Pixie16 & E1.31

[Orville]

32 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

Your problem with the cat5 from the pixie may be a jumper. Just in front of the network port/ jack. Check that. If it is missing place a jumper there and you will have power. Check the director for a jumper as well. Look directly in front of the cat5 port. 

I use my G3 remotely with a pixie 8 as my tune to sign. I remember the first time a few years ago I had no power from the pixie to the G3, tried a new cable, no power. Since I build all of my pixies I did a comparison and that one was missing a jumper from the factory. Found a jumper out of my parts pin and I had power.

I have my director and pixie, no other devices and it sits 300+ fee away from my show. No AC controller.

I have helped numerous people that had the same problem.

I just don't think LOR would put anything out that would not support any G3 device and the ELOR. 

One day the speculation will end and I def can take the advantage of the DMX capabilities from the pixie series.

JR

Thanks JR.  It was a jumper, LOR set it as off, moved it to the position to supply power and it worked perfectly.  

Somehow I missed that when I read through the controllers manual several times before I even connected them to the singing tree lights.  I also didn't notice that the 1st jumper setting above the Cat5 jack was for aux power like to a Director unit from the Pixie controller.   That's sure going to make a difference in how I set up my controllers and run the Cat5 cables now for my 2020 Christmas Display. 

[dibblejr]

46 minutes ago, Orville said:

Thanks JR.  It was a jumper, LOR set it as off, moved it to the position to supply power and it worked perfectly.  

Somehow I missed that when I read through the controllers manual several times before I even connected them to the singing tree lights.  I also didn't notice that the 1st jumper setting above the Cat5 jack was for aux power like to a Director unit from the Pixie controller.   That's sure going to make a difference in how I set up my controllers and run the Cat5 cables now for my 2020 Christmas Display. 

You are welcome, I learned a lot thanks to LOR for letting me be the Beta tester for pixies. By building my own and having to troubleshoot hundreds of members controllers didn't hurt either. LOL

Glad to be of assistance.

JR

[Orville]

11 hours ago, dibblejr said:

You are welcome, I learned a lot thanks to LOR for letting me be the Beta tester for pixies. By building my own and having to troubleshoot hundreds of members controllers didn't hurt either. LOL

Glad to be of assistance.

JR

Well shoot, I did encounter one issue when I plugged the Pixie2D into the G4 Director, the first network is always Regular{Network 1} no matter what, and the Aux A{Network 2}, Aux B{Network 3} or Network 4 Cat5 jacks do not supply power to the Director from the controller unless it's plugged into the Regular{Network 1} jack, and since my Singing Trees will be on Network 3 {Aux B}, my CCB100D controllers on Network 2{Aux A} and my CTB16PC's on Regular, it would work.   But if I'm just testing only the singing trees and I plug them into the Regular Network to get power and set that to 500K, the Trees do not work correctly at all.  They just change colors, no mouth singing or anything.   I'd have to set the channels for them to Regular in the SE.  And I tried that and tried changing the speed to 500K, even 1,000K for the Pixie2D units, and they just would not play correctly.

Would be curious how you are using your Director for yours, now I'm using the standard LOR Protocol because DMX is something I have no idea how to use or set up, and for my various controllers, not sure that would even work for the older G2{V2} CTB16PC Controllers I have in the mix.

Would have been nice if any of the Network jacks could have powered the Director, but not sure if that's even possible in how they are designed and set up or if that would even be a possibility having every Cat5 jack supply power, as I'm thinking that could cause some conflicts or issues.

So back to the drawing board for how I'll be setting my controllers and placement of the Director unit to feed them.   If it isn't one thing, it's something else that always throws in that dad-burn monkey-wrench into the works.

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Orville

[k6ccc]

At least for your testing, plug one of your old CTB16 controllers into network 1 on the director - solely to provide power to the director.  Then plug the pixie into network 2.  Problem solved.

 

[TheDucks]

You can always use a standard 12VDC (center + ) wall wort with the director. These are very common, you may have some saved: some Older LCD monitors, routers/switches, Security Cameras are common uses

[dibblejr]

1 hour ago, Orville said:

Well shoot, I did encounter one issue when I plugged the Pixie2D into the G4 Director, the first network is always Regular{Network 1} no matter what, and the Aux A{Network 2}, Aux B{Network 3} or Network 4 Cat5 jacks do not supply power to the Director from the controller unless it's plugged into the Regular{Network 1} jack, and since my Singing Trees will be on Network 3 {Aux B}, my CCB100D controllers on Network 2{Aux A} and my CTB16PC's on Regular, it would work.   But if I'm just testing only the singing trees and I plug them into the Regular Network to get power and set that to 500K, the Trees do not work correctly at all.  They just change colors, no mouth singing or anything.   I'd have to set the channels for them to Regular in the SE.  And I tried that and tried changing the speed to 500K, even 1,000K for the Pixie2D units, and they just would not play correctly.

Would be curious how you are using your Director for yours, now I'm using the standard LOR Protocol because DMX is something I have no idea how to use or set up, and for my various controllers, not sure that would even work for the older G2{V2} CTB16PC Controllers I have in the mix.

Would have been nice if any of the Network jacks could have powered the Director, but not sure if that's even possible in how they are designed and set up or if that would even be a possibility having every Cat5 jack supply power, as I'm thinking that could cause some conflicts or issues.

So back to the drawing board for how I'll be setting my controllers and placement of the Director unit to feed them.   If it isn't one thing, it's something else that always throws in that dad-burn monkey-wrench into the works.

 

 

Remember if you physically plug the trees in to a new NW you have to change that in your NP and channel config. I assume the lights come on but no mouths because you have a sequence written and the channels are the same, for something else.

As of now a pixie2 wont run DMX. The only pixie DMX would be the pixie4DMX. I have never seen one of those. All of my pixie4's are normal. None of your pixies will run DMX. 

I have my power source (ext cord) powering the controller pixie8. Controller powers the director through the cat5. That was where the jumper came in. No jumper on those pins meant no power out from the pixie. 

The regular NW should be capable of ELOR or 500k. As we spoke of before, I simply don't see a reason for 1000k and since this was not originally for the pixies I have never even tried the setting. Never got past the "1000k pixcon16" comment in NP.

As for the newest director, it should be able to get its power while connected to any controller from there you would have to connect your lights to any of the existing ports per the perspective NW's. That's how the g3 works and I don't see LOR stepping backwards in their design for new equipment.

Is there a manual someplace for the n4. I cant find one? According to the store all 4 NWs will run up to 1000K.

JR

Edited May 22, 2020 by dibblejr

[Orville]

1 hour ago, dibblejr said:

Remember if you physically plug the trees in to a new NW you have to change that in your NP and channel config. I assume the lights come on but no mouths because you have a sequence written and the channels are the same, for something else.

As of now a pixie2 wont run DMX. The only pixie DMX would be the pixie4DMX. I have never seen one of those. All of my pixie4's are normal. None of your pixies will run DMX. 

I have my power source (ext cord) powering the controller pixie8. Controller powers the director through the cat5. That was where the jumper came in. No jumper on those pins meant no power out from the pixie. 

The regular NW should be capable of ELOR or 500k. As we spoke of before, I simply don't see a reason for 1000k and since this was not originally for the pixies I have never even tried the setting. Never got past the "1000k pixcon16" comment in NP.

As for the newest director, it should be able to get its power while connected to any controller from there you would have to connect your lights to any of the existing ports per the perspective NW's. That's how the g3 works and I don't see LOR stepping backwards in their design for new equipment.

Is there a manual someplace for the n4. I cant find one? According to the store all 4 NWs will run up to 1000K.

JR

They are set up in my network configuration as Regular for the CTB16PC, Aux A for CCB100D, but I can's set up a Comm port for the Pixie2D controllers as I don't have a 2nd Red HS Adapter to be able to set comm5 for the Pixies.   If I set comm5 and Aux B, it causes the Comm Listener to go into a forever loop showing that error with Comm2 message and never stops, and when that happens nothing works until I delete the Comm5 Aux B setting from the Netwrok Config software.  Tried setting both Aux A and Aux B to Comm4 to see if that would work, no dice, comm conflict and won't accept it.

I tried to see if the Hub would allow me to configure one of the other Network ports on the G4 Director to Regular, but it won't allow but Network 1 to be Regular, if that could have been changed to an Aux setting, then it might have worked and I would have configured Network 2 or 3 to be the Regular port for the CTB16PC units I have.  Unfortunately that's not possible, would have been nice if it were.

Like stated, I know extremely little, if much of anything about DMX and how it works, so I've never messed with it, read a little here and there, but sounded far too confusing and complicated for my taste.   And I wasn't sure if DMX was something you may have been using with yours or not, just read your posts talking about how you have your singing faces set up to use DMX, so thought perhaps you had set your director up with DMX protocols to run yours.   And why I asked about the DMX aspect.

Ohhh this hobby can be such fun when trying to make things work they way YOU'D like them too!   And now you know where my signature tag line came from. LOL

 

Edit: Almost forgot this, I was using the sequence you did, the Spanish version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, so the mouth movements are there.  Wanted to see how the Director would handle it and the above earlier post about the trees outline and mouth not being correct is true, the outline kept changing colors, as did the eyes and the mouth stayed in the closed position and also changed colors.  Nothing worked as it should until I plugged a Cat5 into my black USB485B adapter for power and plugged the tree into Network 3 on the G4 Director, then it ran just like you had set it up, ran perfectly at that point.  But running the tree off Network 1, nope, just wouldn't operate as it should have.

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Orville

[Orville]

1 hour ago, TheDucks said:

You can always use a standard 12VDC (center + ) wall wort with the director. These are very common, you may have some saved: some Older LCD monitors, routers/switches, Security Cameras are common uses

Thanks, I know.  I purchased the optional adapter {1 amp/12VDC} from LOR when I purchased their first run of the Director units, the G1 DC-MP3 Director w/real time clock.  Actually I traded off, I didn't need the card reader back then, so I opted for the adapter over the card reader/writer at the time.  

So I still have it around here somewhere{just saw it the other day, just can't recall exactly where I saw it! LOL}, but it's not weather proof, so kind of makes it a little more difficult to use in my situation.   I prefer one of the controllers be utilized to supply it's power via Cat5, then no issues.   Seeing that both the Director and my FM Transmitter are housed in the same Control Box, that I'm going to have to make some more modifications to since the new G4 Director is almost twice the size of my original G1 Director that bit the dust after 5 years of use.  But I like the new G4 much better, especially since it has more ports for expansion when needed.

When I test my singing trees and want to check out the sequence to see how it works with the Director, I plug the trees into Network 3 and use my older USB485B black adapter to supply the Director with power via Cat5 cable.   So that at least lets me see how it will handle the singing trees.

 

[Orville]

1 hour ago, k6ccc said:

At least for your testing, plug one of your old CTB16 controllers into network 1 on the director - solely to provide power to the director.  Then plug the pixie into network 2.  Problem solved.

 

Thanks Jim, almost what I did.  I'm using my old black USB485B adapter to power the Director for testing purposes.  So when I finally am ready to start setting up with all the controllers, I know the Director will do what it's supposed too. {I hope!}

[dibblejr]

23 minutes ago, Orville said:

They are set up in my network configuration as Regular for the CTB16PC, Aux A for CCB100D, but I can's set up a Comm port for the Pixie2D controllers as I don't have a 2nd Red HS Adapter to be able to set comm5 for the Pixies.   If I set comm5 and Aux B, it causes the Comm Listener to go into a forever loop showing that error with Comm2 message and never stops, and when that happens nothing works until I delete the Comm5 Aux B setting from the Netwrok Config software.  Tried setting both Aux A and Aux B to Comm4 to see if that would work, no dice, comm conflict and won't accept it.

I tried to see if the Hub would allow me to configure one of the other Network ports on the G4 Director to Regular, but it won't allow but Network 1 to be Regular, if that could have been changed to an Aux setting, then it might have worked and I would have configured Network 2 or 3 to be the Regular port for the CTB16PC units I have.  Unfortunately that's not possible, would have been nice if it were.

Like stated, I know extremely little, if much of anything about DMX and how it works, so I've never messed with it, read a little here and there, but sounded far too confusing and complicated for my taste.   And I wasn't sure if DMX was something you may have been using with yours or not, just read your posts talking about how you have your singing faces set up to use DMX, so thought perhaps you had set your director up with DMX protocols to run yours.   And why I asked about the DMX aspect.

Ohhh this hobby can be such fun when trying to make things work they way YOU'D like them too!   And now you know where my signature tag line came from. LOL

 

Edit: Almost forgot this, I was using the sequence you did, the Spanish version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, so the mouth movements are there.  Wanted to see how the Director would handle it and the above earlier post about the trees outline and mouth not being correct is true, the outline kept changing colors, as did the eyes and the mouth stayed in the closed position and also changed colors.  Nothing worked as it should until I plugged a Cat5 into my black USB485B adapter for power and plugged the tree into Network 3 on the G4 Director, then it ran just like you had set it up, ran perfectly at that point.  But running the tree off Network 1, nope, just wouldn't operate as it should have.

 

 

I have my other faces running from DMX controllers, as I progress with converting all 32 singers I have from led to RGB DMX is the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise I would have as many RGB controllers as I have AC controllers. Drilling holes for 32 singers is gonna take me until 2030 the way I am going. The LOR singers will be my only non DMX singing props but they are already condensed in to a nice compact controller making them easy to move around on their own. 

I'm trying to find someone willing to cut the holes but so far no luck.

As I discovered during testing and helping others with the pixie controllers. You may or may not need a red connector. You can test with the black in any port and see.

Yes the directors ports are pre configured.

JR

[Orville]

5 hours ago, dibblejr said:

I have my other faces running from DMX controllers, as I progress with converting all 32 singers I have from led to RGB DMX is the only thing that makes sense. Otherwise I would have as many RGB controllers as I have AC controllers. Drilling holes for 32 singers is gonna take me until 2030 the way I am going. The LOR singers will be my only non DMX singing props but they are already condensed in to a nice compact controller making them easy to move around on their own. 

I'm trying to find someone willing to cut the holes but so far no luck.

As I discovered during testing and helping others with the pixie controllers. You may or may not need a red connector. You can test with the black in any port and see.

Yes the directors ports are pre configured.

JR

Right now when sequencing I am using the red adapter, 500K, Enhanced Aux A, Comm4 for the Pixie2D's to sequence them and check them out with the SE and the visualizer

But I am saving copies of all the sequences in a separate folder labeled Singing Trees_Aux B-Network 3, as those will be the ones sent to the SD Card for the LOR Singing Trees when the time comes.

Just have to remember to update those with any changes I make in the SE where they are on the same port as the CCB100D Controllers for now {Aux A}.  Makes it a little more work, but currently this is how I'm handling it and able to watch what the Pixie2D LOR Singing Trees can do.

Guess I'm going to have to break down and buy another red HS Adapter for sequencing purposes.  If I have enough left over in June after paying all the bills and can do it, will order another one so I can have all 3 networks up and running from the computer then just transfer them via the Hub to the G4 Director when the time comes.  Will sure make things a little easier I think.

But for now, this works for me.

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Orville