Hardware utility can"t locate controller

[Jerrys Dad]

i'm at a loss. I've done two things this year. I decided to leap into pixels and I bought a new computer because my other one stopped working. I'm using LOR v4.3.24 Pro. I currently have 1 Pixie16 which runs the outline of my house. That's working great but when I try to add my old controllers in from my standard LED bulbs those don't work. I researched and found i probably need a firmware upgrade on those. My problem, I cant get the hardware utility to recognize the CTB16PC controllers. I've tried multiple controllers but none are recognized! I can't upgrade the firmware! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Orville]

Are your CTB16PC gen 3 controllers?  Or are they older units, version 1 or version 2 CTB16PC controllers?   Makes a difference whether they are, as the older units can't run on an enhanced network, nor can they ran faster than 57.9K.  If they are older controllers you need a separate comm port and network for them to work.   I have 4 version 2 older CTB16PC units, they are on Comm 3 and LOR Regular Network and on an USB485B adapter, my version 1 5V CCB-100 Pixel controllers are on Comm 4 LOR Aux A Network and the red USB High Speed Adapter.

But if you have all G3 units, you should be able to run everything on a single comm port and an LOR Enhanced Network at 500K, I think the PixCon 16 I think can go higher, but if on the same network as the CTB16PC that would be limited to 500K, any higher and that may be the culprit causing your CTB16PC's not to be recognized by the HWU.  The Network Speed factor may be too high for them.   Try lowering the network speed, or if older CTB16PC's setting up 2 separate networks would be required.

Would also help a lot if you filled in your profile with the info on your license level and version of the software, that will help you from having to type that in every time you need to ask a question in the future.  Just saves time as then that info is available at a glance.  In case someone misses it in your text, it happens.

The only other thing, is maybe you may need to reset the controllers.  Until the HWU can see those controllers, you won't be able to upgrade the firmware in them.  I don't know how the reset works on the newer G3 controllers, but it's been posted here on the forum a few times.  older units I know how to reset, but seeing I don't know what your CTB16PC controllers actually are, I can only somewhat speculate as to what the issues might be in resolving them not being found.

[Jerrys Dad]

2 hours ago, Orville said:

Are your CTB16PC gen 3 controllers?  Or are they older units, version 1 or version 2 CTB16PC controllers?   Makes a difference whether they are, as the older units can't run on an enhanced network, nor can they ran faster than 57.9K.  If they are older controllers you need a separate comm port and network for them to work.   I have 4 version 2 older CTB16PC units, they are on Comm 3 and LOR Regular Network and on an USB485B adapter, my version 1 5V CCB-100 Pixel controllers are on Comm 4 LOR Aux A Network and the red USB High Speed Adapter.

But if you have all G3 units, you should be able to run everything on a single comm port and an LOR Enhanced Network at 500K, I think the PixCon 16 I think can go higher, but if on the same network as the CTB16PC that would be limited to 500K, any higher and that may be the culprit causing your CTB16PC's not to be recognized by the HWU.  The Network Speed factor may be too high for them.   Try lowering the network speed, or if older CTB16PC's setting up 2 separate networks would be required.

Would also help a lot if you filled in your profile with the info on your license level and version of the software, that will help you from having to type that in every time you need to ask a question in the future.  Just saves time as then that info is available at a glance.  In case someone misses it in your text, it happens.

The only other thing, is maybe you may need to reset the controllers.  Until the HWU can see those controllers, you won't be able to upgrade the firmware in them.  I don't know how the reset works on the newer G3 controllers, but it's been posted here on the forum a few times.  older units I know how to reset, but seeing I don't know what your CTB16PC controllers actually are, I can only somewhat speculate as to what the issues might be in resolving them not being found.

So I tried to make two networks. Which ever side is on the regular network works in SE but not in running the show. I opened the control panel and it shows me an error of "Comm Listener error 3: Comm Winsock Error / 10053 :Connection is aborted    . Is there something I'm missing on turning on the auxiliary A network? I watched the video in the tutorials but it didn't work.

Edited October 7, 2018 by Jerrys Dad
added info

[Mr. P]

19 minutes ago, Jerrys Dad said:

So I tried to make two networks. Which ever side is on the regular network works. Is there something I'm missing on turning on the auxiliary A network? I watched the video in the tutorials but it didn't work.

Once you have set the new Comm port for the new network make sure you go into Network Configuration and set the netwok. Then you have to go into SE and set all the controllers and channels to the new network that you are switching.

[Jerrys Dad]

13 minutes ago, Mr. P said:

Once you have set the new Comm port for the new network make sure you go into Network Configuration and set the netwok. Then you have to go into SE and set all the controllers and channels to the new network that you are switching.

That did it for SE. I can get them all to work while running it through SE. On the control panel its giving me the"Comm Listener error 3: Comm Winsock Error / 10053 :Connection is aborted" error and not playing my show! I can't seem to win! Thanks for helping me as I continue to plug away at this!

[Orville]

Are both Comm ports showing up in the HWU?   And did you set the comm port, the one you have the CTB16PC's set to as the "Network to Run Shows?", however, if you set that and then change to the other {2nd comm port} then the show won't run and sometimes things won't work in SE on the AUX comm and you'll get that error.   It's a show stopper for sure.

Once I set my show port to comm 3, where my CTB16PC's are to run the show, then I turned off that pesky message, because when I'd go to comm 4 where my RGB lights are on "Aux A" Network, I said yes to that use this comm port for shows, then when I went to use the SE or run a show, I got that same error, went back to HWU, set my show to comm 3, clicked on and checked box don't show this message again, tested controllers again in HWU, all working, went into the SE and well, still didn't work, also wouldn't run shows correctly and would bomb out with a comm port error.

I had to go and change all my RGB controllers to the new Enhanced, High Speed 500K network.   So if there aren't on the correct network, it's an easy fix, go into the SE, then open a sequence, then open Channel Configuration under the Tools Menu button, once you get the pop-up, use the drop down menu to locate the controller you want to change, I use tracks so all my RGB Controllers are under Track 7, once you have the area listed in the drop down box at the top of the channel config, select the controller, originally my showed Light-O-Rama Controller Unit CCD Device 01 or something like that, you can rename them if you want to something else, I changed mine to CCB-100.  But to change all the channels that one controller is set for, click on the Change Color button at the bottom, you'll get another op up that shows "Change Controller" in the highlight bar, inside the area you will then see a list of controllers and what network they are on, if you used "Aux A" for say Controller 01{an RGB controller on Aux}, select it, it will show currently that it is on a Regular LOR Network, click the controller number in the area where they are listed to change.

 

Once done at the bottom of the box you'll see 3 boxes that will be filled in, these are:

Device Type:

Network

Unit:

Before you click on a controller only Device Type will be filled in with "Unknown Device", once you click on the controller you want to change, all 3 boxes will be filled with information from the controller  

Device Type: Light-O-Rama

Network: Regular

Unit: 01

You Can't change the Device Type, that one is auto-populated from the controller, however the Network and Unit both have drop down sub menus, on Network, click the down arrow at the right end of its box and you'll see all the Networks you can select Regular, Aux A, Aux B, Aux C and so on.  Select the Network you chose in the Network Configuration Utility when you set your 2nd Network up, "Aux A" in most cases, you can then select the unit ID, although usually the unit ID will stay the same as was populated, if it populated with the same controller you selected the first time, unit 01, you shouldn't need to change anything but the Network drop down box.  

Once done, click OK, you'll get another pop up asking "Are you sure you want to change ALL channels for this controller?", click "Yes" and all channels on controller 01 will now be set to "Aux A".  Do this for each controller unit ID on "Aux A", resave your sequence and RE-EXPORT your Channel Configuration with the same name, that way the next time you create a new sequence using it, all controllers will be set to the right network.  

You can then also RE-IMPORT this new Channel Configuration into your existing sequences as long as they all have the same set-up as the one you changed, this will convert all those sequences to the new Network settings.  You will have to load each sequence individually, then Re-Import the channel config.

Hope this will resolve your problem.   Yes, it's a little work, but not as much as if you had to change each channel individually!

Good Luck and let us know how you make out.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Orville