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ID's in hardware utility show ?


Wayne K

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I have been searching for about 1/2 hr and cannot find any topic related to this. I have17 controllers with 5 on one side of the house and 12 on the other side of the house. I then use one port of the usb adapter for one side and the other port for the other side. In the harware utility 1 to 2 controllers will show the: 10 unknown device ?? instead of like: 11-CTB16D Ver 4.32. the controlers seam to work ok and sometimes they will all show correctly and other times they will be 1 or 2 that will show as unknown. What causes this to show this way? I have all of the latest firmware updates in the controllers. Could it be the usb rs485 adapter?

 

Thanks

Wayne

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Have you run this setup in a prior year without issue? If so, check the wire fingers of the RJ45 connectors in the controllers on the side of the house you are having the issue. I suspect a pushed in finger/wire that's not making the connection. I ask about prior year's use first as this could be a daisy chain issue which isn't really happening or something else. Since you didn't mention ELL's, I'll assume you are using Cat5 or similar wire. Make sure its good quality wire and keep it away from any power wires for possible inductive interference problems. I would suggest Cat6 which has better shielding.

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No, this issue is not new for me. It has been there for several years. But does not seem to effect the operation. I just decided to post this and see why it does it. Yes I am using purchased cat 5e patch cables as all of my controllers are within 50 foot of each other.

Wayne

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You might want to consider ELL's. I've run ELL's before just to get the signal out there, but this year, rather than run extra Cat6 wires, I ran two more ELL's and sure enough, it works great!

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Ideally, RS485 communication is designed for a single terminated comm buss with a maximum of 64 devices hung on the buss. Its not designed to split off two directions. Now it works of course but its not as efficient. If the ELL's is not an option for you, you could get another USB/RS485 converter and run a separate path. That would then require you changing all the addressing for those controllers but at least it would speed things up

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Not sure what you mean by speeding things up. I don't seem like I have any speed issue's. I can't see spending dollars for ell's for a system that is less than 200 foot long at most. There again the show is running fine tonight as it always has. From the usb485B data sheet:Two RJ45 jacks allows more flexible placement in the Light-O-Rama network of devices. It does not say anything about only using 1 port. Also says it will go up to 4000 foot.

SInce no one else has chimmed in, I may send a ticket to tech support and see what they say. 

Thanks

Wayne

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Wayne is right about the proper use of the USB485b adapter. Though dgrant does make an almost right point. The network is also designed to have a termination resistor at both physical ends of the cable. The 110 ohm resistors are there to kill reflections. This is something you could try Wayne. Make two RJ-45 jacks with a 110 ohm resistor on I think pins 4 and 5. Put on in each open port on the last control of each side of the house.

 

For a single port adapter. The termination resistor is built into the adapter I believe. All one would need to do it add one to the last controller on the cable.

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