Lights slow on old network

[rickyniec]

I put this question to the S3 forum with no response. 

 

I'm running LOR 3.10.6. This year I added 5 CCP's to my show. I decided to put the CCP's on a separate network, Aux A, (Com 4) running at 115.4K speed. My old network, (Com 3) is running at 57.6K. Total channels - 1500 on com4 and 64 on com3.

I noticed my arches running on com3 appear to be running slowly on busy sections of the songs.  Has anyone else experienced slow response on an old network when added a new network? I thought leaving the old controllers on the old network would possibly prevent exactly what I'm experiencing now. Before I purchase a long cat5 cable and put everything on the fast network, I was wondering if anyone is running the older controllers on a faster network speed without issues.

 

UPDATE:

Tonight I put both networks to the 115.4K speed and got worse results. So, I put the old network back to 57.6. Now I'm not sure putting everything on a single 115K network would help. If I can't get this fixed soon, I think I will have to revert back to last years sequences (which still work fine) without using the CCP mega tree. I've put in a lot of time programming the tree for 6 songs and would hate to cut it out.

 

If I wanted to put everything on a high speed 500K network I think I would have to buy the red RS485, and do some type of upgrades to my (3) gen 2 controllers and 1 gen 3 controller. Can anyone explain if that would help and exactly what I would need do to the old controllers?

[BrianBruderer]

As you say, having 2 separate networks is supposed to prevent what you are observing. It indicates that the bottleneck is not the networks. It is as if the computer is having a hard time sending the data out fast enough to the networks.

 

You can try reducing the load on the Sequence Editor by turning off the following:

 

"Control Holiday Lights Designer"

"Control Visualizer"

 

If that doesn't help, try turning off the following

"Move Grid with Play"

"Vary Color of Channel Buttons"

"Vary Color of Channel Button Fonts"

"Highlight Current Event"

"Highlight Current Time"

on the "View" menu, set "Fades" to "As Ramps".
 

[Don]

Also, just wanted to point out that G2 controllers, as of this date, can not run 500k. If you try to mix/match G2 and G3 controllers on a network setup to run 500k you will have problems.

 

As Brian said, the separate networks were designed to prevent things like this. I would put everything you had last year on one network at 57.6 (which is what I'm guessing you had it at least year) and the CCPs on another network at 500k. Make sure you have the latest firmware on the CCP devices.

[BrianBruderer]

I would recommend the 500K speed also. I use old USB485 adapters and mine run fine at the 500K speed. You will probably want to order one of the red ones, but until then you can try your existing adapters and there is a good chance they will work fine at 500k.

 

As mentioned, to run the 500K speed you need the latest firmware in the CCPs.

 

To update the CCP controllers to the latest firmware, do the following:

1) Download the latest S3 software if you haven't done so lately.

2) Launch the Hardware Utility

3) Click on the "Refresh" button, after 30 seconds or so it should find your CCR controllers and list them in the list box

4) Click on the "Firmware" button at the bottom

5) Step 1 - click on "Selected unit listed above"

6) Step 2 - click on the "Open" button and select "CCB100D-V1_16.lhx"

 (note that the latest firmware for CCR controllers is "CCR150D-V1_17.lhx" )
7) Step 3 - click on the "Download" button

8) After 20 seconds or so it will tell you it is done

9) Select the next CCR controller and click on the "Download" button again

Do this for each CCR controller

[rickyniec]

Order has been restored to the universe!!!

 

I would like to thank both of you who quickly responded to my issue. The changes Brian suggested to the Sequence Editor had no effect, but changing the CCP network to 500K did the trick. I have even noticed some things the CCPs were not doing correctly has been fixed.

 

For the record, it appears 5 CCPs will not work at 115K if the sequence affects many channels at the same time. (at least on my old PC)

 

Thank again. 

Merry Christmas