DrHudd Posted December 9, 2010 Share Posted December 9, 2010 Hello All,I have a very strange problem with 1 sequence. I have a sequence that I have been modifying for 3 years and it has worked flawlessly, even at the beginning of this season. I just noticed last night that in the last couple of seconds of the song/sequence the lights "freeeze" and the music continues.I deleted the light commands in the last few seconds ran the sequence and all seemed OK. I reentered the commands on the grid and the lights stopped again. I then deleted all the commands except for a couple of channels. All channels worked as programmed. I then started adding additional channels. As I added channels they started locking up. It doesn't matter which channels, it appears to be the number of channels added that causes the "locking up".I know it is the last 5 seconds of a song, but this is really bugging me. Does anyone have any way to "fix" or troubleshoot the problem. I spend 2 hours after my show was over trying different configurations of commands, number of channels, etc. to no avail. Any help would be appreciated.DrHudd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJ Hvasta Posted December 10, 2010 Share Posted December 10, 2010 you've isolated it to the specific timeframe (last 5 secs), try this to see if its a specific channel in the controller.. disable a single channel and replay, see if you can isolate it to a particular channel in the last 5 seconds, if it plays, re-enable the channel, go to the next channel, disable.. and so on... Youd be able to see if its an event (shimmer, twinkle, fade) thats causing it in that specific channel... thats what I would try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrHudd Posted December 10, 2010 Author Share Posted December 10, 2010 Thank you for your suggestions. I tried to isolate for 2 hours the night it happened. I could choose ANY channels less than 10 and it would play fine, once I increased the number of channels above 10 it would start messing up.I finally gave up and let it run the next night. I didn't change anything and then tonight it started working just fine.Don't know why it stopped, don't know why it started, but it did.I believe that if something happens and you can't isolate it or fix it, it will happen again. Hope not, but don't know why it wouldn't since I don't know why it happened in the first place.Thanks again for your reply,DrHudd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrHudd Posted December 12, 2010 Author Share Posted December 12, 2010 OK, now a second song is exhibiting the same behavior, while the first song is working properly.I cannot find any rhyme or reason for this behavior. Again it is the last few seconds of the song where none of the 11 controllers controls any lights. I'm running the show through an LOR1602MP3, not running it with a computer.Both songs are in the same "show" on the DC-MP3 SD card. Both run fine, until the last few seconds of the second song. Then the music continues to play and the lights do not respond. This same behavior happened a couple of days ago on the first song.If I reduce the number of channels controlled to less than 10 those channels will work fine. It doesn't matter which channels I choose, they will work fine. As I add more channels to be controlled (it doesn't matter which channels I add) and I reach somewhere around 20 channels, the channels will not work but the music continues.I don't know what I did to fix the first song, but I will try saving the second song as a different name and reselect the audio file and see if any of that will fix.Any input will be appreciated.DrHudd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob Posted December 14, 2010 Share Posted December 14, 2010 I don't know much about the hardware, so please take this with a grain of salt, but I did have a problem a while back with one of my controllers (an MP3 Director) where the lights would temporarily freeze at a certain spot on certain songs, while the music continued. Upgrading the firmware got rid of the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrHudd Posted December 14, 2010 Author Share Posted December 14, 2010 This is really bugging me.I changed a few things on a song and placed ONLY that song on the SD card. Plugged it into the DCMP3 and the lights stopped responding in the last few seconds of the song. I let the song play a couple of times through and it stopped at the exact point each time.I read this thread to see if there was any further ideas and then reuploaded the latest firmware. I updated the DCMP3 and ALL my controllers to the latest firmware before the season began.I plugged in the SD card again and had the same operation (the lights stopped responding but the music continued).I then opened the sequence and went to an empty cell after the last light command but before the end of the song. I turned on that cell and then turned off that cell and resaved the music animation file. I then placed it back on the SD card and plugged it into the DCMP3.The song played JUST FINE. All lights worked all the way through the song. The ONLY thing that was done to the file was a single random cell was turned on and then off, just to get the save command to show up, and then re-saved.I really don't understand why this is happening on different songs. Since re-saving the file "fixed" the problem, I don't think it is related to the DCMP3 or any of the controllers because ALL of the controllers behave the same (lights don't respond) and nothing changed on the controllers or DCMP3 between the incorrect operation and correct operation. I have a mixture of LOR1602W's and CTB16PC's.It almost has to be within the file, sequence editor v.2.8.12advanced, or hardware utility software v.2.8.12advanced.While writing this response, I just noticed that there is new software available. I'll download and save my sequence with the new software and see if the problem continues.Thanks for listening and any ideas.DrHudd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrHudd Posted December 16, 2010 Author Share Posted December 16, 2010 I don't think I have found the root cause of the problem, but it appears to have gone away.After upgrading to the new software I had a major problem. My show would only play from the SD card one time. I had to remove the SD card from the Show Director and reinsert it to get the show to run again. I spent all night Wednesday removing and reinserting the card. There were so may cars outside I couldn't take time to troubleshoot. The show would stop after the last sequence and not start the show over. At one slow point in the number of cars outside, I recopied the show to the SD card with the last sequence left out.The show ran fine after that. The problem was with my animation only sequence. I went to the end of the sequence and turned on one random cell and then turned it off (just to get the "save" to work) and saved the sequence. Then in another lull in the attendance, I copied the show to the SD card with all the sequences. It appeared to run fine, except the audio sounded like it would speed up and then slow down. The audio and light actions were getting farther and farther apart. Then the audio would get "skips" in it and at one point the lights stopped all together.I removed the SD card and tried again to no avail. Same activity, same problems. Luckly last year I located a Lexar SD card at a local store and bought it for a spare. I opened it and copied the show to the new SD card and all worked PERFECTLY.Tonight the show worked flawlessly. The old SD card appears to be fine. It stores files, etc. it just won't run LOR. I purchased another SD card today as another spare. It is a SanDisk brand 2GB card. It also appears to work fine. I'm not sure the problem was COMPLETELY the fault of the SD card, but it appears to be a big contributing factor.I have tried to reformat the old SD card and it doesn't help. I even went into a DOS window and formatted it there. It formatted it to FAT with 4096 bytes in each allocation unit and 16 bits in each FAT entry.This is a 256MB SD card I got from LOR. Does anyone know a way to salvage this card, or should I just chalk it up as a gonner?Thanks for any advice.DrHudd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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