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Possessed Lights


morganinaboat

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Light show was working fine for 10 nights then all of a sudden it goes haywire. LOR software is only recognizing 2 out of 10 boxes. Checked all cables and all seem fine. Lights themselves are spastic and trying to turn on and off randomly. It's like the worst light show sequence in America. HELP PLEASE SUggestions? Anyone else have this happen? We've turned EVERYTHING off and reset it all. Nothing works.

Just found out that we attempted to reset the LOR boxes with the turn dials to 00 power on 10 seconds power off and reset dials, but that made things worse apparently.

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I had 1 controller out of 13 loose its idenity and the lights went crazy on it.I had to reassign it its number and it has worked fine since then.

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are all your RED status LED's steady? or are some not even blinking?

If not blinking, perhaps they have gotten wet (rain or condensation) and they will need to be dried out.

I took mine in and put a blow dryer on them while plugged in until they started blinking again.

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morganinaboat wrote:

! box has a solid LED indicator and the others are just blinking.

sounds like a CAT5 cable has come loose...
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morganinaboat wrote:

We've remvoed and reconnected all CAT 5 cables. Will try again. Thanks for the help. Wife is panicking...

try a different cable..they have been known to go bad...

if you have Controller 1 with a steady LED...and the next Controller (IE 2) is just blinking, it is probably that cable from 1 to 2

that will cause all the other Controllers not to communicate with your PC
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Tried different cables. At this point, i am just trying to get the 1 box immediately downstream from the one (and only) recognized box to go solid. Changed out cables and nothing works...still blinking LED>

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Ok, here's the verdict...one of the cat 5 recepticals in the lead box was damaged somehow. Must have had a cord yanked and it broke the solder points inside the box. Replaced the box entirely with a spare and we're back online and in business. THANK YOU ALL for the suggestions. Just had to have dinner and take a break and come back at it to solve.

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I have had a couple of cables pulled and pulled the connectors part way off the board and have found that if the wires in the connector are pulled up even a little bit I might as well change it out or things go haywire. I did just experience a poor quality CAT 5 cable that caused lights to come on when they should not have been on. Replace the cable and all is well.

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Glad you got it working. It should really be stressed more often here that you HAVE to use a strain relief on the comm cables or you're flirting with disaster. Many of us (myself included) have learned this the hard way, by having to replace the jack on the board after the cable gets tripped over or the like.

The easiest way to fix the issue is to simply zip-tie the comm cable to one of the power cords either just inside or just outside the controller. Also allow enough slack on the cable inside the box so if a particularly strong jerk happens that causes it to slide slightly through the zip-tie, you're still good.

You shouldn't have any interference issues with that tiny point of contact between power and comm.

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Guest Don Gillespie

Tim Fischer wrote:

Glad you got it working. It should really be stressed more often here that you HAVE to use a strain relief on the comm cables or you're flirting with disaster. Many of us (myself included) have learned this the hard way, by having to replace the jack on the board after the cable gets tripped over or the like.

The easiest way to fix the issue is to simply zip-tie the comm cable to one of the power cords either just inside or just outside the controller. Also allow enough slack on the cable inside the box so if a particularly strong jerk happens that causes it to slide slightly through the zip-tie, you're still good.

You shouldn't have any interference issues with that tiny point of contact between power and comm.


What great bit of info I now am going to make sure that the cat5 cable is zip tied before I go any further with my displays

Thanks for the heads up Tim
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