prevue12 Posted November 27, 2016 Share Posted November 27, 2016 I'm ready to pull what little hair I have out. Last year the last two controllers in the daisy chain of controllers would randomly turn all the channels on. This year I paid special attention to run Cat5 cable as far from power cables as possible. No problems with that set of controllers and there is now three more down stream of them. Now it is two other sets on other side of yard that are 4th and 5th in a series of 21. I used new cat5 cables with these, and checked them to be positive they are good. I don't understand how the only those two are turning on all the circuits and not all of them down stream of them? Going to comb over the Cat5 runs to try to see if they are by some power cords. Does anyone have any other ideas, or know how the two in the middle are messing up without messing more up?. I use the residential controllers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jfuller8400 Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 You could be getting some signal reflection on the line that's causing the random flashing. I added terminators this year to my setup and I'm hopeful they will fix some of the issues I've seen. If you search the forums John Storms posted a nice video on how you can make your own terminators. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 (edited) I'm with jfuller on the terminators (although that's a bit of a stab in the dark). With 21 controllers on the circuit, the possibility of data reflections gets larger. I'm assuming you are not violating the RS-485 spec and splitting the circuit with a Y somewhere? The other thing I would check, is if the problem happens at the same point in sequences, carefully check the sequence. Especially with LEDs, it's amazing how visible a couple percent on will look - and it won't be visible in SE, so it's easy to miss. Edited November 28, 2016 by k6ccc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. P Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 I have been having the same problem for the last few days. I had five controllers that would not be recognized but I was getting flashing coming off of those controllers. After half a day of troubleshooting and changing out cables I said screw it and went and bought 3,000 feet of good, all copper cat5e cable. I spent all day yesterday cutting and crimping to get all the patch cables made. Low and behold, BAM, everything popped right in and works flawlessly. I took all those cheap, Chinese, copper clad aluminum cables and tossed them in the trash. I will make all my cables from now on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little_b Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 Check the pins on the terminals on the board. Last year I had one that was bent and caused me some headache. I straightened it out and haven't had any issues since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plasmadrive Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 3 hours ago, k6ccc said: I'm with jfuller on the terminators (although that's a bit of a stab in the dark). With 21 controllers on the circuit, the possibility of data reflections gets larger. I'm assuming you are not violating the RS-485 spec and splitting the circuit with a Y somewhere? Actually, you can use a wye somewhere if you don't exceed the allowable stub length overall. I wound up using two such wyes last year due to bad RJ45 jacks on the boards, but the stubs were only about 4" each. Total cable length for the LOR network was about 400-500'. I had no issues what so ever.. but I am running at 115k and not 500k. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 26 minutes ago, plasmadrive said: Actually, you can use a wye somewhere if you don't exceed the allowable stub length overall. True enough, but I was more referring to long distances on each side of the Y. I have also used a Y with about one inch of cable (as short as I could make it) on one side of the Y. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plasmadrive Posted November 28, 2016 Share Posted November 28, 2016 A cable that short takes some skill for sure.. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 29, 2016 Author Share Posted November 29, 2016 I made the terminator and tried it out, didn't work. I couldn't find a 120 ohm resistor, but was able to combine two to make 122.9, (150 and 680 in parallel) I don't think 3 ohms will make a difference since that is within tolerance of most resistors. I checked the programming, the lights are not on by accident. Groomed the cables to keep them away for power cords. I guess next is swap out all the cables and/or move all the boxes to different location to see that that does. I guess in reality most people won't notice much, but it stands out like a sore thumb to me, especially when I am doing a blue color fade and red, green, and white lights pop on. Thanks all for the responses and the ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wbaker4 Posted November 29, 2016 Share Posted November 29, 2016 Any chance the cat5 cables you are using are shielded? Also - try dropping the speed down from 115K. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 29, 2016 Author Share Posted November 29, 2016 Cables are not shielded, I was at 57.6K, I tried dropping it lower, and raising it up to 115.4K just to see, Still does it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 30, 2016 Author Share Posted November 30, 2016 Raining tonight so didn't get to try to move stuff. Would it help if I started the daisy chain on these controllers so they are the first two vs. them being number five and six? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jfuller8400 Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 That shouldn't matter. I've got mine numbered all over the place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 30, 2016 Author Share Posted November 30, 2016 25 minutes ago, jfuller8400 said: That shouldn't matter. I've got mine numbered all over the place. Just to be clear, I don't mean renumbering all of them to be in order. I mean that what is the 5th in the daisy chain, is now first in it, Unit IDs stay the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plasmadrive Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 The RJ45 jacks on the controllers are just in/out via PCB jumpers. They are not active repeaters. Unless a jack is bad, one controller should never effect the rest... unless something is really gone wonky with that controller and it is outputting when it shouldn't be. Usually they are just listening unless polled if I am not mistaken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marty Belisle Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 I have also been experiencing some random flashing in my CCRs on my enhanced network during my Halloween show, did tons of trouble shooting, moving of cables, swapping hardware.... I built a terminator based on John Storm's post crimping in a resistor into a Cat 5 connector on line 4/5. Unfortunately I was unable to find a 1/8 w, 120 ohm resistor in our local radio shack however was able to crimp in a 1/4 w, 120 ohm resistor. Will this work? I have not tried this yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 30, 2016 Author Share Posted November 30, 2016 The terminator didn't work for me, hope it does for you. As to the wattage, you can normally go bigger with no problems, its the amount of power they can take before the fail. My next step for trouble shooting is going to be run the contollers one at a time that are causing problems to see if they do it when its just that controller running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DSolmes Posted November 30, 2016 Share Posted November 30, 2016 I had a similar issue. In my case I had a 120 volt extension cord running from the outlet to a "T" and then 2 controllers plugged directly into the "T". I removed the "T" and ran extension cords to both controllers and the issue went away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 30, 2016 Author Share Posted November 30, 2016 I used Ts on those I will check that too. Thank you, I would have never thought of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prevue12 Posted November 30, 2016 Author Share Posted November 30, 2016 WE HAVE A WINNER, Glitch is gone. I got rid of the Ts for that set of controllers, and played around with locations that they were plugged into that that solved the problem. Thank you, DSolmes I would of never guessed that would of been the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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