Extra Laptop running show

[Brewing Guru]

I have an extra laptop that I would like to setup to run my light show. I live out in the country on some property and we are limited to 150G of data monthly. When the family is streaming in the family room and the show is running, we have a problem with buffering. And the more devices we have on the WiFi, the worse it is! There is only one provider in the area unless we go with Hughes Net and some of the neighbors say it?s no better! I am using a Falcon F48 with only two smart receivers at this time. I plan on growing my show over the next few years. Can I buy and use an unmanaged switch, assign static address to all my show components and run my show independent of my home network and WiFi? I would like to keep everything wired for my show if possible. My show currently consists of a few house outlines and two 200 pixel matrices. Except for the network issue the show seems to be working great!
Thanks in advance!

[maldridge]

This seems like a perfectly reasonable course of action.   As long as nothing in your lighting control network requires internet access (it typically shouldn't) this would work well.  I'm a network engineer in my dayjob, and this is actually  a best practices thing, since lighting control networks control potentially hazardous systems, having them airgapped is a great way to improve your security posture as well.

[Brewing Guru]

So is it as simple as it sounds or is there a lot of programming to be done. I am a master electrician but I?m not an I.T. guy.  I have an Ethernet cable from my router to my Falcon controller. If I were to unplug the cable from the controller, put it into a port on the switch, then plug my laptop and controller into the switch and assign static addresses to my laptop and controller it should work?

[maldridge]

Yep, it really is that simple.   I'd recommend picking a different subnet than what your router hands out to make it clearer that this is a distinct network.  For example if your router is handing out 192.168.1.x, make this network 192.168.2.x.

[Brewing Guru]

WOW! Thank you! This will be great! I can't thank you enough! I thought I was going to have to learn a new programming language or something.