Long Fade in/out issues

[Guest guest]

Has anyone experienced a flash during long fade in/fade out commands? In some of my musical sequences I have 5 to 7 second fades (like big pads on keyboard for you midi keyboard buffs) and in my "filler" sequence I have something like

15 second fade in Unit 01.1 thru Unit 01.8 (8 Channels of Red)

then

120 seconds of ON (same channels) (acutally a 1 sec loop x 120)

then

15 second fade out in Unit 01.1 thru Unit 01.8 while at the same time Unit 01.9 thru Unit 01.16 (8 Channels are Green) are fading in.

This set of events occurs to produce a red tree, green tree, gold tree, Red/Green, Red/Gold, Green/Gold, Red/Green/Gold.

The flash seems to occur in about the same vacinity regardless of the direction of fade. I applied the current HW updates CTB16B_V102 and I'm on V1.5 of the Software. If its the nature of the beast I can live with it. If I can sequence around it, I'm open to find out how.

Thanks for looking ..

-- Bob

[Guest guest]

Bob,

I have definately seen it and it drives me nuts! I've also noticed that we aren't the only ones. I've seen it show up in a couple of the LOR display videos that have been posted.

Scott Hardin
Columbus, IN

[Guest guest]

Scott,

I was just thinking .. maybe if we changed the fade parms. I'm using the default 0 to 100. I wonder if started and ended at say .. 25 ... could we work around the point of flash ??

-- Bob

[Guest guest]

Don't know, but it def is widespread. Almost like a quick fade, stop, and then fade on down. Maybe I will try to change the fade rate.

[Guest guest]

Might very well be that we could program around it Bob. I haven't done much testing to nail it down. I know it's someplace in that 15% range though.

I'll do some playing after the first of the year and let you know. Can't really test now as the traffic is really piling up in front of the house and I don't have a spare controller to play with.

Maybe Dan can offer some suggestions as well.

Take Care!
Scott Hardin

[Guest guest]

There was a problem with the CTB16D where it would have flicker in the fade at 20% to 30% intensity. We made a change to the firmware which I thougt had corrected it.

If you are all using the latest firmware and are seeing this then obviously it is not totally repaired. This is something that we should be able to fix with new firmware.

Bob, how many and what type of lights do you have on the contoller?

[Guest guest]

Hi Dan,

I have two if the 16D controllers and I'm using the GE "String-A-Long" 100 light Miniature light sets (33' lighted length) They are rated at 40.8 watts per string with 4" spacing.

On Board #1 I have 8 channels of RED (Channel 1 - 8) and 8 channels of GREEN (Channel 9-16). Then on board #2, I have 8 channels of AMBER (Channel 1-8)

Currently channel 9-16 on board 2 are idle.

That was a long way to say there is a single 100 light string on each of 24 channels (2400 lights). Each channel is only seeing a .34amp load. Asumming the load is increasing or decreasing as the fade moves up or down, could this be something similar to those folks running LED lights and not drawing enough to load the output side of the triacs?

I downloaded the current firmware V102 and it installed without incident to both cards. However I'm not sure I know were to read the current HW version. When I search for HW in the HW utility it returns 2 boards as v2.0? The software is at v1.5

Thank you for looking Dan.

-- Bob

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the info Bob.... One last inconvenience;)

Could you send me the sequence you use, I will set everything up exactly as you have it and play around with it.... info@lightorama.com

Thanks