MP3 Show Director Schedule Problem / Question

[cyberfix]

All,

I have the following setup:
6 LOR1602W controllers - All are 3 years or less in age, not sure of firmware at this moment, but have never had issues.
1 LOR1602MP3 controller - MP3 Director Firmware v4.20
1 iDMX1000 DMX controller - Running 4 DMX RGB floods
2 Cosmic Color Ribbons - Firmware v1.07 (beta)

I use the hardware utility in version 2.9.4 beta software to schedule my shows as follows:
Show 1 - Trigger 1 (Plays 5 sequences in the list), play once only
Show 2 - Trigger 2 (Plays 1 sequence), play once only
Show 3 - Scheduled 5:30PM to 12:30AM, every hour, one time only, animation filler sequence, 5 sequences selected
Show 4 - Scheduled 5:15PM to 12:05AM, continuously play show, 1 animation sequence
Show 5 - Scheduled 12:05AM to 03:00AM, continuously play show, 1 animation

All shows are programmed at 115.4 COM speed with lock step selected.

Problems that I am having:
1) Show seems to work on its own schedule. I had 1 start at 12:36PM approximately and there should not be one then. Another show started at 2AM or so. The lights did seem to go off at some point since they were off at 7AM.

2) I seem to have trouble with one of the CCRs getting stuck in a MACRO mode. It appears the pattern or colors are rights, but it has the animation sequence macro playing over it. Sometimes it will correct itself before the end of the song (I think). It seems to always happen in the first sequence after starting a show coming from the filler animation sequence. The CCRs are connected with CAT6 cable. One is connect to a iDMX1000 and the other is connected to the first CCR. The CCRs run in macro mode during animation sequences and 50 pixel manual mode during sequences.

3) Another issue I have with the CCR is on one sequence, I have all 50 pixels fading from one color to another very slowly. (say from red to green to blue to red, etc.) I then manually override every 3rd pixel set with yellow to show the beat to a song. The display shows all sorts of colors in the strips with yellow being somewhat sporadic on the timings. This is my first time working with CCRs, so I may be doing something wrong? I have the 50 channels setup as RGB channels and use the color pick tool to do fades.

4) I pressed trigger 2 and it played the sequence as expected, but then it launched the full show sequence. Trigger 1 is set to a full show sequence and Show 3 is scheduled for the same sequence hourly. I thought it would play the sequence from trigger 2 and then go back the scheduled hourly sequence?

I am not sure if all of the problems could all be related to the MP3 Director or not.

Clarifications:
I seem to always get myself confused on the hardware utility and I think I understand some of the caveats from searching the forums. Please correct and add other thoughts.

1) If I have several shows with overlapping time schedules, the lower shows will take precedence over conflicting times. So a show as show 3 might play 5 songs in a sequence and finish, then the show in show 4 would start a continuous animation if scheduled. Otherwise, show 5 would play if scheduled and so on.

2) If I press the trigger button, it should play its show sequence and return to the current scheduled show (not set to run continuously).

3) If I schedule a show from 5:15PM to 9:30PM and tell it to play hourly, then it will play at 6pm, 6pm, 8m, and 9pm. I want to make sure it will not do 5:15, 6:15, etc.

4) Is there a way to save shows defined in the hardware utility? It is really a pain to setup every show always. Is it safe to replace just shows that changed? For instance, if I change the sequence that is played in show 2, can I just write that updated show to the card or is it better to format/erase and start from scratch?

Any other thoughts?

I apologize for the lengthy post, but I need to sort this out before a party Saturday.

Thanks,
cyberfix

[Army Lights]

Well, I have some of the same questions as you do, albeit not as complicated because I only have one controller. The question about saving shows is a good one--I've been wondering that. I'd like to add this question though:

If I do a scheduled show from 5-11 pm, then I plug the card in at 10 pm, it does not turn on. I'm thinking it's because it basically sends a "Turn On!" command at 5pm and then a "Turn Off!" at 11 pm, INSTEAD of just saying "If it's between 5pm and 11pm, I'm ON."

So, I'm guessing at 5 PM tomorow, it will turn on. In the meantime, if someone would like to confirm or deny my theory, that would be great. If not, I will just wait until 5 PM tomorrow! If it doesn't turn on, then I must have done something else wrong!

Thanks guys!

[cyberfix]

Army Lights wrote:

Well, I have some of the same questions as you do, albeit not as complicated because I only have one controller. The question about saving shows is a good one--I've been wondering that. I'd like to add this question though:

If I do a scheduled show from 5-11 pm, then I plug the card in at 10 pm, it does not turn on. I'm thinking it's because it basically sends a "Turn On!" command at 5pm and then a "Turn Off!" at 11 pm, INSTEAD of just saying "If it's between 5pm and 11pm, I'm ON."

So, I'm guessing at 5 PM tomorow, it will turn on. In the meantime, if someone would like to confirm or deny my theory, that would be great. If not, I will just wait until 5 PM tomorrow! If it doesn't turn on, then I must have done something else wrong!

Thanks guys!

I think you might have something wrong as my show always starts as soon as I plug the card in, then it resumes the schedule. Of course this is minus my issues. For instance, mine is playing a show right now as I type and I have nothing scheduled for right now. This is very frustrating. I had no issues the last two years. In the past, my show or lights would come on when I inserted the card during the scheduled time. You might want to format your card and do it again.

[chewinggum2]

I am having the same problem My lights come on whenever they want. I have updated to latest firmware, believing this was the problem. Lights still come on whenever they want.

My show does run during scheduled time and shuts down fine, but then will restart at random. I have had to resort to manually inserting the sd card at the start and end of every night - quite a pain!

There must be a glitch somewhere. I thought the latest firmware was supposed to take care of this issue.

[cyberfix]

chewinggum2 wrote:

I am having the same problem My lights come on whenever they want. I have updated to latest firmware, believing this was the problem. Lights still come on whenever they want.

My show does run during scheduled time and shuts down fine, but then will restart at random. I have had to resort to manually inserting the sd card at the start and end of every night - quite a pain!

There must be a glitch somewhere. I thought the latest firmware was supposed to take care of this issue.

I watched the MP3 Director while my show was playing and noticed that the error indicator came on several times. This signifies that it was not able to keep up with the sequence and fell at least .1 seconds behind. Hopefully Dan and group will make a MP3 Director Plus (and give a discount to current owners to upgrade ) which will have more power to play complex shows and support wave files too. It is a great concept and I like the scheduling features it offers.

In light of the errors, I quickly switched everything to a spare laptop to run the show from the garage. I forgot just how painful the scheduling software is since I am used to the flexibility of the MP3 Director scheduler. I thought I had a similar schedule that will work, but now i have some issues with that. When the show is running, it goes very well, but the animation sequence is hit or miss on working. Most of the time everything will work, but some times the CCRs will not have their macro running and one other time various lights were out.

I have to admit that my CCRs do look great in the show now that they are actuallly working correctly instead of random issues from the MP3 director not being able to keep up.

So, I am on laptop for now with a few gremlins to work out. Are you using triggers in your show? I can't help but wonder if the triggers I had or the show timing falling behind had something to do with causing the MP3 Director to get off schedule or glitch.