Odd DJ Scan 250 Behavior [SOLVED]

[KenK]

Hello, I am new to using Freestyler and have been working with v3.5.5. My initial light show includes a 4 channel dimmer, 4 - DMX LED PAR64 lights and a 5 channel DMX LED Mushroom. All of these work great. However, I recently borrowed a pair of old ADJ DJ Scan 250s and added them to the show. The problem that I am having is that the scanners act very erratic under Freestyler. For example, if I set the color (manually) it will turn on the lamp and switch to the color that I selected. However about every second or two, it will roll back to white and then reselect my color again. This just keeps repeating. The same happens with gobos and with pan and tilt. I move the beam to a position but it constantly is moving to the 0 position and then back to my set point.

Initially I thought that I might have a hardware issue. I am using a uDMX interface on a rather slow laptop. However, I loaded another DMX app (QLC) and did not see any of this behavior using that app. Which makes me think that I might have Freestyler configured wrong. Any ideas?

[Partyman]

It sounds like it may be a refresh rate problem with your USB dongle. Some lights just do not respond well with the low end dongles.

Rusty

[KenK]

Thanks Rusty, I think you are right about the refresh rate. I am finding that the Windows uDMX driver is not very compatible with the DJ Scan. At least not on an old slow laptop. I was able to adjust the driver communication parameters and improve but not eliminate the problem. Interestingly, when I tried QLC, I had plugged the same uDMX dongle into my (much higher end) Macbook and it worked perfectly.

Seems like the easiest solution will be to pickup a better DMX interface. Something I was considering anyway.

[Partyman]

Glad to assist.

I have all of these and they all work flawlessly with freestyler. http://www.dmxking.com/usbdmx

P.S. The reason for the different results is because the low end usb controllers let the computer do all of the work (hence your results). The better controllers have chips built in to handle some of the load.

[Nathanrs93]

Also I wouldn't recommend using interfaces like uDMX above as you'll see there's no protection between your fixtures & FS, at least with paying that bit more you'll know that if you did get a fault and comes back down the line it won't fry your laptop.

Peace

[deezel85]

its interesting to see this post after I had the same problem a few weeks ago... I just solved my issue with my Scan250s.

I own 2 DJ Scan250s, and 2 of the 'newer' scan250 deluxe scanners, both units perform look and perform identical. With my basic Gus electronics open interface I had this same problem. The Deluxe units are fine but the originals would be erratic. My hardware based dmx controller ran all 4 no problem.

I found a post somewhere else with someone stating the same problem about the DMX timing. AMDJ was ZERO help... essentially they just told me the lights were discontinued and to forget about it.

I ended up ordering the Sirs-E dmx pro unit off ebay. A clone of the DMXKing, in the configuration utility i set the TX mode to "Maximum Compatibility" and that was it.

Can someone chime in about the protection? Does my SIRS-E device not have it either?

[KenK]

Glad to hear that your had some success with the DJ scan 250s. I was really about ready to give up. So far I've had no luck getting this resolved. I did acquire a DMXKing Ultra Micro which I believe is functionally equivalent to the unit that you bought from Sirs-e (both made by DMXKing.) But still having the same issue. In the configuration utility I upgraded the firmware to 1.2 and did try the several of the communication speeds including Max Compatibility. But now there is hope! Still I am wondering if the old slow laptop is part of the issue. I tried using the channel utility in the DMXKing configuration tool and got the same issue as when using freestyles. So I think I can rule out Freestyler as being a cause.

I did read some old posts from 2006 about dmx issues on this light. Apparently, it was kind of a lemon. Now I know why these lights were in store room for 8 years!

Btw, pretty sure the both of these dmx adapters are not isolated.