Off command appears to be sent to all channels even when turn used lights off at end is not checked

[jeffl]

I have a problem where by my FM sign is turned off at the beginning of a certain number of sequences.

If I remove all the programming (turn off all the cells except the sign) from the sequence and run it as part of the musical section of the show everything works normal. I have run the verify utility and the channels are not duplicated.

At first I thought this was a channel sticking issue but now it appears that a "global" off is sent to everything at the start of these sequences. The crazy thing is it's not all of them.

[Don]

The only time a global off command is sent is if you have "Turn of used lights at the end of each sequence" checked.

If that box is not checked (in the Show Editor) and the sign is still turning off, you'll want to look at the sequences that plays just *before* the sign went off. Usually, there will be an off command at the very end of the sequence that is causing it.

[jeffl]

After every test known to man I finally found a bent pin on the USB485B adapter. The far right pin ( I think brown wire) on connector one was out of it's slot and bent. Luckily for me I had an extra and was able to swap it out. I ran a test today and it appears to be solid. I'm hoping for a good nights sleep tonight.

[jeffl]

Spoke too soon. It's back. Lights off at the beginning of the sequence and sticking channels during.

I don't know what to think of next.

[Guest wbottomley]

Reset the boards.

[jeffl]

I'm going to do that tomorrow. I have about 35 deployed. I'm not sure if I should do them all or only the suspicious one.

Would it hut to do them all? Also, does it do a reset on them when firmware is upgraded?

[JBullard]

jeffl wrote:

I'm going to do that tomorrow. I have about 35 deployed. I'm not sure if I should do them all or only the suspicious one.

Would it hut to do them all? Also, does it do a reset on them when firmware is upgraded?

I would do them all

I always do a hardware reset after updating the firmware. only takes another minute or so per box.

(yeah I know, with 35 boxes, another 30 minutes or so)

[jeffl]

Reset all controllers. No change as I'm still loosing my sign and donation box.

The consistent thing is it only happens on sequences where there is a ton of activity right at the start of the sequences.

It's like the burst of activity interrupts the stream. I'm going to have to tame them down and see if I can get it to quit.

[jeffl]

Yes I have tried it both ways. Both in (Background, turn lights off at end) and in the (sequence, leave lights on at end).

Both behave the same. When my voice overs and announcements start,the fm sign and donation box go off/on and I see channels stick. Sometimes for just a second and sometimes for 20 seconds.

They never do it during my normal songs. The difference is my announcements this year is I have heavy animation and heavy light usage from 0 seconds to the end.

The lights go nutz and my power meter screams with joy.

If I could just keep my sign, donation box on while this happens.

The stickies also happen during these times. Luckily it only drives me crazy and most people don't notice.

I'm trying to narrow it down but I can only pinpoint one area of the display where the stickies happen.

More troubleshooting tomorrow.

[Steven]

I just had the same thing happen tonight. I have an "always on" channel that I have in a background sequence. I also have the "Turn used lights off" box un-checked, and I have several channels that I leave at the same intensity at the start and end of all my sequences.

I thought it was a problem with the ELL link, but tonight it started happening at the beginning of some sequences, seemingly at random.

What happened is that all channels turned off between some sequences. I only noticed because I was watching the show - the channels turned right on again when the next sequence started (and the background sequence looped back to the beginning).

Fortunately, this year I have my radio and speakers controlled separately (using the parallel port, which I wrote about in a different thread).

I unloaded the LOR control panel and restarted the show, and the problem seems to have gone away. This, and that it only happens between sequences, tells me it's a bug in the show player, but I don't know how to reproduce it.

[jeffl]

I'm hoping the LOR team comes back with some ideas of things to try.

[bob]

One possibility: If the channel is present in a sequence, it is sent a command at time zero. This is true even if the channel is off at time zero - in that case, it is sent an "off" command at that time. If you're not expecting this, it could seem strange.

Another possibility: Perhaps the sequence is taking long enough to load that the comm heartbeat is interrupted, which would (after a long enough amount of time) lead the controllers to shut off the lights. In this case, consider using the "Sequences are loaded before any are played" option when setting up the show (it's available in the Show Editor, by pushing the "Options" button).

[Steven]

bob wrote:

Perhaps the sequence is taking long enough to load that the comm heartbeat is interrupted, which would (after a long enough amount of time) lead the controllers to shut off the lights.

This sounds like the most likely possibility. The show computer is several years old, and the problem happened the first time it played this sequence.

Perhaps a defrag of the disk will make it load faster.

How often is the heartbeat sent? How long will the controllers wait until the lights are shut off? How about allowing this time to be changed in the next firmware version?

[jeffl]

I pulled out my laptop from last year with XP and S2 2.6 and the show runs flawless. After this I then downgraded the desktop I'm having troubles with from Windows 7/ S2 2.6 to XP/ S2 2.6 and here is what I found.

After rebuilding the machine I forgot to turn off system sounds. Once I started the show and it hit the second voice over (one of many that causes problems) I heard the USB connect/disconnect sound. Somehow the USB disconnected and reconnected but the lights were only out on the background items that I could tell.

I have come to the conclusion I have a PC hardware problem. After searching the website of the MB vendor I found a BIOS update that refers to system instability when USB device was unplugged. Sounds close enough to my problem.

Based on this I updated the BIOS and removed the USB wireless keyboard and mouse, USB card reader and PCI USB card. I then replaced with a standard USB keyboard and mouse.

I'll run the show on this computer after my normal show is done tonight and see what happens. Either way I can say it's my hardware no matter how crazy it is that only my voice over sequences cause the problem and not my normal songs.

[bob]

How often is the heartbeat sent?

There's no strict answer to that, but under normal conditions at least a couple times a second.

How long will the controllers wait until the lights are shut off?

I don't know if all controllers or all versions of the firmware react the same way with respect to this, but at least for the controller I just tried it out on, a few seconds.

How about allowing this time to be changed in the next firmware version?

I would suggest sending suggestions like this to wishlist@lightorama.com.

[jeffl]

I updated the BIOS and ran a test for an hour last night and everything worked perfect.

Tonight it ran four about 45 minutes before it started sticking. Time to evaluate another machine.

[Steven]

I was looking at the status log tonight and may have found the cause. It showed "Ending Sequence", then "Starting Sequence", then there was a pregnant pause (which caused all the controllers to lose the heartbeat) before the sequence actually starts.

I was thinking of why this would happen, and then it hit me - I'm using RDS.

I run a BAT file as a Windows command that puts the name of the song in the "Now Playing.txt" file, which is monitored by MiniRDS. I know that MiniRDS drives the serial port control pins with the IIC protocol, which requires precise timing. I suspect that the miniRDS software is taking over the whole computer for a few seconds, making the show player unable to send the heartbeats.

So, what to do? I'll try lowering the priority of the MiniRDS process, but I don't have high hopes. If all else fails, I could just give up on RDS, it's not that important.

Being able to configure the heartbeat timeout in the controllers would also solve the problem.

[jeffl]

New motherboard arrived. I loaded it up with 2.9.4, started the show and sure enough, the first voice over starts and all the lights went off including the background lights. As the sequence kept running channels were sticking like crazy.

The motherboard I have tried are:

ECS G31T-M7
BIOSTAR G41M7

The only difference between the two is they both have the chip set listed below. My thought is there is an issues with something with this chip set and how the FTDI driver works with it. I am using the latest FTDI driver certified for Windows 7. I have also tried XP on the ESC board and it also failed so I know its something with the motherboard.

Intel ICH7 chip set

This is getting expensive trying to figure out what to do with motherboards that run well except for running shows.

[JonB256]

Either way I can say it's my hardware no matter how crazy it is that only my voice over sequences cause the problem and not my normal songs.

Have you converted the voiceover sound files to WAV? If not, I'd try it.

[jeffl]

JonB256 wrote:

Either way I can say it's my hardware no matter how crazy it is that only my voice over sequences cause the problem and not my normal songs.

Have you converted the voiceover sound files to WAV? If not, I'd try it.

Yes. I have tried that. No changes.