Bad CCR Controller???

[Brandon Dodge]

I am having problems with one of my ccr controlers I just purchased about a month ago. The hardware utility will see it but will not control the ribbon (other controller works fine). I have swapped the controlers to test the ribbon and have updated to 1.7. It has only been used one other time for learning. Went to use them fo Halloween, but didn't work

Any ideas?

Send it back?

[aurickle]

There are a few things that are good to check.

1) Are both controllers configured the same in the hardware setup?

2) What happens if you plug the other ribbon into this controller? Does it stop working? If so, then the problem is with the controller. If not, then the problem is with the ribbon.

3) I assume you've double checked to ensure that all of your connections are solid?

4) Have you tried swapping the ethernet cable leading to the controller? It could be as simple as a bad cable.

5) Disconnect the problem controller from the rest of the network and plug just it into your computer. Do you still have problems? If so, you'll have ruled out network conflicts. If the problem goes away, then the issue lies somewhere in your network itself and not with the controller.

6) What happens if you plug it in while holding down the red reset button? If you don't get the test pattern, that's a good sign that there's a problem.

These aren't in any particular order, but you should test them all until you find the issue or at least narrow it down. I went through this with one of my own CCR's and in the end it did prove to be the controller. Once that was established, Dan had a replacement controller to me a few days later. But you don't want to go through the effort of an RMA without having conclusively established that the problem IS with the controller.

[Brandon Dodge]

Yea I haven't had any luck with these CCR's. I had one ribbion go bad and now the controller. They are replacing them both thank goodness. Now I am in the process of learning to program these things. Thanks for the reply I hope you are having good luck this year!

[aurickle]

I used SuperStar (the two ribbon license) for my CCR's this year and it really made things a snap. I did Instant Sequences each time and fiddled with the settings until I got a look I liked for the particular song.

Because I did the ribbon arches last, I already knew what each song looked like in the rest of my display. This allowed me to create effects in SuperStart that complemented the rest of the display.

After that, it was just a matter of exporting the sequence from SuperStar, opening it in S3 and converting the channels to RGB, after which I copied them into the main sequence.

Easy!

From my Halloween show I also know that the arches look 1000% better in the yard than in the S3 Vizualizer. SuperStar does a great job of letting you see what you're creating while the Vizualizer is really just a representation -- one that looks very muted compared to the true brightness of the ribbons. In truth, the colors in the real world are so bright that my video camera was having trouble getting the colors. They looked mostly white in the final video. But they looked awesome in the display.

I don't recommend using the CCR macro commands that are built into the ribbon's final channels. They're ok for simple stand-alone effects but they are not as precise as true sequencing. For example, if you use the same macro on two ribbons at the same time, you won't always have matching effects. The timing might end up being slightly off. The only way to avoid that is to either have different effects on each ribbon or to have true sequencing in the 50 RGB channels.

[Brandon Dodge]

Thank you for the info. I had used the superstar instant sequence and thoight about using that but i could not figure out to insert that file into my exhisting sequence. Do you know how to do so?

[aurickle]

After using Instant Sequence you need to export it. Be sure to include the .lms extension when typing the filename.

Now open it in S3. What you will see is all 150+ channels for each ribbon you sequenced, with red, green and blue on separate channels for each pixel.

Right-click on the channel name for the top-most channel and choose the option to convert to RGB. In the dialog box that opens, specify to do this for the next 50 channels. You'll see your channels change to have black backgrounds with the actual colors of the various effects in their places along the timeline.

If you have used SS for multiple ribbons, repeat this for the first channel of each additional controller.

Now open the sequence into which you are going to be copying the ribbons. Add new CCR controllers to your sequence if you don't already have them set up and make sure that they're RGB channels. At this point, move the CCR's to a new track that has no timings. The reason for this is that SS probably created the sequence with different timings than your sequence has. In order to for the copy/paste to work right you need the same timings for both the source and the destination. Because each track can have unique timings, this works around that problem.

Back in the sequence you imported from SS, right-click on any cell and select the row. Right-click again and copy timings. Return to the destination, right-click in any track and Paste Timings at 0:00.00. The timings in the track will now be identical to what you got from SuperStar, but the rest of your channels are unaffected because they're still in their original track.

Return to the SuperStar sequence and select all the RGB channels for your first CCR. Just drag a selection box all the way down. Right-click within your selection and choose to Select Rows. You now have the entire sequence selected for that ribbon. Right-click again and Copy.

Return to the destination sequence. Right-click in the first cell for the first CCR channel and Paste.

Done!

Repeat the copy and paste for any additional CCR's.

It's actually really fast and easy when you get the hang of it.

[Brandon Dodge]

Wow...thanks for the help. I think I got lucky and the timings were the same. I attatched the lms file to see if you think it is. Seems to play at the same time. I was able to select copy timings but would not let me past timing so i tried to copy all and paste it into the begining of the sequence and it seemed to work...I think. It is hard to tell without hooking up the ccrs and watching it all together. Now I need to learn about using the ccr tool in the visualizer to watch them there.

[Brandon Dodge]

Wow...thanks for the help. I think I got lucky and the timings were the same. I attatched the lms file to see if you think it is. Seems to play at the same time. I was able to select copy timings but would not let me past timing so i tried to copy all and paste it into the begining of the sequence and it seemed to work...I think. It is hard to tell without hooking up the ccrs and watching it all together. Now I need to learn about using the ccr tool in the visualizer to watch them there.

[sasmuse]

Just wondering if you tried inserting the ccr programming as a subsequence? That's what I'm currently doing. When I tested it looked fine. Should I be concerned?

thanks,
Sally

PS I haven't played with the visualizer yet.

[Brandon Dodge]

I think you should be okay. I didnt use a sub sequence. All I did was use the instant sequence in Super Star then exported and opened it into S3 and simply used copy and paste methods as described before by aurickle.
As far as the visualizer I did get my arches to show up great. There is a place to download fixtures on the forum just dont remember were they are but a search will find them. I used jacks arch because I am making two arches out of one.

Good Luck!