Lights won't stay on via Hardware Utility

[KeysNole]

Hello all,

When trying to manually turn my lights on, they only stay "lit" for two minutes or so.

 

I am afraid this may be caused by renaming controller 3 to controller 1 (1 got wet and does not like me right now).

 

Everything else is the same as the show has been all year.

 

Any thoughts?

[dgrant]

I'm thinking you are overloading the controller and its protecting itself by shutting down the channels. I had this happen on one channel that I simply had too many incans on it...Radio Freq signs. When there was just one sign, no problem, but when I added the second, it would shut off after about two minutes. Then I separated the signs to two different controllers and no more issue. So, what all is connected to the one controller?

[plasmadrive]

The controllers have no smarts for overload that allows them to shut down.  It most likely means you are losing data somewhere.  I had my HU on yesterday for about 3hrs while I fixed the wind blown lights.. It finally shut off about 5 minutes after I was done. (that was weird).  But it was most likely a data stream loss.   LOR protocol requires only state changes be sent to the controllers.. and I think they have a "network active" (or some such) signal that allows the controllers to continue with the last command batch.  If you turn them on and the signal goes away, they will stay on for a couple of min at best then shut off.  Watch dog timer I think when the "network active" is missing.  

 

So, check cables, connections and so on.   

[Max-Paul]

I wish someone at LOR would weigh in on this to confirm what it is for sure. But I believe that the controllers are polled at a given interval. Thus if you are using one of the inputs it will be reconized. Also this polling resets the watch dog timer. If this timer is not reset by a poll. The controller will shut down its outputs. This is what I believe is being done. But as I said before. I wish LOR would weigh in.

[plasmadrive]

Max, it is something like that but I don't know for sure.  Could be that they just have to send some sort of command every so often to reset the timer, but that doesn't fit in with what I have read over the last few years about only sending command changes.  Something has to tell the timer that there is still a good network.  Polling or what I called "network active" (same same) is about all I can think of to do this.  It would be nice to hear from LOR or someone that knows the LOR code.   I am curious.

[Steven]

When you run the Hardware Utility, the Sequence Editor (with "Control Lights" checked), or the show player, they send what is known in the networking world as a "heartbeat" signal. I'm not sure how often it sends this signal, but I would estimate something like 2 a second.

 

The heartbeat signal is not sent to a specific controller address, but is used by every controller on the network. There is another command, the "All Lights Off" event that is also received by every controller, but only the Hardware Utility and the Sequence Editor have buttons that send that.

 

It is unclear if this hearbeat signal is sent when the network is saturated with other events, such as when playing an intense sequence, or if the other events on the network will also act as a heartbeat.

 

When a LOR controller receives this heartbeat signal, it will stop flashing its status light and turn it on solid. After a period of time of not receiving the heartbeat, the controller will turn all channels off and start flashing its status light. This period of time varies between different generations of controllers G2 controllers seem to wait about a second and a half, but G3 controllers seem to wait about 5 seconds.

 

The ELOR, by SanDevices, does behave like LOR controllers when the heartbeat stops. The ELOR will leave its channels turned on, and will also ignore the "All Lights Off" command.