DMX flickering?

[Robert Burton]

Ok,

This may not be an LOR software (definitely not hardware...my pixcon16 is working fine!), but not sure. I am not using LOR hardware on the stuff that is flickering. But wanted to run this by the crowd.

 

Running the show tonight, as the longer into the show... I had flickering problems. I am running the show "Show On Demand" with regular .lms files. NONE have been ran through the Pixel Editor... to get intensity files(? Know not what I am talking about there).  Could be files be too intense and then cause flickering?  I have several pixel related items that were ran through xLights and dropped into the sequencer.  Yes. It might be a cabling thing as well. But wanted to try this first.

 

Robert

[Robert Burton]

The files are not compressed either.

[k6ccc]

Step one, use compressed files.

Can you describe what you are using. You only told us what you're not using.

[Robert Burton]

Hey Jim,

Just got through running a vhf / uhf net ;-) Now back to the light business!

Ok on the compressed files.  Not sure what you mean, "What I am using".  Running the show on a Asus (sp?) laptop running Win8.1. 4gig ram? Pretty fast machine. None of the files have been put into PE, so the pixel tree (960 pixels) portion is pretty intense. So the "On Demand" program is just running .lms files. 

Is that what you need?

[Robert Burton]

I possibly found one culprit. I unplugged (sadly) all my rgb dmx floods from the loop and the flicker almost stopped completely. Going to try and run those on a separate universe and dongle Thursday night. Makes me mad since I went back, daisy chained (as I should have in the first place) THEN they still didn't work. Went back to the "Homerun" way of doing it, and they worked... for a while.

 

Now I get just a little flicker on some fades between red and green on a few things. All dmx devices. They are not figured with dmx intensities. Wonder if that would help. Also wonder how I would edit those "finished" products I have already sequenced to dmx fades up and down.

[k6ccc]

Robert, what I was asking would result is something like this:

Running 17 DMX RGB floods in Del Xyz from Holiday Coro with the little white 3 channel modules also from Holiday Coro. Also have 7 RGB dumb strips from Ray Wu that are powered by a 27 channel DMX board. All the DMC cabling is in one big loop that totals about a half mile (big lot). Using a model ABC DMX dongle. Running from an old HP desktop PC running Windows XP.

[Robert Burton]

Not sure what "Del Xyz" is ;-)  Ok. Here we go with the rest. Unfortunately most is not in a daisy chain like it should. Learned about that AFTER having everything wired up :-(

 

I will only go over the stuff that is "blinking" the most. I have a SanDevices e682 running some Flextech Arches that I port out my dmx signal on Universe 1. Separate power supply running it (will list those since it may be grounding related?)  I run dmx + & - to a Holidaycoro 27 ch RGB board (separate supply) running 10 RGB dumb strips. From there I split (split A we will call it) off dmx signal (+ and -) along with power to 2 Holidaycoro 3 channel rgb (dip switch) floods that are daisy chained. One of far end has terminating resistor. From "Split A" I have another 3 channel rgb flood (acting up). No terminating resistor. Stopped blinking before WITHOUT one. (before) Also ANOTHER rgb flood from "Split A" ... not acting up! It does have a terminating resistor.

 

On a separate power supply, but getting the dmx + and - signal from the very first 27 ch controller above, I have one Seasonal Entertainment 9 ch. rgb controller controlling 7 rgb strips and 1 HC 3 ch controller working 1 rgb strip.

 

On a separate (Astron) supply, but taking it's dmx + and - from the 1st 27 ch controller I have 13 HC 3 channel rgb controllers running 13 rgb window frames. All were starred back on the porch. After that gave me fits, I re-routed the dmx signal into a daisy chain with a terminating resistor.

 

Sorry. Didn't include the feet on the cabling. There is probably several thousand feet on just the house portion. There is somewhere between 400 and 500ft on the window frames alone. 

 

All this did not include 9 other dumb rgb controllers, 1 Pixcon and 2 e682's in the front. Left off also is the 7 LOR controllers that are on a separate network.

 

Now you can see why I chased this for several weeks, got it under control for a solid week... and then acted up like it was chocking on data or something. Most all the flickering stopped when I unplugged the rgb floods. What erks me about that is that I "daisy chained" them after this started and that didn't help. What helped was going back to the "split off" I originally had from the previous 2 or 3 years. Then it decided to "throw up" all of that ;-)