Problems with addressing or cabling?

[UniCav]

Finally got my DMXking USB adapter and tested a few things. At my office I have a Windows 7 PC that I've been experimenting with Fixture Creator and playing with one of our ADJ Mega24 Pro's and one of my Chauvet SlimPAR 64's. Everything works great. Today I hooked up the entire rig - 8 SlimPAR's and 2 Mega24's and installed Freestyler 3.5.2 (haven't upgraded yet) on my WinXP Laptop that I use at shows. I added 8 SlimPAR's and let FS do the addressing, then added 2 Mega24's the same way. Set all my fixtures to match the addressing of the FS setup and then started testing channels. It seems that every channel except the last SlimPAR works and neither of the Mega24's work. I've double checked that every PAR is set on 7ch mode and the Mega24's are in 16ch. All the addresses match what's set up in FS. I removed the Mega24's from the DMX cabling and went straight into the PAR's and still nothing. Eventually I got PAR 8 to come on but no idea what changed. I also can't get the Master Intensity panel to work here. On the work PC with only a couple things hooked up it works perfect, but here there is NO response from it whatsoever, and I have verified these all have a Lamp channel and that "Ignore Master Intensity" is unchecked in the setup.

This has been consistent with the problems I've been having at the shows since I bought these. The SlimPAR's are buggy as heck. I have been running the lights on an Elation StageSetter using 3ch mode. Hook everything up ... bugs. check cables and program modes and such and eventually they start to work but no idea what changed other than powering on and off a few times.

Is it possible I need a DMX terminator to calm these goofy fixtures down? The run through the entire fixture line is about 100'. Any other ideas why this setup is so buggy?

[Jan_K]

Hej

If you have only a direct connected PAR 8 then you have the optimal setup for debug.

Is there a LED or something that indicates that FS is sending a DMX signal.
If you can see that you have DMX signal then you can see what DMX value FS is sending in the output panel.

My guess is that the PC / FS are not sending anything as it works on your office PC.
You may have to update your driver for the DMXking.


/Jan

[UniCav]

The driver is the latest - 2.08.30 WHQL Certified. The DMXking does have 2 diagnostic LED's I'll check that out. I just found a note in the DMXking manual that some devices - notably Chauvet Colorstrip - require adjustments to the timing in their control utility. I'll get some more testing done today and see what I can come up with. Still planning to get a terminator on the end of the line as well. I'm also planning to cut my cables between the PAR's down to like 16" or so instead of 10'. I was going to just buy some short cables but wow they're expensive as long ones and I'm perfectly capable of soldering connectors myself. BTW all these cables are either ADJ or Chauvet brand so they "should" be good quality?

Just out of curiosity has anyone ever noticed a difference in control/timing/reliability depending on what end of the chain the controller is on? Yesterday when I connected everything I actually had the laptop on the END of the line. The 1st SlimPAR is channel 1-7 and the last one is 50-56. The 2 Mega24's are 16 channels each.

This is the first computer controlled rig I've ever connected. In the past I've had 20-24 lights but they were simple dimmer packs and a footswitch with automatic chases. The rig we started out with in this band was 2 dimmer packs on the same channel running on that StageSetter board. He was only using 4 channels. When I rigged up the Mega24's on it and programmed a few chases it used all 16. This is a lot of channels compared to what I've used in the past so I'm open to tips and suggestions. LOVING Freestyler and I've barely gotten my feet wet. This is going to be an AWESOME rig once I get a handle on it.

[Spirit]

hi i never had any trouble with any lights.. they allways seems to work ok on my Enttec pro..
i also made crazzy longe chains without any problems..
as i have seen a Avolight table that could not controll more then 5+ Sunstrips..lucky we had 4 Dmx universes
as with the Enttec i allready had 20 sunstrips +20ledspars and some MH on the same universe..
and nevers used a Terminator..

also nice to know which DMXking device do you use?

ps: Enttec PRO and DMXking PRO are the same as both the devices use the FTDI chipset.

/spirit

[UniCav]

Spirit mine is the DMXking USB RDM Pro 3-pin and I'm using the Entec USB Pro selection in FS

[UniCav]

I built and installed a DMX terminator, it seems to have helped some. Found the rest of my problem seems to be that instead of exporting and importing my fixtures I simply copied the fixture directory (with only my fixtures in it) from the office PC, moved the original fixture directory to Fixtures-Orig and pasted my fixture directory onto the laptop. I had to open my 2 fixture files and tweak a few things.

That said - the Mega24 Pro will not work with RGB values only it's built in colors which I already had in my fixture file. I removed the CMYK/RGB setting and now I have it's built in values only on the color wheel tab which is fine. It also responds to the master intensity ONLY after you have OPENED the lamp or set a dimmer vallue, which is also fine. The Mega24 Pro also has a piss-poor stand design that causes anything other than a 90-degree power or DMX connector to drag the ground, and subsequently causes the unit to turn off or lose connectivity through the DMX bus. Going to have to engineer a better mounting system for those to prevent cable problems.

The SlimPAR 64 fixture I tweaked a bit and added macros for basic colors to help speed up programming sequences. Also added an OFF macro. As of moments ago I had satisfactorily complete control of all functions on both these fixtures so now it's on to sequencing! If anyone wants copies of my fixture files for these 2 let me know I'll be glad to upload them, but I'm betting anyone who has them has already configured them. Thanks again for the help and suggestions!

[djSupport]

Just to add, people assume alot that dmx signal problems are from the cabling between units but the internal cables can be damaged too, I had 4 mac 250 kryptons and made up some sequences, every few minutes the Last two lights would jump a little after further investigation one of the lights had a very long thin wire inside that connected to the dmx ports and the PCB, either through heat which makes them brittle or a slight break in the cable was corrupting the signal and once replaced they worked great!



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[UniCav]

djsupport that's a good point and although my first thought was "but these are brand new LED's" you still may be right about why they are so flaky when it comes to DMX and here's why:

A few weeks back we did a full show setup, practice and tear down to work on tuning a new DM-10 Drum kit and these lights. I set the whole rig up and had a dozen different glitchy issues trying to get all of them working in 3ch mode on the StageSetter board. Finally they all started working so I started running chases so everyone could see how they looked. Not long after, one of the lights lost the blue channel. I fiddled with it awhile then gave up thinking the light had gone bad. That night I plugged the unit up at home and realized all you had to do was bump it and the blue channel would go on/off. Tore the thing open and the plug on the back of the LED plate FELL OFF. It was barely plugged in.

I'm thinking now it's a good time to open every unit and check all the connections.

[djSupport]

Plug it in and make a test sequence loop it over and over see how it responds, pick the light up and gently move it around see if it goes nuts while your doing it it may help diagnose faster! If they all seem ok use two lights... Why? To see if its just the output causing an issue



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[UniCav]

Only problem with that is all of them are mounted on T-Bars. But yes as soon as I get a sequence looping I'll go move them around some and see if that does it

[djSupport]

Connect the input into say the first two and pull out the cable between the second and third then rinse and repeat for the other two



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