Many screens in CC

[Genor]

Hi,

I am looking for software and hardware capable of handling several hundred, or 1000+, displays simultaneously. I have downloaded Crystal Control and tested it, and my experience is that Crystal Control crashes when more than 100 screens are entered. I have tested this using the Simulated LCD function. The following message pops up when screen no. 101 is entered: "Access violation at address 00418614 in module "CRYSTALCONTROL.EXE". Read of address FFFFFFFF." If this bug is fixed, would it then be any problem to handle hundreds of USB LCDs connected to one host PC?

Also, when working with many screens it would have been nice if it was possible to load many screens into CC simultaneously.

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[CF Mark]

Hmm, i guess i could fix that for the next version...

One question though.... why do you want to do this?

 

[CF Tech]

There is also the issue of physical connectivity. USB will get you quite a few, but I think it is limited to 255 +-.

 

[Genor]

Hi, and thank you for your answers.

The background for my interest for your products was an idea about using them to make a price display system for shops. The Norwegian Competition Authority recently criticized shops for having different prices on store shelf edges and in their electronic checkout scanning systems. (Shops in Norway use the traditional paper label pricing system on the shelves). However, just after I posted my message in your forum I became aware of companies already offering price display systems, for instance telepanelsystems.com. So, I probably and unfortunately have to bury my "project".

Concerning the physical connectivity, the best solution that I have found is from Belkin, belkin.com. Belkin`s "USB 4-Port PCI Card with QuadraBus™ Technology" has 4 USB controllers on it, so theoretically it is possible to connect 4*127=508 devices to the card. Through careful configuration it may be possible to install two such cards in one PC (if enough system resources are available, IRQs,....) If this could be done the amount of bandwidth used by the connected devices would be the next question. I don`t know whether or not such a system could have worked with your LCD-displays connected (?). Such a system would also have required a lot of hubs, which would also have counted as USB-devices. The biggest external USB-hubs I have found have only 7 ports.