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Well I used Freestyler for my first show today - only 24 dimmer channels so a very small scale event at school.

I was pleased with the results, and found it easy to use very quickly. I just programmed a few que's quickly and busked from them.

HOWEVER, it died about 10 minutes after the event started. The laptop was responding, and freestyler was still working (I could select fixtures and change the DMX values) but the DMX output just suddenly dropped to 0 and I had to restart the program meaning people were left in black-ness for a short while. It was the stable release.

I'd use it again definitely, but not for a show or something. So I'd use it in gigs and stuff as if you're in the middle of a scene and the DMX drops you're screwed. It's also not good for theatre.


An 8 out of 10.



Tom

What interface are you using?
If an Enttec Open DMX, then look elsewhere on this forum for a fix. It sometimes stops working. Restarting FS is the only solution.
I think the same goes for some other interfaces.
Edit: http://www.freestylersupport.com/fsforu ... 32&start=0

Or maybe its an issue in FS. It would be nice if you try to repeat the faulty situation. Make it a reproducable situation with as little possible fixtures and steps to do. Then post that as a bug.

I did that some time ago on a problem with fades who stopped working after an amount of time. That is solved in the next release (currently testing several beta's). If you manage to make a tiny reproducable situation, then we all can make FreeStyler a step better.

You can report a bug here:
[bugreporting][/bugreporting]

I just think it's strange that at the exact time the other laptop froze.

Make sure your laptop is on a clean supply and not the same as the dimmer. Also make sure you use the optically coupled interfaces to keep noise out of the PC.

Spav wrote:Make sure your laptop is on a clean supply and not the same as the dimmer. Also make sure you use the optically coupled interfaces to keep noise out of the PC.

A laptops power supply should in theroy should always be very clean as it gets its power from a battery and not direct from the mains. The mains adaptor is really only a charger for the battery. Thefore laptops always have clean power and it should not matter where its plugged in.

except that is not the case.
Try running your laptop with the battery removed or even a dead battery. u will find it will still operate.
The mains supply is not isolated from the laptop via the battery, otherwise we would never suffer from ground loops on the audio side.
but the most common cause for the ops problem will be a glitch on the usb line.
most cheaper interfaces will hang when noise is picked up mostly through the dmx cables.
theres a fix by placing caps between hot and gnd and cold and gnd on the dmx output of the enttec stuff, optically isolated interfaces shouldn't suffer the same problem.

In short keep dmx cables away from powerlines, Dimmers and smoke machines.
Possibly use RF Filters and use another power source for the laptop which has no dimmers/smoke machines etc.

The dimmers are on their own 60A SPNE ring.

Another reason you should use proper DMX cable instead of mic cable!