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How to incorporate DMX lights into a show


flyinbyu20

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Were you able to get that orange light to turn blue? That is crucial. Without that no dmx transmission from LOR sw.

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You can test that without any lights connected. You have to be able to broadcast dmx before plugging your lights in. Just connect the dongles (LOR and hc dmx) and make sure when you run a sequence that light stays blue, control lights stays checked. Then plug the light in if that light stays blue.

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Also, looks like chan 1 needs to be full on for intensity and no strobe. It has an effect on how the light is output for sure. When you were manual you pushed chan 1 all the way up. So do the same in sw. Be it xlights, qlights or LOR.

And maybe a terminator is needed. My setup is a lot more low tech. So maybe these dj lights needs every bit of signal.

Edited by sax
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ok, i verfied it was selected but the light never turns blue.  Once again, I was able to control the light.  In the video, unit 1.1 is on the entire time set to channel 1 full intensity as you said.  Then channel 2,3,4 is RGB and you can see it does work, but it still flickers wrong colors in the background.  


also note before I even beginning playing with the light in any of these videos, it flickers like its getting some garbage signal and that signal remains throughout the test

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Ok, looks like your getting better. Strange that the light stays Orange. LOR control panel running? It would have to be just to get the light to respond at all.

Next, what happens when you make channel 1 off? That is what controls that strobe according to your manual. You should have 4 channels, 1 for the strobe and 2,3,4 for the RGB. 1 also does intensity whatever that means. I assume it is that white light intensity. But it could be all lights.

When you had the manual connection did you try the RGB (channels 2,3,4) with channel 1 off?

And just to verify, you have dips 1 and 10 on and all others off?

Lastly, have you tried the moving light?

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Ya, the control panel was running with a blue light bulb.  When I had the manual connection, and channel one was off, nothing comes on.  Channel 1 is the intensity of the RGB as well as it does strobe.  There is no white light.  The manual says Strobe 0-127 I think and intensity 128-255.  I don't have the physical controller with me here, but I remember that as I moved the slider up, it increased the intensity.  Then at about half way started to strobe and all the way up it was full on.  My GUESS is that full up is still strobing, but so fast that it "appears" as steady.    

Dips 1 and 10 on all others off.  If I turned on the next dip, it moved it to channel 3 on my controller board, and so forth with more dips.

The moving light works with the physical controller, but was unable to get it a signal with Qlights, Xlights.  It never indicated that it was even talking to the dongle (no flashing red dot in display like it had when talking to the controller)

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and in qlights, it doesnt work live.  meaning if I move the red slider all the way up, I have to hit blackout off and on for it to register.  Red comes on, but still flickering.  If I want green, I move the green up to 255 red to 0 and it wont read it till blackout off and on.  Get green solid but still flickers.

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*Update

Got a hold of the tech department in holiday coro.  From what I told them with it happening on both computers, across all programs, etc, they think it is defective and is having me ship it in.  So that is where we stand.  Thanks for the continued support zman and everyone else!

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In the interim, I been messing around in device manager.  If I disable the actual USB serial adapter, which then also removes the Comm 4 port (which is the one it is using), the light still flashes sporadically.  I am leaning heavy towards this being defective. 

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If you have the right adapter cable, your LOR USB adapter can be used as a DMX dongle.

 

It will look like an "Enttec Open", not an "Enttec Pro" device.

 

There's instructions on the LOR Forum on how to make your own cable, if interested.

Edited by Ken Benedict
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Thanks Ken.  The controller has been sent back to holiday coro for replacement.  If that doesnt work, I may look into that.  I am also getting to the breaking point where I may just buy the LOR iDMX if this holiday coro has any more issues :( 

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I was out of town on a biz trip. Got back and only glanced here. I will catch up and see what has transpired. I am surprised if it was a dongle issue.

There are iDMX's that come up for sale periodically from others.

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Hey Zman-

   Ya, I talked with their tech support there at holiday coro.  Very basic, but had me try a few things including trying the dongle on my laptop and the exact issue was happening as on my desktop.  Even with the dongle disabled in the device manager, it was still sending out a garbage signal.  Made sure there were no background programs running and from what I could see, none were and it was still outputting a signal of the random flash every 2-4 seconds.  I dont know of any easy way to see if there is another program using the port, but like I said, I had everything closed via cntrl alt delete in the task manager.  

They gave me a return label via USPS.  Brought it there, turns out it weighed 13oz and not the 10oz the label said.  Long story short and completely no help by the USPS rep (wanted to charge a new box, a whole role of packaging tape because the label needed to be moved etc), ended up taking it home and taking it to another USPS without the usb cable and it came in at 9.5 oz and sent it off.  My guess I will get it back by next Thurs and Friday and I will advise if we got it working.  

Recapping all the topics here, we did get a signal to the RGB light through qlight, xlight and S3.  IF I wanted all red, I could get all red, if I wanted green i could get all green etc, BUT it was not a good signal and still had the flickering going on in the background at all times - with signal or no signal.  When plugged into the moving head RGB light, it had no signal to it and the light itself never indicated it had a DMX light signal.  Both lights tested perfect with a physical controller, the obey chavet 70.  


Thanks everyone for all the support in this endeavor.  I will advise when the replacement comes.  Any other ideas, please post as always 

tim

Edited by flyinbyu20
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ya, it looks like it was sold two days ago... thanks for trying though zman! appreciate it!

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  • 1 month later...

Scott, if you have the Holiday Coro dongle, contact David at Holiday Coro. He will have a fix for you. If not what is the symtoms.

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I do have the HC Actidongle.  Just got all of my stuff a month or so ago.  I have S3 advanced, a 16 channel LOR controller, the USB adapter and the Actidongle.  I am using this for a boat parade in a month.  I bought 4 of the Par lights mentioned above and I also have two Chauvet 4Plays.  

 

At first, I could not get the system set up correctly so I could get the blue light and control lights to stay clicked.  Somehow, by reconfiguring, rebooting, whatever, I was able to get the blue light on and control lights to stay clicked.  Then when I tried to control the Par, I got the flicker mentioned above.  I switched over to a 4Play and was able to control that unit perfectly.  So, it may be that those little (cheap) Pars do not work well with LOR and I can deal with that if I have to.

 

However, after I shut everything down, and I open the programs again, I lose the blue light and the control lights and instead of the blue light I have a red one that indicates (when you hover over it) that I have a com port error.  And the LOR controller does not even respond to any commands.  My controller is on Com Port 7.  If I reboot the controller and then autoconfigure, I can get it recognized and the test works ok.  However, back in sequence editor I still do not get the blue light.  Sometimes I do and I have not figured out what I did to get it back, but regardless, I need to fix this permanently as I cannot go through this nonsense each time.  Also, I updated the firmware on the controller to 1.07.

 

Thoughts? 

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Fly had a bad dongle output from the hc dongle. The cat 5 output worked proper but the xlr jack did not as discovered by David at holiday coro. Holiday coro is now correcting that.

I don't think fly ever got a blue light in the LOR seq editor.

In the end he purchased the iDMX. I haven't heard if that allowed him to control the lights proper or not. Maybe he will update....

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Last night I was able to get everything to work correctly - not with the cheap ebay Pars, but with a Chauvet 4Play.  The blue light issue seems to have to do with my LOR controller.  I get it set up in the HU and then I sometimes get the blue light, but then lose it when I shut everything off and come back and turn it all on again.  I sometimes dont get the blue light at all.

 

My LOR controller was on Com Port 7.  I changed it to Com Port 8 and seems to have some luck with that aspect.  i will see what happens when I turn it all on tonight.  I did order a different dongle to see how that works.  If that controls the cheap ebay lights, then I guess I will have two dongles - which is not all bad anyway.

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