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Any known issues with skipping DMX Universes ?


bob_moody

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I have expanded the show a little this year from last.

I know have DMX universes 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,18, and 20

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 were all in place last year

18 and 20 are new this year only adding 281 pixels total... Also these are on a new controller (SanDevice 6804)

The new pixels are all on the porch and roofline meaning all the cabling in the yard is the same as last year.

In LOR Network Preferences, all universes in play are defined as multicast.

Switch and show PC (laptop) are the same as last year.

Switch is an 8 port Cisco and the laptop is old Dell Inspiron 1300 (Celeron 1.5Ghz w/2GB of RAM) running Windows XP.

My total pixel count (w/o nodes and AC DMX channels included) is at 1328.

The nodes are 24 channels and the Minleon AC controller is using 12 (36 channels total on Univ 1)

All that being said, I am noticing terrible stuttering and lag in several of the sequences.

Except for the addition of the 281 pixels added this year, the sequences are the same from last year.

Is it possible the empty universes (10 thru 17 and 19) are causing some issue? They are configured as NONE - Raw DMX ..

Is it possible I have exceeded the processing ability of the Dell laptop?

Can anyone think of some feature that I have left on in the sequences used for editing and not needed for production?

I grabbing for any reason(s)...

Thanks for the reading the long post ..

I'm open to any and all suggestions..

Bob ..

I do have as a space a Dell Latitude D620 (Intel Duo @ 1.83Ghz, 4Gb of RAM, an SSD C-Drive) running also Windows XP. Gigabit Ether port.

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Admin,

I am terribly sorry.. I realized I posted this in the HARDWARE section.

At your convenience could you please move this to an appropriate thread location?

Again.. I am sorry ..

Bob

Edited by bob_moody
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Bob,

The unused universe numbers are not an issue at all.  If the universe is not defined in Network Preferences, it functionally does not exist.  I have looked at enough WireShark traces to be able to confirm that!  This year I rearranged some of my universes as well, so the following are in use:  1, 2, 5, 12-17, 21-23, 31, 32.  Next year should add:  3, 4, 11, 18, 24, 36, & 37.  I had an idea today which would add another four to that if I implement it.

 

As for your show computer, I think that's even slower than mine!  I did start running out of CPU horsepower on one sequence until I switched that sequence to using an intensity file from SuperStar, and then that problem went away.  Start the Task Manager and watch it for a while and it will give a pretty good idea if  the show computer is running out of horsepower.  When I started seeing problems I figured I should plan on replacing that old computer next year as I will be adding several thousand more channels, but after switching to the intensity file, I don't believe that will be a problem.  Because all sequences will need to be rebuilt for 2016, I'm going to replace the two controllers that can't take an intensity file and all channels in all sequences will be played via intensity files starting next year.

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Jim,

Thanks for taking a look...
I'm running the show now and watching the CPU.... amazingly enough I have only seen one spike to about 55%. The rest of show seems to hang well within the 10 to 40% range.
I did go in and make sure I didn't have any extra channels running (a couple of songs did)
I also verified that I had removed the visualizer version of the pixel tree (one still had it in there which is 4 universes of CCR data that goes ... no where!! )

 

Memory usage is rock solid at 1.19GB with the show running (about 325MB at idle)

I'll watch again tonight and see if that resolved the issues.

One other thing I noticed is that when I set up the show I had it set to load as needed instead of preload all.. maybe an issue?? I have a 3 second delay between each song. What I don't know is when set to load as needed, when does it actually start to load? Is just lucky the 3 seconds is enough or does it start to load while the other song is running where the preload has everything ready to go...

one of those things that make you go ... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Bob

Edited by bob_moody
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Yes Sir.
 
According to the LOR docs ...

http://www.lightorama.com/help/compressed_sequences.htm

I do have both LMS and LCS files loaded in the sequence folder.

As mentioned earlier, I also turned on the option "Sequences are loaded before any are played"

Until today .. I did not have that option engaged.

 

Thanks Phil ...

 

Bob

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Jim and Phil,

 

Looks like turning on the option "Sequences are loaded before any are played" solved my issue.

I watched last night and entire show ran smooth and clean ... no jumps, jitters, stutters ...

 

Thanks for taking the time to help me out guys ...

 

Merry Christmas ..

 

Bob ..

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DMX generation takes a LOT of Computing Power esp if LOR always generates full frames of DMX, it also takes quite ab it of network bandwidth if running in Multi-cast mode..

 

I found this out the hard way as i run a combination of LOR 4 and MADRIX software  with over 20 universes of RGB..  (Sandevices and LOR CCP's)..

 

I was running on a Core i7-3770  with 8 GB RAM, my Network is enterprise grade HP Gig-E switches (2920's)  and I still had stuttering..

 

I switched to a machine with a core i7-5820k and 32 GB RAM  and it runs smooth as can be..

 

I also went Unicast and found I have a lot less network issues than I previously had.  in my case I use E1.31 only for remote input but went to ART-NET ..  However going E1.31 Unicast will give you similar reductions in network traffic over multicast. (network traffic will be directed to each controller rather than blasted to all).. 

-Christopher

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Chris,

 

Regardless of running Unicast or Multicast there is still only one path from the computer to the switch and once you get to the switch and the ARP table is established then traffic flows directly anyway.

Most (I know J1Sys isn't.. not sure about SanDevice) pixel controllers are not bi-directional so once the link is established the switch port is pretty much dedicated to the device at the end.

I might also mention that I have static route set up for multicast traffic.. all it really does is keep the traffic on the Ethernet port and off my wireless connection to the home network and internet.

 

Preloading the sequences at show start (loads the LCS files) cleaned up all my issues. Since I only play with this once a year .. I forgot to do it.

 

As I mentioned, even with a single core Celeron processor and 2GB of RAM (Windows XP) its now running perfectly .. HOWEVER.. I am running, as you can see only about 3100 channels total and maybe 60 channels or so of LOR AC controllers. It all runs out of LOR .. no NutCracker, Madrix or other influences. I've never run it, but from what I have seen.. I can see running Madrix would take some horsepower...

 

Thanks for the feedback ..

 

Bob

Edited by bob_moody
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