Discontinued: This product has been discontinued.
Falcon 4 String Smart Differential Receiver Board v2.01 Black
The Falcon 4-String Differential Smart Receiver Board allows 4 ports to be placed up to 300+ feet away from the host controller. This smart receiver can be daisy chained with an additional five smart receivers if used in 6-chain-mode (Falcon v4 and Kulp). The chain will share the allocated number of pixels configured for the port it is connected to (see the chart below) and the receiver-chaining article. This board supports 3 wire pixels only, which means pixels in the WS28xx family or USC190x. The power input lug will accept 5-13v of power with a maximum draw of 30 amps. As with other smart receivers in the family, this has a built in test mode that is activated by a push button which is great for testing up to 1024 pixels per port without the need of a controller. The board features four LEDS that will light respectively when data is detected on the four data lines.
When the smart receiver is used in smart mode, the count of pixels per bank is reduced due to the overhead of the smart protocol. Below is a chart that depicts how many pixels are lost on each port pool at a given setting. When the smart receiver is in "dumb mode," no pixels are lost. However, depending on the model, when the receiver is switched to "smart mode," you may start losing pixels immediately even though no other receiver is in the chain. The product on this page is version 2 of the smart receiver.
Receiver Version | 1 (Dumb) | 1 (Smart) | 2 (Smart) | 3 (Smart) | 4 (Smart) | 5 (Smart) | 6 (Smart) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
v1.x | 0 | 30 | 60 | 90 | NA | NA | NA |
v2 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
v2.01 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 11 | 14 | 18 |
Due to the chip shortage of 2020-2022, features of v2.x of the smart receiver became very fragmented. Below is a chart that contains a feature list and modes of operation for each type of differential receiver along with the compatibility matrix for different controllers. The receiver on this page is highlighted in blue. Please note: Different types of receivers can be chained together if the mode is the same across all nodes in the chain. Smart receivers have a termination switch that should only be engaged for the last receiver in the chain. This applies to chains of 1 to 6 nodes.
Receiver Type | |||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Controller | Max Receivers per Chain and Switching Pattern | Red or White Dumb Receiver | White or Black Smart Receiver v1.x | Blue Smart Receiver v2.0 | Black BBB Smart Receiver v2.0 | Blue Smart Receiver v2.01 | Black Smart Receiver v2.01 | ||||||||
Falcon v2 (Blue or Red) Supports Dumb Mode Only |
Count | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||||
Switch Setting | NA | Normal | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||||||
Falcon v3 (White) Supports Dumb |
Count | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | ||||
Switch Setting | NA | Normal | A-C | 0 | 0 | 1-3 | 0 | 1-3 | 0 | 1-3 | |||||
Falcon v4 (Blue) Supports Dumb and v2 Smart Mode |
Count | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 6 | |||||
Switch Setting | NA | Normal | 0 | A-F | 0 | 0 | A-F | 0 | 4-9 | ||||||
BBB Capes with FPP Supports Dumb, v1, and v2 Smart Modes |
Count | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
Switch Setting | NA | Normal | A-C | 0 | 4-9 | 0 | 1-3 | A-F | 0 | 1-3 | 4-9 | 0 | 1-3 | A-F | |
Mode of Operation | None | Two Switches (Refer to info on back of board for adjustment) |
Rotary Dial 0-9,A-F |
-Research graciously provided by Daryl C & Ron Armstrong. Reprinted with permission.