Using wireless controllers - lights seem to stick,etc

[Brad Caudill]

I am running wireless Ell's. They seem to not be communicating fast enough. They will do fine and then it will get sluggish and sometimes things do not come on when suppose to,etc. Now I am having to send it through two walls inside the building. Is that the obvious reason why? Was just seeing what anyone else thinks may be causing it.

[Brad Bilger]

Mine were doing the same thing. Try changing the channels on the ELL's. I moved from the default and they ran a whole lot better.

[johnny christmas]

its not just wireless that hangs up, im connected through copper and my lights hang up every now and then...p's me off to tell the truth

[Brad Bilger]

johnny christmas wrote:

its not just wireless that hangs up, im connected through copper and my lights hang up every now and then...p's me off to tell the truth

I know the feeling... Last year, when I ran my show, I was livid over the fact that a few channels were hanging up.. my boss said that I was the only one that noticed it. This year, I had some of my new channels doing it also.. I had to relocate my ELL's. Had one behind a masonary wall, and another under a steel stage. I've never had mine hard wired together. If you are having the same problem with hardwire that I am with ELL's, then the problem must exist someplace else then..

I haven't had a chance to run my show at night after relocating my ELL's, but I'll let you know if I still have the same problem. The one that was hanging up last weekend was one of my new boxes that I got this year..

[Kicker3]

Did anyone get a fix for this? Is it the ELL or a software issue. Last year with 1.5 and 3 boxes with ELL's, it worked great. I have the same 3 boxes with ELL's and those seem to be working fine, but my 2 new boxes for this year with ELL's are inconsistently working and lagging behind all the other commands. The 2 new boxes are right next to 1 of my old boxes that's working fine.

Any ideas? or solutions from this earlier topic? I have tried changing software and no luck. I really didn't want to hard wire each box, but that's what I am doing tomorrow so I can eliminate the wireless lag (if any).

[DCook]

Same Here.

Even with direct line of sight and only about 56-60 ft between the ELL's, I get intermittent spotty communication (I think). I watch the LED on the 8 channel controllers hooked to the ELL and it kind of looks like it is flashing extremely rapidly. Sometimes all three are doing it and sometimes only one is doing it.

I also can't run the channels all on full at the same time or the controller LED flashes off and then reconnects (LED turns on). It makes the lights all go off for a few seconds until the next change in the sequence happens and then they all jump back to life. If I run them at 50% intensity instead of full they all seem to keep working.

Everything connected through coper is working fine.

I just figure it was something I was doing wrong.

First year running 4 ELL's.

[Kicker3]

Just to follow up on my post, it certainly was the ELL's with my problem. Once I hard wired them with Cat5, it worked perfectly.

[LightORamaJohn]

DCook wrote:

Even with direct line of sight and only about 56-60 ft between the ELL's, I get intermittent spotty communication (I think). I watch the LED on the 8 channel controllers hooked to the ELL and it kind of looks like it is flashing extremely rapidly. Sometimes all three are doing it and sometimes only one is doing it.

I also can't run the channels all on full at the same time or the controller LED flashes off and then reconnects (LED turns on). It makes the lights all go off for a few seconds until the next change in the sequence happens and then they all jump back to life. If I run them at 50% intensity instead of full they all seem to keep working.

The first paragraph seems to describe how the Status LED would behave in the case that a standalone sequence had somehow been loaded into that controller. Reset the controller or use the HWU to remove standalone sequences to see if this problem goes away. Note that if the unit does have a standalone sequence in it, this may cause the ELL to transmit and the power supply on a CTB08 probably won't support that.

The second paragraph sounds like a power problem. When all the channels are on full, this uses the maximum amount of low voltage power to drive the optos. This may rob enough from the ELL to cause it to reset. Make sure the cable to the ELL is 10' or less and try to use two CTB08s cabled together to power an ELL.

[Brad Bilger]

LightORamaJohn wrote:

DCook wrote:

Even with direct line of sight and only about 56-60 ft between the ELL's, I get intermittent spotty communication (I think). I watch the LED on the 8 channel controllers hooked to the ELL and it kind of looks like it is flashing extremely rapidly. Sometimes all three are doing it and sometimes only one is doing it.

I also can't run the channels all on full at the same time or the controller LED flashes off and then reconnects (LED turns on). It makes the lights all go off for a few seconds until the next change in the sequence happens and then they all jump back to life. If I run them at 50% intensity instead of full they all seem to keep working.

The first paragraph seems to describe how the Status LED would behave in the case that a standalone sequence had somehow been loaded into that controller. Reset the controller or use the HWU to remove standalone sequences to see if this problem goes away. Note that if the unit does have a standalone sequence in it, this may cause the ELL to transmit and the power supply on a CTB08 probably won't support that.

The second paragraph sounds like a power problem. When all the channels are on full, this uses the maximum amount of low voltage power to drive the optos. This may rob enough from the ELL to cause it to reset. Make sure the cable to the ELL is 10' or less and try to use two CTB08s cabled together to power an ELL.

One other thing on the ELL's. Last year, I had 4 controllers all run by ELL's. No hardwire at all. This year, I have 6 running, with still no Cat 5 cable. The height above ground varied on my ELL's from 2 foot to about 12. The one that was 2 foot was the one that was at my PC. I ran one show with a crowd around the pc. (about 100 people between the pc and my furtherst out controller and lost almost every signal to that box. Mounted my ELL at the pc on a pole about 8 feet off the ground and brought it to the same level as the others, and I haven't lost a single beat since then. All ELL's are connected to the controllers using the 10' cat 5 that came with them. It seems to not just be distance that figures into the equation, but height above ground is critical also. Channel selection also figures in. Look at the environment. My show area uses wireless mics, Wireless DMX systems, Portable radios.. Change channels and see if you get a better signal.

[Richard Hamilton]

Sticking my 2 cents worth in here.

When I read this post, it rang a bell in my mind from a couple of years ago, so I looked up my LOR notes. Here are some issues I had and how they were solved.

I had this problem controlling lights wirelessly. Fortunately, I had access to an RF spectrum analyizer and discovered that my home cordless telephone was interferring with LOR. Yup that's right... .the home phone. My phones were older style that operated in the 900 MHz range which is the same range as the LOR wireless. I'm sure LOR personnel will correct me on this if I am wrong.

I noticed that whenever my son got on the phone, LOR would raise hell with not controlling the lights properly. Changing the channel did not solve the problem because the crappy telephone was still interferring with a couple receivers. Once I put some physical distance between the receivers and the phone, and changed the channels, the problem went away. Finally, I just upgraded my phones to 5.7 GHz versions, and never had any issue again.

I'm not saying that your problems are caused by interference with your cordless phone. I'm just saying to open up your mind to problems being elsewhere. In fact it could be due to most anything on the same band as the LOR receivers.

As for wired issues of the same type, then obviously this is not an RF interference issue, but it could be a software one. For testing, be sure to stop ALL Windows services running on your computer (in the system tray) just to be sure you are not running something that is hogging up all of your CPU time. I observed back in July that something flaky was going on with an additional LOR unit that I ordered. It turned out to be that my security camera recording software (on the same computer) was occasionally locking up the computer for a few hundred milliseconds (a short time but enough to cause problems). Every time the camera software would save a file to disk, it sucked up all the CPU time and was apparently interferring with the LOR drivers. Again, keep your mind open to other reason why your LOR isn't working.

[cmoore60]

For those that use the ELL and are having some issues.

I personally do not use the ELL, however I have been following the threads.

Dan and/or John may want to correct me. I believe that if your using the ELL connected to a controller, that controller should be the blue board type. I remember getting my first blue board kit and asking what is the difference. The blue board has a more beefy power supply (10vdc) for the acessories. Where as the green board was around when the power was just needed for the 485 adapter.

Could the ELLs not be getting enough power or pulling down the board power supply? Just something to keep in mind and maybe someone that is having issues may want to check and chime in.

Chuck