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Multiple Networks, trazillion lights, I'm gonna kill my spouse, loljk but really.


codechick

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17 minutes ago, codechick said:

But I may very well take you up on your offer, I generally return favors in food offerings, coffee or alcohol, but pacific time tells me that could be a problem.  haha

Don't worry about that.  I have helped MANY people on the forum over the years.  I will settle for a thank you.  Every once in a while I get something back, but I don't ask or expect it...

 

 

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21 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

Note the Star next to the firmware and note at bottom. 

I'm unsure what you're asking/saying?   If it's to check the firmware version, yes I can confirm all are out of date, some more critically than others.  

I'll work through updates and see where we land.

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29 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

 

Also the pixcon is not a HU controller. 

 

For clarity, I don't have a PixCon, we have 2 "Pixie16 Smart Pixel Controllers".  

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2 minutes ago, codechick said:

For clarity, I don't have a PixCon, we have 2 "Pixie16 Smart Pixel Controllers".  

I was just using that as a reference to the other comment.

All I have are pixies for RGB stuff and a ton of them at that.

I type in my cell and my hands are not 100% functional so sometimes something doesn’t get entered or entered correctly.

I meant it’s not a controller that is recognized in the HU but is still controllable in shows and SE.

JR

Edited by dibblejr
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7 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

I was just using that as a reference to the other comment.

All I have are pixies for RGB stuff and a ton of them at that.

I type in my cell and my hands are not 100% functional so sometimes something doesn’t get entered or entered correctly.

I meant it’s not a controller that is recognized in the HU but is still controllable in shows and SE.

JR

Oh that's good to know anyhow.  What about ribbons, do they behave differently in HU?  We have 2 different kinds; Cosmic Color Controller 2 and CCR Smart Strip.

Edited by codechick
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On 12/7/2018 at 2:36 PM, a31ford said:

Actually, the 2 issues are somewhat related from the standpoint of Hi-Z (impedence) on cables, studio microphones use the 600 ohm "XLR" type connector, where as the old crystal microphones used hi-Z phone jacks. Distance was the issue with them, more than 15 feet, and the capacitive effect of a hi impedence cable would start attenuating the hi frequencies so the person speaking would sound muffled....

Snubbers  stop the hi-z on LED strands from triggring the Triacs, terminators stop the capacitive effect (hi-Z) on fast network speeds causing a slur in the waveform.......

I haven't thought about it much, but I guess that's the case.  At any rate, as you already know, a simple incandescent bulb or small resistor load solves the problem.  I'm glad that was added to gen 3 as I was tried of putting snubbers everywhere.

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Early in this thread a31ford talked about termination on the RS-485 network.  Let me say this about that.  First of all, the RS-485 specification requires a120 ohm terminator at each end of the network.

However the vast majority of lighting people get away without termination just fine.  Particularly for someone running only a few controllers on a relatively short network, you will get away without termination just fine.  Bear in mind that the spec allows 32 devices on the network with up to 4,000 feet of network cable, so most of us are running a relatively short network with few devices.  The other major factor is network speed.  As we get faster, proper termination does become more of an issue.  In other words, a network that worked fine at 56k speed and three controllers on 200 feet of cable, may not work as well without termination when you up the speed to 500k, added 14 new controllers, and 2,000 feet of additional cable.

With all that said, all three of my networks are terminated (including my Regular network that is about 120 feet long with one InputPup that is running at 56k).

 

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2 minutes ago, k6ccc said:

Early in this thread a31ford talked about termination on the RS-485 network.  Let me say this about that.  First of all, the RS-485 specification requires a120 ohm terminator at each end of the network.

However the vast majority of lighting people get away without termination just fine.  Particularly for someone running only a few controllers on a relatively short network, you will get away without termination just fine.  Bear in mind that the spec allows 32 devices on the network with up to 4,000 feet of network cable, so most of us are running a relatively short network with few devices.  The other major factor is network speed.  As we get faster, proper termination does become more of an issue.  In other words, a network that worked fine at 56k speed and three controllers on 200 feet of cable, may not work as well without termination when you up the speed to 500k, added 14 new controllers, and 2,000 feet of additional cable.

With all that said, all three of my networks are terminated (including my Regular network that is about 120 feet long with one InputPup that is running at 56k).

 

YA ! what he said ! 🎄

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Jim and Greg, thanks for re-enforcing this in my brain.  As I mentioned, I never had trouble in the 15+ years of doing this stuff, YET next year, I'll be running lines to the house next door that we got for Wife's mom.  It's going to be an added 500 feet run and a 3 more controllers.  As Murphy's Law will have it, I anticipate this problem, so I'm making notes for a termination to add. I presume these might be readily available to buy somewhere.  I hated making snubbers and this is just one more thing. 😣

Edited by Richard Hamilton
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If you go back to the original post I had where I showed those two little female and male CAT5 jacks you will see that in the very very last pair of pins which of course or four and five there is a 120 Ohm resistor and each one what I did after all of that was I actually put hot glue from hot glue gun over top of that to waterproof it they work great you just plug him into whatever unit it doesn't matter and of course if you were to make it into a cable or then you can never remember which cable has the resistor and which doesn't this way it's just a little adapter you plug the cable into the female and you plug the male into the board that's the end of the line done deal

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So what happened to code lady and hubby.   Problem fixed ?   or electrocuted ?  🙂

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Does anyone know if LOR included the Feed end 120ohm in their dongles.  (I made some RJ45 plugs with 1/4W 120ohm resistors. 1/4W leads will fit the contact crimp direct

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2 hours ago, TheDucks said:

Does anyone know if LOR included the Feed end 120ohm in their dongles.  (I made some RJ45 plugs with 1/4W 120ohm resistors. 1/4W leads will fit the contact crimp direct

Not to my knowledge.

 

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47 minutes ago, k6ccc said:

Not to my knowledge.

 

That is just wrong for all the single port dongles. I do security systems, they have a Terminator jumper that you remove if you drive a Y (2  lines, both terminated).

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I stand corrected.  I just measured my spare Red USB to RS-485 adapter, and sure enough, there is a 120 ohm termination across pins 4 & 5.

 

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On 12/9/2018 at 12:04 PM, Richard Hamilton said:

So what happened to code lady and hubby.   Problem fixed ?   or electrocuted ?  🙂

I'm still here & I haven't hung husband by his beard yet.  I had to take an unexpected quick trip out of town, and can you believe he didn't even have all the lights fixed when I got back.

I'm heading out to start firmware updates now which I hope goes smoothly, but also nothing does around here so I'll leave my rose colored glasses for the next time I ask if these pants make me look fat.

As far as I can tell it's pretty straight forward.

  • Download the latest version for each piece of hardware/controller.
  • Terminate a single controller (connect 1 controller to the computer)
  • Follow the dialog in the firmware tab of the HU to upload new firware. Careful not to interrupt the update/connection 
  • Tada

Am I oversimplifying this? 

Edit:  Are incremental updates required?  If existing version is 4.01 and current is 4.35 can I jump straight to 4.35 or do I have to run through all versioning?

Edited by codechick
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The firmware updates went well, everything is now running the latest version except...  on the lor16 "CTB16D" blue.  It's noted that if you're on version 4.40 or higher you cannot go back, so I opted to first upgrade from 4.01 to 4.30 to be safe, if something went bad, I could at least go back to one of many different versions between 4.01 & 4.30. Once the 4.30 upgrade completed, I did a refresh and then tried to upgrade to 4.40 and it was not happening so I left it at 4.30. 

Of course that's the only box that won't play during a sequence now, glorious! It's the com3 regular network, so I suppose it could still be a network issue.  This box runs half our regular led lights. It's showing fine in HU.

I finally got the two songs I had already sequenced to play, all.. wait no.... most of the pixels played (a ribbon controller that's refusing to power up now so I've just rerouted) the regular led tree and house trim on the other lor16 played.  They played fine multiple times, except the lor16 blue box I mentioned first, I could not get it to fire at all in a sequence.    Eventually when playing either song, the rest of the lights stop responding, with the exception of one Pixie16 tree, nothing has changed in HU or NP or in the sequence. 

Does that sound like a cabling issue? I do think it sound like a network issue, information isn't getting where it needs to go.  I'm not running my setup very far at all to think I need special terminators, the longest single run of cable is about 25' I'd say. Our son (IT kid) made all of our cables, and tested all the connections, but I did just find out that it's cat-6 rather than cat-5 but 6 is backwards compatible so it shouldn't be an issue.  However with the way things always work over here, we probably need a dog-9 cable instead. XD

Edited by codechick
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9 minutes ago, codechick said:

Our son (IT kid) made all of our cables, and tested all the connections, but I did just find out that it's cat-6 rather than cat-5 but 6 is backwards compatible so it shouldn't be an issue.

Cat-6 is fine, but one word of warning.  Cat-6 is much stiffer than Cat-5.  On some controllers, when the controller door is closed, the cable can't bend enough and will put a lot of stress on the RJ-45 connectors on the controller PC board.  This CAN result in the connector breaking loose from the PC board.  It depends on which controllers you have.

A common work-around to that is to put a short jumper of Cat-5 into the controller connector and connect the Cat-6 to that.  This product was made specifically for the purpose:

http://store.lightorama.com/rjwada.html

 

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I’m having similar issues and I want to make sure I understand the guidance correctly:

According to my HU, I have

1) 1xCTB16D (ver 4.40)

2) 3x16PC-G3

3) 2xCR150D

4) 2x CMB24D

5) 1xPixie8

I upgraded to S5 this year and am trying to get the enhanced network thing to work for my pixel tree as well. The question i want to clarify is:

Can I update my CTB16D’s firmware to make it work, or is the Gen 3 thing a hard wired aspect of it? 

If it’s not something I can fix, it sounds like I have to run 2 networks, but how do I do that? Do I plug in two separate USB cables using the dongle? I’m not completely clear on the physical nature of the wiring. 

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