Some confusion has arisen concerning how many “things” are hooked to a Lynx port (two ports => Thing 1 and Thing 2, if you remember your Dr. Seus).

The question is: If I hook up something like a Lynx Quad Temperature module is that 4 of the maximum 30 sensors or 1? Here are the essential rules.

• A Lynx “device” is something with a connector on it (round for sensors off the DIN rail, flat for each module on a DIN rail). The port limitation of 30 “devices” can be thought of as 30 “connectors”.

• Some devices send input (or control output) for more than one value or “Channel”. The ID-7 has 7 digital sequence inputs but counts as only one Lynx device. The Quad temperature module is 4 separate sensor inputs. But again, being only one connector each Lynx Quad Temperature module is a single Lynx “device” and counts as only one of the 30 limit (or 1 of 14 for outputs)

• The more “channels” a device has the more data it sends up to the eDART. This reduces the sample rate. For example the Quad Temperature module sends 8 (possibly to be 9) bytes in order to carry the data for 4 sensors. Even though it is one Lynx device it takes up space in the data stream equal to 3 cavity pressure sensors.

• There is no specific software limit to the number of channels input. It can store them all. On the older eDARTs (before April 26, 2007) the graphical display would simply get slower and slower with ever increasing numbers of curves. The data would still be stored, computed and alarmed upon, even with the slow graphics.