running 2 LOR CTB16pc controllers on LOR dongle in xlights

E

everettdale

Apprentice elf
Joined
Nov 18, 2022
Messages
66
I'm getting there.

I have my LOR controllers attached to my laptop via the LOR usb dongle and I can add one controller and get it to work properly. but if I add the second controller I the com port line goes red.

Both controllers are on com port 3 and work with the LOR hardware set up program.
the controllers are correctly IDed, as 1 and 2 (inLOR and Xlights)
If I delete the second controller in xlights the first one works fine.

what am I doing wrong or missing?
 
You probably need to post screenshots of what you're doing. I suspect that you are adding 2 usb LOR controllers on the setup page whereas you only need the 1 and the number of channels being 32 (or higher).
 
AAH said:
You probably need to post screenshots of what you're doing. I suspect that you are adding 2 usb LOR controllers on the setup page whereas you only need the 1 and the number of channels being 32 (or higher).
Click to expand...
Hmm. I'll give that a shot. If it doesn't work I'll send some screen shots.
 
AAH said:
You probably need to post screenshots of what you're doing. I suspect that you are adding 2 usb LOR controllers on the setup page whereas you only need the 1 and the number of channels being 32 (or higher).
Click to expand...
Alright I tried setting it up as a single controller with 32 channels and I can't get the second controller to operate. I'm starting to suspect that Xlights just won't let me use 2 CBT16PC controllers on a single port (via USB dongle) for some reason. It see it as a conflict. What screen shots are you interested in?
 
Well I didn't want to send you 32+ images, so here are the controller settings tab with each of the controllers selected. And 2 of the layout tab with one model selected from each controller. Everything else is just duplicates with the appropriate settings changed.

All of the strings on controller 1 work as expected, but none of the strings on controller 2 will light up.

Thanks for looking.

Capture1.JPG
Capture2.JPG
Capture3.JPG
Capture4.JPG
 
I think what you are missing is that you add multiple devices under the 1 universe ID so in your scenario delete the 2 universe and add the second controller to the 1 universe. in effect each com port is a single universe with multiple controllers.
lor.jpg
 
1675985141661.png
Screenshot has solved your issue. You only want 1 usb device added but with the LOR optimised protocol you need to select 2 devices and select what type they are. Screenshot shows (kinda) what you need to do to fix up your problem.
 
I used LoR with the dongle in 2021, but not in 2022 because I started running them off DMX.

@AAH's method may work, but I struggled horribly with it in my show... the LOR devices kept missing the effects. I discovered later that this was a bug in xLights LOR Optimized: https://github.com/smeighan/xLights/commit/e7658d44d95c7c55c9a704854ffbf90a323ca0b1. That got fixed, but I never tried the fix.

Hopefully it will work for you, but if not, you could also try what I resorted to... pre-creating the 256 LOR channels on one controller. (This had the benefit of minimizing controller changes and re-renders also.):
LorCtrlr.png

Then I referenced each channel based on the (LoR Unit ID - 1) * 16 + channel number on the unit. For example the front porch lights were controlled by Unit 3, this section was on plug #7, so the channel was #39 (3-1)*16+7 = 39.

LorLayout.png

I'm sure I got this strategy on the internet somewhere but forget where. Anyway good luck with LoR optimized, and if it doesn't work try this instead.
 
AAH said:
View attachment 22487
Screenshot has solved your issue. You only want 1 usb device added but with the LOR optimised protocol you need to select 2 devices and select what type they are. Screenshot shows (kinda) what you need to do to fix up your problem.
Click to expand...


This worked. Thank you.

One thing I would like to point out if anyone else is having this problem. I actually tried to do this at one point, set up a single universe and set the devices to 2 etc. but it didn't work. I think it was because I had set it up differently, and changed things to theses settings. When I did that the second controller never showed up. Maybe the program got confused? But when I set this up from scratch (new directory etc.) it worked. Not sure why that would be but was definitely part of my frustration.

Sometimes you just need to start from scratch.

Thanks to everyone who helped out.
 
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