my router via a cat5 cable. So far so good.

Now, as I also run audio control for my M32 mixer on this network, I want to minimize the DMX related network traffic on the router. As the pi also has a physical ethernet port my thought was to set a static ip address for the physical port, on different domain than wlan0, and connect the DMX-AN 2 via cat 5 set to a different static ip on the same domain as eth0. I tested this configuration on my macbook pro and it worked perfectly, but it won't work on the pi.

It seems that the pi wants to use eth0 preferentially to set it's IP etc. How do I set the pi to always use wlan0 on boot before looking at eth0? There's plenty of documentation related to this on a regular raspbian rpi build. Do I do it the same way in this custom Buster build, or????

Thanks for any suggestions.
Ian

1. DMX does not produce a lot of data, unless you have thousands of universes. lets say 512 bytes per universe * 44 Hz * 2 (overhead, it's less than that for sure) ~ 300 kbps. Maybe you just worry too much.

2. Maybe just run cat 5 from pi to router and call it a day,

3. If you want to have separate networks, make sure you use network address from reserved address space that does not overlap with the network from your router.
For example: if your router network is 192.168.0.0/24 then make your DMX network 192.168.1.0/24
You may also have to adjust routing table, but probably not.

Jano

Hey Jano, thanks for the suggestions. I've got it working now but it's still not bulletproof. In response to 1. I definitely worry too much but it's better to worry now than at the gig!

so here's what I've got going.

1. Raspberry pi wlan0, Samsung tablet and Midas M32 mixer all connect to a wifi router set to the 10.0.0.XXX domain. All connections are DHCP but are assigned known reserved IP's based on mac address.

2. eth0 port on the pi is set to a static address at 2.0.0.10, and is connected via an ethernet cable to a Chauvet DMX-AN 2 ArtNet/sACN to DMX interface. Both wlan0 and eth0 parameters are set using the configuration page accessed via the web interface at 10.0.0.105:9999.

3. I've configured both universes to look to ArtNet 10.0.0.105 as the input, and ArtNet 2.0.0.10 as the output, unicast to 2.0.0.104 which is the static address of the Chauvet DMX-AN 2. When I load the qxw file onto the pi, I set the passthru option on the configuration page. The input seems to get reset to 127.0.0.1, butI seem to get better performance if I reset the input back to 10.0.0.105.

Initially when I tried this it would work perfectly on my macbook pro, butI couldn't get it to work on the pi. I would boot the pi using wlan0, and establish either a web or ssh session (or both) but whenever eth0 was plugged in (set static, connecting to another static device) I would loose the web and ssh connections to wlan0. If I tried booting with eth0 connected, wlan0 would never connect to the router.

I went to the terminal and used the "route -n" command and it showed eth0 at priority 202 and wlan0 at 302. I had to install ifmetric, and was then able to issue "sudo ifmetric wlan0 200". I connected the ethernet cable to eth0 and it now works!!!

After rebooting, wlan0 was back at priority 302 again, however the pi will now (usually) connect to the wifi over wlan0 even though eth0 is connected to the DMX-AN 2. So I guess the question is with QLC+ build Buster 20200830 where do I go to set the priority of wlan0 so that it is persistent without breaking anything in the build. (I tried earlier setting the discovery order of wlan0 before eth0 in wpa_supplicant.conf but ended up loosing all visibility of the ports on the web interface. they were just gone. The only option was the start file and reboot . fixed that by reflashing the card )

It seems to me that this setup is the best of all worlds for a small musician/band rig. One tablet can connect to either the lighting or audio rigs using only web interfaces. The actual DMX streaming data is kept completely off the wifi network (although the DMX-AN 2 is happy to be plugged into the router) as the data is streamed via cat 5 cable between the pi's physical eth0 port and the DMX-AN 2. Just like using a usb DMX dongle for output, except using eth0. I can simply mount the pi and the interface to the back of a fixture and the whole controller/show is there by default and no extra wiring...

I read through all 21 pages of the QLC raspberry pi forum last night and didn't see one reference to this, the closest being to use wlan0 as an access point. Am I the only one who thinks this way, or just the only one who had problems. Any feedback is appreciated.
Cheers,
Ian