Problems adding second controller

[Scott011422]

Hey guys

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around what's going on here. Last year i did a medium size mega tree for my first display to try out the whole light show thing. Worked fine. This year I'm expanding by adding Smart Floods around the house. These require a separate controller. if I set everything up like last year, things work great. if I connect the second board, things seem to be split between the two controllers. I cant seem to figure out exactly what is wrong. I suspect what is below. Ultimately i don't have a good enough grasp of getting the software and hardware linked together.

When I setup the mega tree prop I'm using a Pixie 8D. and the Prop Designer shows 8 channels that were filled in automatically. At the time the fields made sense. 8 ports on the Pixie 8D, 8 units on the channel setup. 100 leds per port = 300 channels per string. 300 circuits per channel on the channel setup. I think this is my problem.

 

As i am configuring my new controllers I'm learning about Unit Id's. My old Pixie 8D is unit 1, Always has been. I have the new controller setup as Unit 2 since its my second unit. Now as I'm trying to figure out my lighting problem Im realizing that the Unit ID in the channel setup may be the controller Unit Id. And this is where I loose it. There must be some wishy washy stuff here because i'm using 1-8 on the ID and I only have one unit. So how was that working? And I tried setting all 8 strings to unit one and that didn't work either. I cant wrap my brain around the relationship between the board assignments and the channel assignments in the software.

What is the relationship between the hardware and the channel setup? I'm not even sure what this is called to do a better search. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

 

The way I see it, I have two controllers, each with 8 ports. Each port can handle 200 leds which means 600 channels per port. If I want to hook up a candy cane to the second controller on port 5, what does that look like in the software for the 100led candy cane addressing?

 

Thanks for your time guys.

[Don]

Pixie 8 uses 8 ID's.

You would need to use 09 or higher.

[k6ccc]

A couple of things.  First of all, please update your forum profile to indicate your software license level.  Frequently questions ask depend on your license level.  If you update your profile, we don't have to ask.  However since that data is not there, what is your license level?

Second is a terminology thing.  The eight outputs from a Pixie 8 controller are NOT channels.  They are ports or outputs and each one will have many channels.  I think part of your confusion is that you are using "channel" in places where it does not apply.

As Don said, the Pixie 8 uses eight IDs so if you have it configured as Unit ID 01, each port uses a separate Unit ID, so it will use Unit IDs 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, and 08.  Remember that Unit IDs count in hexadecimal, so if you were to add a second Pixie 8 and assign it as Unit ID 09, it would use Unit IDs 09, 0A, 0B, 0C, 0D, 0E, 0F, and 10.

45 minutes ago, Scott011422 said:

If I want to hook up a candy cane to the second controller on port 5, what does that look like in the software for the 100led candy cane addressing?

Assuming the base ID of the second Pixie 8 is 09 (as Don mentioned and my example above) Port 5 on that second Pixie 8 would be Unit ID 0D, and 100 pixels would be channels 1 - 300.

 

[Scott011422]

K6ccc

I'll have to get that updated then. I'm at PRO.

I figured as much. In the LOR Manuals they seem to like changing the names of the things they are talking about. In one section its 3 channels per led, then the next that line item is a channel and the actual channels are circuits. Even if it was wrong, a little consistence would be nice.

This is what I'm looking for! Why is this so hard to find? I'll try this out tomorrow but makes total sense to what I'm seeing happen. They really need to make that "Controller ID" in the hardware setup. So whatever the hardware Unit ID is, That's also the ID of the first port on that controller . And each port is a "Unit ID". So if I had 3, 3 port controllers:

Unit 1

          Port 1 =  Unit ID 1     1-300 Circuits for 100 leds   (Yes channels, but the program says circuits)

          Port 2 =  Unit ID 2    1-300 Circuits for 100 leds   (Yes channels, but the program says circuits)

          Port 3 =  Unit ID 3    1-300 Circuits for 100 leds   (Yes channels, but the program says circuits)

Unit 4

          Port 1 = Unit ID 4     ***And so on***

          Port 2 = Unit ID 5

          Port 3 = Unit ID 6

Unit 7

          Port 1 = Unit ID 7

          Port 2 = Unit ID 8

          Port 3 = Unit ID 9

 

 

Does this look correct?

 

Many Thanks!

 

 

[TheDucks]

3 minutes ago, Scott011422 said:

K6ccc

I'll have to get that updated then. I'm at PRO.

I figured as much. In the LOR Manuals they seem to like changing the names of the things they are talking about. In one section its 3 channels per led, then the next that line item is a channel and the actual channels are circuits. Even if it was wrong, a little consistence would be nice.

This is what I'm looking for! Why is this so hard to find? I'll try this out tomorrow but makes total sense to what I'm seeing happen. They really need to make that "Controller ID" in the hardware setup. So whatever the hardware Unit ID is, That's also the ID of the first port on that controller . And each port is a "Unit ID". So if I had 3, 3 port controllers:

Unit 1

          Port 1 =  Unit ID 1     1-300 Circuits for 100 leds   (Yes channels, but the program says circuits)

          Port 2 =  Unit ID 2    1-300 Circuits for 100 leds   (Yes channels, but the program says circuits)

          Port 3 =  Unit ID 3    1-300 Circuits for 100 leds   (Yes channels, but the program says circuits)

Unit 4

          Port 1 = Unit ID 4     ***And so on***

          Port 2 = Unit ID 5

          Port 3 = Unit ID 6

Unit 7

          Port 1 = Unit ID 7

          Port 2 = Unit ID 8

          Port 3 = Unit ID 9

Does this look correct?

Many Thanks!

Yes for mythical 3 port controllers

Just remember: The next controller is 0A 

 

[k6ccc]

7 minutes ago, Scott011422 said:

I'll have to get that updated then. I'm at PRO.

You're the one that updates it.  In the upper right corner, find your User ID and notice that it has a dropdown.  One of the options is "Profile"  Select Profile and then again, near the upper right corner is "Edit Profile.

TheDucks beat me to the rest.

 

[Scott011422]

19 minutes ago, TheDucks said:

Yes for mythical 3 port controllers

Just remember: The next controller is 0A 

 

TheDucks

I didn't have Hex chart with me, so kept it simple. Wanted to show progression. 3 worked. LOL.

 

 

Thanks again for the help