Missing lights or additional lights on with 6th song sequence added...

[blueirocguy]

Hi Guys,
I'm running an Mp3 show director with ver 2.6 software and 90 chan worth of lights. Today, I added a 6th light sequence and when I watched it playing outside, I've got some lights on and off here and there in just about all the songs now. I grabbed a different SD card and put the original 5 songs back on there to see if that changed anything and it still ended up missing stuff in the same parts of the songs. The sequences are still correct and run fine in the editor, but something seems to have gotten lost in the translation to the SD card and when it's run by the mp3 director. I'm scratching my head on what needs to be looked at next, as everything was working fine before I added that last song. The sixth song used the same number of channels as the last two I did and all of them I've programmed. Thanks for any info if anyone has had a similar problem!

[cmoore60]

Was the MP3 in your sicth song sequence 128 constant bit rate?

Just a stab here, but worth asking.

Chuck

[blueirocguy]

Thanks for the reply. I've checked all my files again and all were ripped at 128k and then run thru audacity to make sure they would work with lor. I'll see how the show works again tonight, it ran fine with the laptop plugged into it running single songs today. I may just have to muddle through with it this season and look into getting an old laptop to power the show for next year. I reset the mp3 show director board today and reloaded all 6 songs again. The board may have gone bad, but haven't had any problems with it the past 3 years?! Will find out soon one way or the other!

[Dennis Cherry]

How did you add the sixth song to the SD card?

[blueirocguy]

I added it by using the hardware utility and generating a new show. I only have one show on the sd card. But even generating the original show of 5 songs gave me the same effects that weren't there before and that show was put on a different sd card. Tonight's show seems a little worse than last night. You definitely notice the missing lights on the megatree, or added ones for that matter.

[Dennis Cherry]

OK, that looks good.

Now the next questions:

Are the Cat5 cables factory assembled or hand made by you?

Did you check the Cat 5 cable plugs and jacks for any rust? Some users have had this problem.

When creating the show did you make sure the Lock Step box was checked?

[blueirocguy]

Thanks for the reply, Dennis. I had checked the lock step and the cat5 cables came assembled from lor. The connections all looked great (I tend to cover the boxes in garbage bags for a little extra protection from rain and snow.).
I figured box #1 might be the issue as the lights were giving me the most problem on that range of channels. Disconnected it and brought it into the house to check it over. Of course it worked fine, so I went and hooked it back up and then decided to check each box by playing a song and then plugging the next one in and so on till all were daisy-chained together again. I hoped that would find the culprit, but after plugging them all in, I had no luck in finding anything wrong. But the show works perfectly again!?! I had reset the power cords a couple of times before this, but that hadn't helped. Somehow disconnecting and reconnecting the cat 5 cables fixed it?!? I keep the boxes dry and the connectors were all very bright, so maybe it was some stray electrons trapped in a box somewhere.... I guess I should go outside and look for some UFO's overhead next!

Thanks to all who looked at this thread, the show's back on!

[Dennis Cherry]

blueirocguy wrote:

Thanks for the reply, Dennis. I had checked the lock step and the cat5 cables came assembled from lor. The connections all looked great (I tend to cover the boxes in garbage bags for a little extra protection from rain and snow.).
I figured box #1 might be the issue as the lights were giving me the most problem on that range of channels. Disconnected it and brought it into the house to check it over. Of course it worked fine, so I went and hooked it back up and then decided to check each box by playing a song and then plugging the next one in and so on till all were daisy-chained together again. I hoped that would find the culprit, but after plugging them all in, I had no luck in finding anything wrong. But the show works perfectly again!?! I had reset the power cords a couple of times before this, but that hadn't helped. Somehow disconnecting and reconnecting the cat 5 cables fixed it?!? I keep the boxes dry and the connectors were all very bright, so maybe it was some stray electrons trapped in a box somewhere.... I guess I should go outside and look for some UFO's overhead next!

Thanks to all who looked at this thread, the show's back on!

What is looks like is possibly condensation.

It is recommended to keep the controllers powered on at all the time. This will generate a slight amount of heat, off the transformer, to keep the internal works from getting any condensation. However, if you seal the controller in a plastic bag then you can trap some water and possibly give yourself that problem. Some air circulation would be my recommendation.

Glad your back up running again.