In my previous DMX-RT post, I listed some of the problems I’d encountered. Today, I’m going to solve one of them.
I went through four DMX-RT units before I got one that worked. The first one was “dead on arrival” (no menu). The second one worked fine for a while (using a Kingston Class 10 MicroSD card), then died. The third had problems accessing any MicroSD card I gave it (reporting “no F”). Finally, the fourth unit appeared to work as expected, though I would find the loops would stop playing every now and then.
I exchanged numerous e-mails with Chauvet technical support during all of this, and wanted to pass along their recommendation about which MicroSD cards they “know” work in the unit. I tried Kingston, Sandisk, and a few others, but here is one they use:
- SanDisk Ultra PLUS 32GB at Best Buy. (Was $9.99 the other day when I picked one up in my local store.)
I would hope that the 16GB Ultra PLUS would also work, but I wanted to get exactly what support was using to test my DMX-RT out. I let it run a loop overnight and it was still looping the next morning.
There is also a step up from this card — SanDisk Extreme PLUS — which is supposed to be a bit faster. I picked one of those up as well and ran some benchmarks.
First, here is the Kingston Class 10 Canvas Select card I was trying to use:
- Kingston Canvas Select 16GB via Amazon (affiliate link). These are high rated and cheap ($3.54 as of this writing, as an add-on item). I have several of these I am using in Raspberry Pis with no issue.
In the above AJA System Test benchmark, nonie that the write speed (the blue line) jumps around. This could be a problem when recording DMX streams. The read speed seems okay, but dropped off at the end. Maybe this is why my unit would stop looping when using this card?
I also had an older SanDisk card that I tried:
- SanDisk Ultra 32GB (not the PLUS model)
Notice that the read speed is only a bit faster than the Kingston, but the writes are a bit more flaky. I did not have success using this card in the DMX-RT.
- SanDisk Ultra PLUS 32 GB – This is the card suggested by Chauvet for me to use.
Write speed is a bit faster, but read was a bit slower than the normal ULTRA and had performance dropouts. Interesting, considering this card seems to work fine.
- SanDisk Extreme PLUS 32GB – This one I just tried for fun. It’s only a few dollars more, and it claims to be faster.
Wow! Look at those write speeds. They may be jittery, but they are fast. Read speeds were only a tad faster than the older Ultra card I had.
I don’t really know if any of this is useful. I’m happy just buying the card that Chauvet suggests, but I thought it might be fun to look at the others I tried to see if I could spot why they failed. (I do not have benchmarks for a few cards that seemed to die on me during the testing process.)
Coming up next will be a video showing off the Halloween project I am using the DMX-RT for.
Until then…