Major Problems!

[Guest guest]

Hi there.

I've been having issues with my LOR boards this year. First of all, on my 16D I unplugged 8 channels and upon plugging it in again, the darn thing has a mind of its own. I had to set the address to 0 to reset it. That's fine, unless your boxes are on a snow covered roof like mine.

2nd. I just got a new 16D board which came with the new firmware. I have 11 controllers running, (9) 16-chaneel and (2) 8-channel. For some reason when the new CTB16D is in the circuit, it messes up all the other controllers up and downstream from it. When I bypass it, the other controllers worked fine...well they did. I tried that board again today and as a result (after removing the new frimware board), my 8 channel controllers no longer connect..they simply flash.....and I hadn't even touched the communication wires to them. I even ran a known good wire to the 8-channel boards and still nothing (yet the 16 channels work)...well, almost. Now LOR sees one of my 16 channel boxes on the roof, but doesn't control it...absolutely no control...even in the hardware utility.

I'm tellin ya, I've been tearing my hair out here for the past 2 days...just about ready to solely go back to my DIO cards.....thank goodness I'm still running 1/2 the display those.....!

Do you think having firmware version 1 on (8) boards and Firmware version 2 on (1) board would cause any of this???

If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I'm extremely frustrated as of now.

Thanks

[Guest guest]

I know NOTHING of LOR or of anythign re: animated lighting BUT I do know that when I'm networking computers if they are not all speaking the same language something goes loopy. So I would say, the 2 different firmwares may be your problem. Just my 1cent....
Greg

[Guest guest]

I had a controller on the roof the first year I did LOR. I had trouble with my com cables that year (not an LOR problem) and it was crazy trying to get to that box.

Ever since, I ran cords up to the roof from an accessible box. Doesn't help you this year, but something to consider for the future...

Good luck on the actual problem, sorry no ideas there.

-Tim

[Guest guest]

What version of LOR software are you running. The newer firmware requires LOR software version 1.5. That's my guess at your problem. I'd also upgrade the firmware on all your other boards when you have time.

[Guest guest]

I've upgraded to LOR 1.5

I'm going to try updating the firmware tonight after the show. Problem is I've been working 6am-6pm the last 3 days so I can't get time to do the firmware updates without stopping the show.

Oh, by the way.....my 16-channel board on the roof magically started working again last night after about 2 hours of doing nothing....weird (and yes, power and communication were always fine because the board would show up in my hardware utility).

[Guest guest]

It does sound frustrating.... It seems we need to come up with some better tools/procedures to diagonse these problems.

In a lot of cases it is bad cables/connectors...

Of course it can be a bad controller BUT unless that controller has some how gone into a mode where it is transmitting then it should not affect other controllers in the network.

You said that your CTB-08s stopped responding even when directly connected to the PC is that still the case?

Although it is a hastle I recommend getting all units up to the same version of firmware and if possible reset each of them.

One other thing you should not do... When disconnecting cables to try and debug things Do not disconnect the wire going into a controller (from another controller).... A comm wire (Cat 5 or Phone) not terminated at the end of a chain can cause lots of noise and confusion on the network.