Guest guest Posted November 20, 2006 Posted November 20, 2006 I have (4) CTB16D units built from kits. Everything has gone well untill now.As I built each unit I tested each individually. For Halloween I used 1 for a cool lightning effect and everyone was impressed. Now for the main attraction Christmas and 64 channels. I have addressed each of the four units 1,2,3,4 and have used the Hardware utility to see them all with the refresh button. It has found all four units.However the only controller I can turn lights on with is #4. I have selected each of the four controllers and tried them one at a time. # 4 is the one I used at Halloween. Did I miss some kind of setup on #1,2,3?I'm kind of bummed out that I can't figure this out. Please help.ThanksGary Slater
Guest guest Posted November 20, 2006 Posted November 20, 2006 This sounds like a configuration issue. The fact that you can see all 4 in the hardware utility is a good thing.When you say all 4 in the Hardware Utility were the all daisy chained together?What are you using to control the lights when only unit 4 is responding?
Guest guest Posted November 20, 2006 Posted November 20, 2006 DanThat was Quick!I was using the Hardware utility to turn the lights on. I tried unit 1 then 2 then 3 and only 4 is working. yes they are daisy chained together. 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 . I just thought of something is there a terminating resistor or jumper I missed?
Guest guest Posted November 20, 2006 Posted November 20, 2006 Toymakr000 wrote: DanThat was Quick!I was using the Hardware utility to turn the lights on. I tried unit 1 then 2 then 3 and only 4 is working. yes they are daisy chained together. 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 . I just thought of something is there a terminating resistor or jumper I missed?We don't really need a terminating resistor like DMX uses... The fact that they show up in the list indicates that you do have communication. Do the LEDs stay steady on all four units.Stop the Hardware Utilty and then start it again. Do not click refresh. Rather just to the right of the refresh button where it says 'select unit' click in that box and type in 01. Then try to control the lights on that unit
Guest guest Posted November 20, 2006 Posted November 20, 2006 The led's stay on solid on all four controllers. I restarted the hardware utility. Right now unit 01 has no lights attached. So I tried typing in 02 and selected ON effect and tried to resend cmd several times. Still no lights. Then I pressed refresh and all four units were found and I selected 02 and selected ON effect and tried to resend cmd several times. Still no lights.
Guest guest Posted November 20, 2006 Posted November 20, 2006 HummmmmThe units know there ID numbers but do not respond to lighting commands. This is very uncommon.Try a reset on the controller. (power off, set unit id to 00, power on for a few seconds then power off and set the unit ID back to the original value. )...
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2006 Posted November 21, 2006 I got the evil eye around 11:00 so I stopped playing around with the lights.I got into bed started falling asleep when the same idea hit me. Reboot, Reboot, Reboot. I listened to it all night as I slept, but now I'm at work and can't . I'm going to do that when I get home.I was also wondering in the sequence editor can I make the llights actually work from the sequence editor alone with the check on the control lights selector? I don't think that works either. For Halloween the only way I could get the lights to work was set up a show then schedule it.
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2006 Posted November 21, 2006 Yes you should be able to control the lights using the sequence editor, with the full version of the software, the demo doesn't control the lights. Assuming you have the channel settings configured of course.
Guest guest Posted November 21, 2006 Posted November 21, 2006 Toymakr000 wrote: I was also wondering in the sequence editor can I make the llights actually work from the sequence editor alone with the check on the control lights selector? I don't think that works either. For Halloween the only way I could get the lights to work was set up a show then schedule it.Yes Gary,You can run the lights playing the sequence editor making sure you checked the "control lights" selector. This will make it easier checking to see what controllers will work while playing that one sequence.You might want to check your channel config on each channel of the sequence while you're doing that just to make sure everything is correct.Hope that helps,Tom
Guest guest Posted November 22, 2006 Posted November 22, 2006 Dan/everyone, Thanks for the help. I now have 4 controllers playing well togther and controlling lights WOOOOOO HOOOOOOO! Last night I was able to reboot everything which allowed 3 of the 4 controllers to work properly. The fourth had a missed solder joint on the second half of the board, causing the lights I had plugged in "of course the channels that didn't work" to not work but the comms to work properly.Lesson learned when bench testing use both sets of power supply terminals andactually load test with more than a 7 watt bulb on each channel. Even with a missed solder joint this thing worked fine during test. However after putting on the big heatsink, mounting it in the box and wiring everything up caused the circuit to open.I think the next set of controllers I build I will have someone else check my work.Thanks for all your helpGary Slater aka. Toymaker
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