Bad com ports on CTB16PCg3

[John Griffith]

I have two CTB16PCg3 controllers with bad com ports. One unit has one bad port and the other has both ports bad. Is this a common problem, and is there any concensus as to what caused this failure? Does LOR repair these boards at a reasonable cost?

[bdwillie]

If you are handy with a soldering iron they are pretty simple to change.

Please don't use a cat cable with a protector boot on it, they don't bend easy and put stress on the sockets when the enclosure door is closed.  also you need to attach the cat 5 cable to the enclosure somehow, outside the box, maybe with a zip tie, so if something gets caught up in the cable in the yard, it won't pull on the connectors.  These two will help keep you from damaging the ports. Also look in the ports themselves to make sure two of the wire fingers have not crossed themselves, or are stuck down.  If so adjust with a toothpick with POWER NOT APPLIED to the box.  I don't know the price at LOR to repair these, but open a help ticket and start the process.  This is a busy season for them so you might be pushing it to get them back in time.  If you were close to me I could swap them out for you, maybe a fellow enthusiast with soldering skills in your area can help you out and swap them.  The replacement ports are cheap from LOR, digikey, etc.  THe part number I used was  5556416-1 to get the ports.  Mouser's part number is

571-5556416-1

Best of luck to ya!

[dgrant]

Look at each suspect RJ45 connector(s) and see if any pins are retracted as opposed to the others. If there are, you need something like a dental pick tool or micro tweezers. Carefully try to get behind the pin and pop it back into its normal position. Now if the entire port is lose on the board, you'll need to extract the board completely, and re-solder the pins but if you are going that far, might as well replace it as "bdwillie" suggested. You'll only need a simple solder sucker and soldering iron that's like 35watt or an adjustable one. Do not overheat the connections.

[TheDucks]

LOR network is on the center 2 pins (4+5) those are a Must

If you are using ELL or Show director with the controller supplying the power, THEN you need the next pins on either side (3+6)

I have Installed the Network dongles (2 sets if the controller is in the middle of a chain) that LOR sells

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XssqectruJzV7RgB6YgUAjyPWDy9K_IY/view?usp=sharing

(I skipped the inner weather seal cap on the left one.)  Its a lot easier to replace the bulkhead assy than the jack on the board.

Picture: Pixie 4 door mounted, 2 @ CMB24 in the main. 2 @ HC 400W external 12V PSU on the back of the CG1500 box

 

[PhilMassey]

I had three DC controllers with flakey com ports. They were literally wiggly. I reflowed the solder pads on the back with my solder station hott air gun and they have been fine since. That was 5 or more yrs ago.

Do protect your jacks with strain relief and don't put any stress on them.

[John Griffith]

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. After closely examining the suspect boards, I discovered that the board with both bad connectors, the connectors themselves were loose on the board. The other board seemed to have the connectors tightly fitted to the board. I am a retired electronics engineer, with lots of experience soldering components to PC boards, so no problem there. Also, I did some research and found the Texas Instruments part for the comm driver IC. For those who are interested, the part number is 65LBC184, and these can be bought pretty cheaply on eBay, about $10 for a quantity of 50 chips. Also, the RJ-45 PCB jacks are about $1 each on eBay. One caveat, on the IC chips, be sure to order the ones for insertion into an IC socket and not the ones meant for PCB surface mount. I have placed an order for both the IC chips and the RJ-45 jacks, and am willing to share my stash with anyone who needs these replacement parts. The RJ-45 PCB jacks look to be pretty simple to replace, and the IC chip is socketed, so they just plug in.

I got 6 of the LOR controllers, along with two mDM_MP3 mini Directors, and a USB485B, and a box full of cables from a friend who moved to a smaller place and decided to give up the hobby. This is my first foray into this hobby, so I'll likely have many questions to ask of this group. I hope to catch some of the after-Christmas sales on lights and props and learn to build sequences, hoping to get a display up and running for Christmas 2022 !

 

By the way, these boards are stamped CTB16PCG3- V5 . Do I need to upgrade the firmware, and what version software should I purchase for use with these controllers?

Please disregard the info listed with my name in the block on the left of the page. I have not purchased any software yet, so the version is incorrect.

 

Thanks again for your help,

 

John

Edited November 9, 2021 by John Griffith
Left off some info

[k6ccc]

Welcome to the addiction.  Those LOR controllers are current hardware and likely do not need a firmware upgrade.  As for LOR software, since you are new, I highly recommend downloading the current version of the S5 software - which is 5.6.6 as I type this.  No point in you learning S4 only to update to S5 later (there is quite a bit of difference).  As for license level, the LOR software has several software levels that give increasing capabilities.  This page gives a good idea of the differences:

https://www1.lightorama.com/showtime-sequencing-suite/#levels

Note that you can download the software and play with it without a license, but the advanced features are disabled or limited, and you can not control lights without a license.

In real general terms, you write sequences on a PC, and can control a show either from a PC or using a Director.  To use a Director, you write a SD card on the PC with the show information and plug it into the Director.  The Mini Director you have is somewhat limited in that is has no clock, so if it's powered, it runs the show.  Other Directors have more capabilities.  Personally I have never run a show from a Director, but rather from a PC.  I would feel substantially limited trying to run my show from a Director.  I use E1.31 for substantial portions of my network which none of the Directors support.

 

Edited November 9, 2021 by k6ccc

[PhilMassey]

Just one addition to Jim's points. When you buy the software you get 5 seats so you can use the software on up to 5 machines at the same time.

[Orville]

8 hours ago, k6ccc said:

 I would feel substantially limited trying to run my show from a Director.  I use E1.31 for substantial portions of my network which none of the Directors support.

 

Excuse my ignorance here, Jim.  But this may have been explained somewhere,  I looked, but didn't find what I think I'm actually looking for.

And that is, what is the difference between "Enhanced" LOR, and an "E 1.31" network?  As I thought the E in that, meant enhanced.   So, if you don't mind, could you please explain the difference between those two {I do know the Enhanced for LOR is usually ELOR as opposed to the E1.31, but I thought they were close to being identical cousins}. 

So I'm asking just so I can be aware of what they are, as if the E1.31 is just another name for an enhanced network, then I'm sort of confused on why a Director would not be able to do, or use it.  I've never used E.31, and I know it's a protocol, but that's about the extent of my knowledge of it.

Thank you.

Edited November 10, 2021 by Orville

[k6ccc]

2 hours ago, Orville said:

And that is, what is the difference between "Enhanced" LOR, and an "E 1.31" network? 

For the benefit of others that may read this I am going to also explain non-enhanced LOR, and DMX.

LOR networks run on a single pair of wires using an electrical standard called RS-485.  Yes we run it normally over Cat-5 cable which has 4 pairs, but only one pair is used for data.  The RS-485 standard allows up to 32 devices on the network with as much as 4,000 feet of cable, and all of them are capable of sending and receiving data.  Because it is a single pair of wires, all data in all directions use that one pair of wires.  That means that only one device can send data at any given instant.  In order to make that work, a device has to listen on the network to determine if the network is idle before sending.  It also must pause on a rather regular basis to allow other devices to send data.  There is also part of the standard that allows detection that two devices actually did transmit at the same time.  In order to make that work, there is a lot of idle time.  For you old time networking types, this is a form of an "Aloha network".  On such a network, under normal circumstances, only about 30 to 40% of time is actually used for sending data.  Depending on the network speed, a LOR network can handle up to one thousand or so channels of lighting data (that number varies a lot depending on the complexity of the programming being sent).

In order to improve data throughput, LOR can up with an Enhanced version of the LOR network called Enhanced Light O Rama (or ELOR) networking.  In simple terms, the main thing that ELOR does is restrict transmission on the network to only one device.  That would be the Show Computer or Director.  All other devices on the network are not allowed to transmit.  That means that the sending device can essentially transmit data all the time without leaving gaps so that other devices can get a packet in.  This is why you can not detect input devices on an ELOR network - the input device is never allowed to send any data.  Depending on the network speed, a Enhanced LOR network can handle up to several thousand or so channels of lighting data (that number also varies a lot depending on the complexity of the programming being sent).

There is one more lighting data protocol that can be used over an RS-485 electrical network.  That is DMX.  DMX is a lighting standard that is heavily used in theatrical lighting.  That means that there are LOTS of devices out there that can be controlled via the DMX protocol - including most LOR controllers.  The data protocol in DMX is very different than the LOR data protocol, but they do both use the RS-485 electrical standard.  DMX often uses three or five conductor cable using XLR connectors, but a lot of newer DMX devices can also use Cat-5 cable with RJ-45 connectors.  The DMX standard allows no more than 512 channels of lighting data over a single cable.

The last one (and what Orville was asking about) is E1.31.  E1.31 is DMX encapsulated in Ethernet (what your computer LAN uses).  E1.31 has the advantage of speed.  If your computer LAN can handle gigabit, then you can send E1.31 at gigabit speed.  That allows a very large channel count over a single cable.  E1.31 being standard Ethernet can be connected to standard Ethernet switches and routers and can even be routed to other locations.  Although each LAN segment can only be about 100 meters long, the signal can be regenerated by going through a LAN switch, and as with standard Ethernet, can easily be carried over microwave radio or WiFi.  When run at gigabit, a single Ethernet cable carrying E1.31 can handle hundreds of thousands of channels.

One word of warning if you are using RS-485 based networking and E1.31 based networking.  You can not plug one in to the other. They are not compatible, and under the right circumstances, doing so can result in letting the magic smoke out of something.  For that reason, my standard recommendation is to use different color cable.  In my case, all my E1.31 cables are green and my RS-485 cables are purple.

 

[Orville]

Thanks for explaining all those differences Jim.  I'm sure that will definitely help a lot of folks understand those differences. 

It sure helped me to understand the differences and how each one functions to carry the data signal. 

I doubt I'll ever use anything but the basic ELOR protocol, as that is what I know the best, but sure helps to know and understand the differences between them.