griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 Ok, I've read through a ton of stuff trying to solve the problem I'm having and now I'm afraid I'm getting even more confused. Let me take a breath and start from the beginning...... 1. I purchased a flood light kit, ActiDongle, and Programmer cable from Holiday Coro2. I built the flood and used the programming cable/software to program the light (gave it addresses 101, 102, 103)3. So far, so good4. Followed the instructions to get DMX and LOR working together as follows:5. Connected ActiDongle to laptop and Flood to ActiDongle (power supply is in line and injecting power over CAT 5 per Holiday Coro "how to" video)6. Plugged LOR adapter in and opened LOR S3 (Advanced version 3.4) - network preferences chose the Entech Pro adapter and associated protocol7. Created an RGB channel and set DMX as device type and Circuit at 101, 102, 1038. Opened LOR control panel and made sure it's Enabled9. LOR listener is working10. Added effects for RGB light, made sure "Control Lights" was selected and ran.................nothing My brain is fried......is there something simple I'm missing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis Cherry Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 Use RAW DMX and not Entec Pro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 I'm really new to this, so please excuse my stupidity. Do you have a link to the Raw DMX you refer to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CLD Kevin Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 Use RAW DMX and not Entec Pro. I may be getting schooled here too….I have not used the AntiDongle, but HC website does state its “Compatible with Enttec Pro”. So should Enttec Pro be the correct choice and not RawDMX like Enttec Open or similar? You want it to use the processor in the device and not the PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 Ok, I get what you mean. Anyway, I changed the protocol to RAW DMX, but still nothing.........I've read a lot of posts that seem to point to the HC dongle as the culprit and many people recommend using the LOR dongle. I would try that, but I only have one LOR dongle and (of course) I need it for LOR to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveMaris Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 Did you try unloading LOR and then reloading it after making your setting changes? Also under the LOR tab in Network preferences, be sure to select none. If you have your LOR dongle selected, the other dongle will not work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 Did you try unloading LOR and then reloading it after making your setting changes? Also under the LOR tab in Network preferences, be sure to select none. If you have your LOR dongle selected, the other dongle will not work. Arrgh!! As soon as I changed my LOR network to none, it worked! Thank you so much! Now, this brings up my next stupid question........How will I get my LOR controllers and DMX to work at the same time if the LOR network is none? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveMaris Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 (edited) Good deal You will need to setup two networks, One for each, unless you are under 512 channels in which case you can run the LOR boards in DMX and just use the single dongle. Edited February 17, 2013 by SteveMaris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 So in LOR, under Regular Network, I had COM 5. This is what I removed to make the DMX start working. My DMX universe is 1. Do I need to change the DMX universe to 2 and set my LOR back to COM 5? Thanks so much for your help with this. I just completed my first "season" with LOR and decided I needed to add DMX to the mix, so there is a ton I don't know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveMaris Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 (edited) I am not 100% on this, but I think you leave the LOR network alone. You set up a dmx network as universe 1. The reason it was not working is because you did not have the LOR dongle plugged into the usb. If you plug in the LOR and the other you can then go back to network preferences and turn LOR back on, and then run both on the sequence editor and have it control lights. If you don't want two cat 5's coming off the show computer, you could set up everything to run on DMX and only use the one dongle. That would require changing the way you set up the numbering on the LOR boards and also require a "cross over" cat 5 cable. Edited February 17, 2013 by SteveMaris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 I reset my LOR network back to COM 5 (as it originally was) and now the flood on the DMX side does not work. So, it definitely seems to be an issue with the two devices. Maybe taking a step back from here will help: On my computer, I have the LOR dongle plugged in and setup on COM5 for my LOR network. This worked great all year, so I know it works. Now on the DMX side, I have the ActiDongle connected to another USB port, which is then connected to the RGB flood light. It's set up as DMX universe #1 and the addresses are 101, 102, 103 I could not get the flood to work until I changed the COM5 setting under LOR networks to none. As soon as I change it back, the flood quits working. I appreciate your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan C Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 You cannot have two usb dongles working as "com5". You will need to change one of them to an unused com port. Once you have done this, you should be able to use both. If you go into Device Manager (from Control Panel), with only the dongle you want to change connected, you should be able to find it in the hardware list. One of the options should allow you to change the com port number. Regards, Alan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 Looking back, I don't think I was very clear on that variable. My LOR dongle is using COM 5, my DMX dongle is using COM 7. When both are plugged in, I can get lights to work on the LOR controller, but not the DMX side. If I disable the LOR COM port, the DMX flood light will work, but (obviously) my LOR setup won't work. I've been at this all day...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bob_moody Posted February 17, 2013 Share Posted February 17, 2013 Disconnect everything from the PC and reboot. Plug the LOR dongle in first and make sure that it is registering to COM5 (Open the HW util and make sure you can see the connection)Then add the dongle for DMX and make sure that 1) it doesnt conflict and 2) it gives you the COM port you think it is. I run E1.31 so I dont have your specific problem with DMX, however I also run X10. So I have the same issue about which order things get plugged in. If I dont plug in USB cables in the right order, I always have to reset (or go through and clean house by deleting ALL the COM ports and starting over) ... I'm not familiar with the ActiDongle. I do have the HC programmer which works GREAT for programming and when testing will run one and only one prop. More than one and wierd things happen. The fact that you disable LOR and DMX works still points to a COM port conflict or reversal of what you think is in place... Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
griswald Posted February 17, 2013 Author Share Posted February 17, 2013 Ok, I think DMX has pushed me over the edge and I've totally lost my mind. I disconnected everything and rebooted. First, I plugged in the DMX ActiDongle and disabled the LORCom 5 in S3. The DMX flood light then worked. Next, I plugged in the LOR dongle, re-enabled the COM 5 port and what do you know........the darn thing is working. Now here's where it gets weird..........I set up a schedule to try everything out. With my wife watching, the first time the schedule kicked off, I had no LOR lights, but the DMX worked. I disabled the show, checked the network setup (but did not change anything) then tried again. On the second, and subsequent tries, both LOR and DMX are working. I'd chalk it up to having a bad headache from working on this all day, but my wife noticed the LOR lights did not work the first time either. Long story short, I'm not sure what happened, but it "seems" to be working now. bob_moody - I got your reply as I was typing this, so thank you for your help as well. At this point, I agree with you, I think it might be an issue of plugging things into the computer in the correct order. I'm gonna walk away from this for awhile......maybe go shovel the driveway or something. May work on it some more tonight or tomorrow and see if I can get a set procedure down. Thank you to all for the help...........you guys rock!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveMaris Posted February 18, 2013 Share Posted February 18, 2013 Glad to see you got it working.I had to step out for a few hours with a "honey do" list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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