lights firing when no signal given to them

[rgambino]

this may be a lenghty post but hope this helps somone in a similar situation,  I had channels firing in 3 of my control boxes 5,6,7 that should not have been firing, these control my mega tree and right side icicle lights,  only when a solid green command from the program right before that would change to a different color the red, white and blue would flash,  I scoured the forums here for all possible things to be wrong ,  I took all of the advice given and tried each one, checked every cat5 cable one by one, checked the sequences for light blips, checked controllers, made sure cat5 cables were not by any AC cords,  did not fix the problem, here is my findings,  those boxes are only running about 3 amps each, so I had all of the AC cords plugged in together,  I had run the sequence unplugged the cat5 cord going to box 7, when the green command came up in the program the white, red and blue still fired, the cat5 was disconnected,  the command was back feeding up through the AC cord to the other boxes firing the other colors,  I unhooked all of the AC cords and ran them one by one the the outlets,  problem solved. I have hooked up these boxes like this for years with no such problem until this year.

 

hope this can help someone, been messing with this problem for a couple of weeks, I thank everybody here for past advise on what to check.

Edited December 10, 2014 by rgambino

[Steven]

Do you have the cat5 cable in close proximity to the power cords?

[rgambino]

I checked all of the cat5 cords and moved them away from the AC cords,

[KStatefan]

Have you run the Verifier?

[Steven]

I'm having a similar problem that happens during the day when no show is running. Some times multiple channels will come on at random times and stay on, until I reset them.

 

My display has multiple houses connected with ELL's. I think the spurious commands come from an ELL on one of the houses, because the lights on that house do not come on, neither do the lights connected to the ELL that does not have a line of site to that house.

 

My network is laid out like this:

 

02--12---13---0C---ELL(949)    11---(50 feet)---10--06--15--ELL(955)   ELL(961)--09---(50 feet)---0C

 

---- Street ---

 

1C--ELL(970)  19--1A--1B--ELL(972)  Show-Player---ELL(974)

 

(That's the "Aux A" network. I also have a "Regular" network.) (Yes, there are 2 "0C" controllers. Too busy to separate.)

 

Channels connected to controllers connected to ELL(949) and ELL(972) turn on at random (sometimes). I believe the culprit is the network connected to ELL(955), because spurious signals generated by ELL(955) are blocked from ELL(961) by a garage filled with metal racks, stucco, wiring, etc.

 

What is generating those signals? Is it the ELL itself, or is it in the 50 feet of network? And why don't the channels on that network turn on? Is the RS485 signal threshold for an ELL less than the threshold for a controller? Will a an RS485 termination with failsafe biasing resistors solve this problem?

[Max-Paul]

Steven quoted your above post here "Will a an RS485 termination with failsafe biasing resistors solve this problem?"  Ok, so what is a failsafe biasing resistor?   I am only aware of the terminating resistor at the head end and tail end of the network. These usually are used to kill any reflecting signal that might be running on the wire.

[Steven]

An RS-485 network is multi-generator, meaning that when not sending data (e.g. between LOR events, or when not running a sequence), the bus is left undriven. This allows the balanced signal lines to "float" at effectively the same voltage. If a receiver (e.g. the ELL) is too sensitive, it can detect a small amount of noise as a valid signal. This problem is solved by using a fail-safe bias to bring the idle bus to a defined, and constant, "0" or "1".  Search for "RS-485 fail-safe bias" for more information.

[Max-Paul]

Ok, read the paper you made a link for. Ok, does help if you have lots of noise and not using twisted pair. Well that is one of the benefits of using Cat 5 cable cause it aint anything but twisted pairs. I also noted that they talked about legacy transceiver chips. LOR is using a fairly new chip. And their is a large draw back to installing these failsafe bias resistors. They create a large load on the signal thus cutting back on the number of transceiver chips. Terminating resistors do more good than these bias resistors. That and using twisted wire and keeping the cat 5 cables away from any wires that could inject noise into the network. I would reserve this form of fix as a very last resort.

[Steven]

I also noted that they talked about legacy transceiver chips. LOR is using a fairly new chip.

I know their controllers use a new chip. My question was about their ELL.

[Ray Rose]

My phantom flickering light issue happens when no show is running, yet shows are enabled.  I have four 16 channel controllers networked with cat5 and the LOR USB485B voltage boosting converter. I get a few channels that just flicker for no apparent reason, then the nest day it may be a couple channels on a different controller, and sometimes they are all off, like they are supposed to be.  I've tried to seperate my cat5 and power leads, but that hasn't seemed to help.The two things I've found that stop the flickering are Disable Shows, and disconnecting the cat5 from my USB converter.

 

It doesn't seem to matter if it is a rainy day or dry day. 

 

Should I add a terminating resistor? Where would i buy one? Where do I add it? Any any other suggestions?

[Steven]

Should I add a terminating resistor? Where would i buy one? Where do I add it? Any any other suggestions?

 

Read this topic, and scroll down for instructions. You add one at each end of your network. (You network has 2 ends. Your computer or director may be at one end.)