Max-Paul Posted November 20, 2012 Posted November 20, 2012 Well for the past 3 yrs I have had no problems at all with my sequences. Well the odds caught up with me this year. The problem is 7 of my 8 songs I turn on what I will call my perimeter light string attache to my candycanes. On the 8th song I use this light string as a voice, which worked perfectly. I have to give the assist to my wife saying something that got me thinking. So, I took one of the sequences that was not working right and delayed the time when the full ON command is given. Went from 00:00.00 to 00:00.5 (MM:SS.ss). Looks like to many channels must be, being turned on at the same instant. And for what ever reason the controller was not seeing that the 16th channels was commanded to turn on. And just delaying it for a half of a second was enough for the network to become clear so that the command could be sent in the clear.So, if something is not turning on like it should. And it is being turned on at zero time. Try backing it off a few tenths of a second and see if starts to work properly.
LOR Staff Posted November 20, 2012 Posted November 20, 2012 In order to get everything into a consistent state, at time 0 of a sequence we send reset commands to every channel defined. What can happen is that your ON commands can get inter-mingled with these resets.In order to reduce network congestion, we 'combine' commands for a single channel. Basically, as the com buffer fills, we defer sending commands and instead track their state internally until there is room once again on the buffer.Depending on the order that the commands come into the process that actually sends the data, your ON command could get there first, followed by the reset. Since the reset is last, it wins. Remember, the software does not guarantee what order channels are sent.
George Simmons Posted November 20, 2012 Posted November 20, 2012 So, if something is not turning on like it should. And it is being turned on at zero time. Try backing it off a few tenths of a second and see if starts to work properly. A long time ago I quit starting sequences at zero time to avoid this issue. Now it's just a habit when I convert audio to 128 CBR I also add half a second of silence to the beginning of the audio file. No one ever notices and it allows the reset commands and then my lighting commands to both go out unmolested. 1
Max-Paul Posted November 20, 2012 Author Posted November 20, 2012 Well looks like I missed that some how for the past 3 years. I also having some other problems it seems. I ran out of bulk Cat5 cable and bought a premade 50' cable at Wally world. On the way home tonight I bought 100' bulk cable cause I feared that there might be some problems. Well tonight I connected all of the cables leading from show computer to controllers. Good Grief found 19 then 20 items. Although I only have 12. So, I made a new 35' cable and replaced the Wally World cable and now down to just 1 unknown item. all of the 12 items that I DO have are listed just fine. This is causing a segment in my arches (4) to freeze now and then. And I have 1 RGWht tree that is either stuck on as red or green.I have already put a 120 ohm terminating resistor on the last controller. Looks like I will need to swap a few more Cat5 cables to see if I have one that is just not quite up to snuff. Thank God my show computer and MBB transmitter is still working ok. Oh well looks like I have had beginners luck for the past 3 years.
George Simmons Posted November 21, 2012 Posted November 21, 2012 Uh - oh... derailing his own thread... gonna get yourself put in time out if you keep that up. I should complain to admin...
Max-Paul Posted November 21, 2012 Author Posted November 21, 2012 LOL, With friends like you, I'm in deep do-do. Well in that case I best start something in hardware. Interesting journey I have taken over the past few days. But I have my solution. So, if you want to see it, going to have to go over to the general hardware area.
jeffl Posted November 21, 2012 Posted November 21, 2012 I have found it's just not normal to not have issues. How else would be learn. On my sixth year now and every year something like this bites me. This year is was not using compressed sequences, not loading sequences before playing and having windows command in sequences causing them to load slow.And a word for the wise about cables. I bought a cheap 100' cable off eBay last year. Ran it one evening and that night a rabbit chewed clean through it. The good news is I found out the cable had 0 twisted pairs.I have cables I bought from LOR years ago that you can see the twisted pairs in and I dream of getting more like them.
CKSedg Posted December 8, 2012 Posted December 8, 2012 I hope someone can help me: I am running v3.8.0 Advanced on a computer with Windows XP. Everything is up and running great (thank goodness). I decided to add a batch file to the Windows Shell Command within each sequence, to send an RDS message to my transmitter. When I enter the message in the sequence, and hit enter, I get the following error message:Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime LibraryRuntime Error!Program: C:\Program Files'Light-O-Rama\LORSequenceEditor.exeThis application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.Please contact the application's support team for more information.Anyone have any ideas? I have already entered a help ticket, but thought I would ask all of you gurus!Thanks.
Greg Young Posted December 12, 2012 Posted December 12, 2012 Are you simply calling the batch file from the shell command? Please post an example of your command line for a sequence.
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