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Disapointed in playback of new Tree


Jack

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I finally got my installation problems worked out with the help from Matt from LOR on my new 16D Pixie Tree 100 nodes per string with 1 fold (50 up and 50 down),  did some trial runs and tweaked the sequences.

Last night  I watched my new tree from the street for the first time and lets say I'm not happy!!!

Solids, Bars moving up / down, snowflakes, most of the effects seam to be ok, however Spirals are a different matter. The fatter/ wider ones don't look to bad but when you start to use the narrow  and maybe slower rotation you notice the issues.

 They just don't hold together they move in chunks or step up the tree in sections and seem to be worse when it turns one direction verse the other. FYI, The playback preview on my computer looks great

SO, here are some questions that I have come up with:

1. What's the limits of thinness and rotation speed to look good?

2. does one direction work better than the other?

3. Do I have an comm. issue, I use cat 5 cable between all devices, this tree is the 5th. device in the chain (175ft away) from my g3 mp3 Director that runs the show.

4. would it help if I split the run and moved the tree to use the 2nd network from the Director, (still would be 150ft away) don't know what's involved in this option.

5. number 1 strand should be on the back side or away from the street view, correct?

6. how many devices / controllers can you put in a daisy chain and still work properly?

Thanks,

Jack

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Jack, I see that Matt helped you via the Help Desk, but I’m going to address parts of 3, 4, & 6 for you.  LOR networking uses the RS-485 electrical standard which allows up to 4,000 feet of network cable, and up to 32 devices on the network. So you are well within both limits.  Because of the nature of the LOR protocol, there is not a specific hard limit to the number of channels that can be controlled on a single network.  Back in the old days when 115k speed was as fast as it got, the general recommendation was about six CCRs or 900 channels on a network.  Now we have 500k speed which increases that by several times, and Enhanced networking which also increases the capacity.  We also have 1000k speed, but so far very few devices support that speed.  As I recall at Christmas Expo 2017, the LOR exhibit ran 7,200 channels on a single high speed Enhanced network.  Also note that the RS-485 specification also requires termination at both ends of the network.  Most Christmas lighting people don’t bother with termination, and because our networks are generally far shorter and have far fewer devices than allowed, we get away without termination.  Personally, all three networks are properly terminated.

You said you have a Pixie 16 with 100 nodes per string.  Assuming that there are 16 strings, that’s 1,600 nodes.  With that number, the Pixie should be on a 500k Enhanced network.  I don’t use a Director, so I can’t answer any specifics about them, but I recall that the G3 mp3 does support two networks and high speed enhanced networking .

Hope that helped your understanding.

 

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Jim,

Between the Help Desk, Matt & yourself I've got the answers.

I did bump the speed up to 500K and I' running it on a single Enhanced network , that took care of my issues.

I have found that each time I setup a show to the SD card the program reverts to 57.6k as the default,  it would be nice if it would stay where you set it because, I KNOW that it will catch me next year!!!!

From what I remembered the number of controllers and cat 5, length is well under the max and you confirmed.

MERRY HO HO ho,

Jack

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