Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Ethernet to RS485 widget
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funkyant:
I've never started a project like this before, but I really have a need for a specific widget which after some years, is still not available to purchase from any manufacturer at any cost. So I figure it's time to jump in and try to design one.

Trouble is I'm not sure exactly where to begin.

Design goal as follows:

ArtNET to DMX adapter.
IP67 rated or near as possible
PoE power supply

ArtNET is an open source protocol supported by many (most) lighting control manufacturers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art-Net

DMX is a variant of RS485 and is still the main standard for professional lighting fixture control, but is slowly being replaced by ArtNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMX512

The max485 chip seems to be the standard for sending DMX
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/interface/transceivers/MAX485.html/tb_tab0

Data rate of a single DMX universe (bus) is 250kb/s. I'd like my widget to have 4 output bus, so total data rate of the MPU needs to handle 1Mb/s without issue. Existing (non PoE, non waterproof) products on Aliexpress suffer from jamming up when dealing with too much data throughput, so I'd like to improve on that.

Where I'm getting a bit lost is where to begin looking for a suitable microcontroller. It would need to run an 100mb ethernet stack, a simple web server for remote settings management, the ArtNET library to read the data packets and spit them out to the max485 chips. And then I need to design a power supply that will work with off the shelf PoE ethernet switches.

The mechanical design, I'm planning on borrowing from a great MPPT solar housing I saw which is basically perfect for keeping everything weatherproof, whilst easily serviceable.

Can anybody point me in the right direction with regards to the PoE part and a suitable MCU/ MPU?

There are projects around using Raspberry Pi and even Arduino, but the former is overkill, and the latter also lags when flooded with a lot of data.

Competing products are priced at around 300 bucks a pop, and require a power supply and require mounting in a weatherproof box. I need 5 for a current project and am happy to go through a learning curve to create the perfect solution to my problem of reliably controlling outdoor lighting, which is not a unique problem to me.
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