JimCanfield Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 I was able to run a 16 channel light show for a birthday today using 1 16 channel controller (the ctb16pc that I has soldered) and sixteen channels with 1 100 light strand on each. I must say that the controllers and the software worked AWESOME!!! The only thing I noticed was that channels 8-16 would fade faster than channels 1-8. They would come on together then 8-16 faded at a faster rate. One point in the song I had a series of fades where all 16 channels came on @ 100 percent then fade to 0, then repeat 3 times. The first set came on at the same time, but then it got off after that because of the different fading rates. Is this common? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR V Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 No that don't sound right. First question, were you using only one power cord plugged into the wall or two? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beaker020 Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 second question is: were these LED's or incandescents?LED's sometimes fade funny, depending on how many are on the channel. 'Terminators' often help. Check out www.crazylightlady.us for a great How-To. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimCanfield Posted July 16, 2008 Author Share Posted July 16, 2008 I did forget to mention what type of lights they were. They were the typical incadencent minis. Some were new some were used also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimCanfield Posted July 16, 2008 Author Share Posted July 16, 2008 Also I used both power cords from the unit and plugged them into two different outlets but I do not know if they were from different breakers or not. It was a cubicle I was decorating so I have no clue what all was being run off those outlets. Would that make a difference?I was not concerned about using 2 different outlets only drawing about 5 and 1/3 amps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Simmons Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 Jim,I know this sounds dumb, but are you absolutely certain the timings for the fades are identical? I put a few things together for a mini-sneak-preview for some friends last weekend and I had the same issue on one of the songs. When I went back to investigate, I discovered that athough they looked okay to the eye, when I placed the cursor over the events, the timings of a couple channels in different tracks were off by .02 - .03 seconds. In my case, I think this happened because I was using the beat wizard and had subdivided the timings into a different number of segments for each of the tracks (one was divided by seven and the other had timings divided by eight). A difference of .03 second might not sound like much but it was very visible.George Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted July 16, 2008 Share Posted July 16, 2008 There is a risk when plugging into a cubicle environment that you might wind up on two separate phases of a three phase Y system, where the power could be 120 degrees out of phase, instead of the 0 and 180 degrees that LOR allows on the two inlets..However, I would expect the issues to be much more noticeable and strange than what you experienced... I would second checking your sequences... - Kevin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmoore60 Posted July 17, 2008 Share Posted July 17, 2008 Jim,At 5.3 amps what does the show do at home plugged into your outlet, even if both plugs are in the same outlet.I believe that Kevin has hit the nail on the head. With the difference in power systems. Over my years on the boards there has been several discussions about the 3 phase 208/120 power and the need to make sure both plugs of a controller are on the same phase for the reason of fading. There was some rather lengthy talk about this with a detail explaination.Chuck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimCanfield Posted July 17, 2008 Author Share Posted July 17, 2008 I have not tried it at home yet, was going to do that this weekend. I double and triple checked the timings, and even made a simple animated sequence (not musical) and it still did it. I am thinking in may be the triple phase like Chuck stated. I will try it at home Saturday and then let you all know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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