Random Channels Turning Off

[toddm1919]

I am migrating from s4 to s6.  I have a 2 minute animation sequence that loops to Halloween.  There are times that channels will randomly turn off (the time from starting the show until turn off varies) and never come back on.  They can even be different channels on the same controller.  The only way to get them to work again is to shut down the control panel and run the show on demand.  
Has anyone else experienced this?  Any ideas on a fix?

[Jeremiah Ackermann]

Just a few questions to make sure I understand what is going on.

The animation sequence itself has loops or is it just continuously looping in the show player (single sequence in a show’s animation section)? Do you happen to have the “turn used lights off at end of each sequence” checked?

Is the show running from a schedule or are you always running it on demand? I can understand restarting control panel when the issue is seen, just didn’t know why show on demand is being used after the restarting the app.

For the channels having an issue, are they just turned on at some point in the sequence and then never turned off or do they have many on/off or fades on those channels?

 

If a channel is only changed once and there happens to be a communication issue, then the channel may be kept in the wrong state as the player doesn’t keep resending the same data. There are workarounds to recover, but they may be different depending on answers to my first questions.

[toddm1919]

It is a 2 minute animation running in the background section.  I place it in the background, because on Halloween night, I have 4 lightning sequences that I run in the animation section.  
I do not have the “turn used lights off at end of each sequence” checked.

It is running from a schedule.  Since the schedule seems to have the issue, I run it on demand to “fix” the issue.

I will have to get back to you on the last question regarding the channels being always on.   I know many of them are, I don’t recall if the ones that change intensity are affected.  I am aware of the work around to change the intensity to 99% every so often, but that would still mean that those channels would remain off until the next 99% intensity data was sent.  Obviously I would prefer it to work as intended.

 

 

[bdwillie]

Toddm1919,

 

I nearly pulled whats left of my hair out with this same problem.  I finally did get it to work.  Had to go look for the thread.  Hope ya get it fixed!

 

 

[Jeremiah Ackermann]

22 hours ago, toddm1919 said:

is running from a schedule.  Since the schedule seems to have the issue, I run it on demand to “fix” the issue.

This is the odd part, as a show plays the same whether from schedule or on demand.

 

I haven’t seen this issue for a few years, but I run my AC controllers in DMX mode from a Falcon rather than directly using LOR/ELOR.

I definitely had seen random channels stay off or stay on before switching to DMX (always included an all off in show shutdown as work around to make sure all lights were off). Not sure if that is a solution you could try easily.

The level intensity trick can work, but also feels like it’s just masking an issue. Even if there was a COMM issue/hiccup, if the data was periodically retransmitted, it could eliminate this intensity trick and could be why I don’t see it using DMX mode.

[k6ccc]

On 10/8/2023 at 8:25 PM, toddm1919 said:

It is a 2 minute animation running in the background section.  I place it in the background, because on Halloween night, I have 4 lightning sequences that I run in the animation section.  
I do not have the “turn used lights off at end of each sequence” checked.

Since you have both the animation in the background section and the the lighting sequences in the animation section playing at the same time, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that the background sequence and the animation sequences are using different previews and that there are ZERO channels that appear in both previews.  Having the same channels in the two different previews (or trying to use the same preview) will do exactly what you are describing.

 

[bdwillie]

On 10/10/2023 at 12:14 PM, k6ccc said:

Since you have both the animation in the background section and the the lighting sequences in the animation section playing at the same time, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that the background sequence and the animation sequences are using different previews and that there are ZERO channels that appear in both previews.  Having the same channels in the two different previews (or trying to use the same preview) will do exactly what you are describing.

 

Absolutely checked for this MANY MANY times last year.  double, triple, and quadruple checked. Trust me, been there done that.  drove me nuts to the point of creating new previews.  Can't remember what finally did it, I think that the 100% on being changed to 100 down to 95 back to 100 ramp helped the most.