1 string of lights has a mind of its own?!?!

Giles1

Giles
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Hi all,
It’s my second year, and once again the Pixels hate me! :(
As usual, I am having issues with setting up the addressing of my lights and then also to have xLights successfully talk to my controller. However, I will go back to that issue again tonight, but you will probably see some questions (pleas for help) on that issue in a couple of days, if I can’t fix it.

I now have an entirely new issue that I haven’t seen before. This year I’m using a Falcon F16V3 controller with Differential Receiver Boards (to minimise power injection). However, as soon as I power up the system, one string of lights comes on? Even when I run the Test pattern on the F16V3, that one string of lights still does its own thing. I thought it may have been a fault on the Differential Receiver Board, so as I still had a spare card, I swapped if over, but I still have the same issue with the new card.

Does anyone have any idea of what would cause this to occur and what I can do to fix it?
 

richardd

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Jan 3, 2011
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If by a mind of its own you mean in test mode its Blue when the rest or Red then Blue when the rest of Green then it an easy fix. You can change the RGB order on the Falcon. As far as staying on check the connection, grounding problem can cause that behavior
 

Giles1

Giles
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No, “by a mind of its own”, I mean that when the Falcon F16V3 controller is first powered-up (in Run Mode) and xLights isn’t even turned on, the one string of lights will show a paten (the lights change colour and sparkle). At the same time, all of the other lights will remain off (as I would expect).
 

richardd

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OK One more thing that could be causing that behavior, check to see if the controller port is configured for the correct protocol, i.e., WS2811 or WS2801, etc
 

MrX

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Sep 1, 2018
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If it is a structured pattern and not just random blinking and colour changing then I would think that it is unlikely to be a physical fault. Are you sure there are no other devices sending pixel data to the controller?

Edit: I have an element which is quite large and noticed that at one point in a sequence it would stop functioning, some pixels at the front of the line would be different colours. It came down to power injection, during a bright part of the sequence voltage must have dropped too low for the ones at the front to pass data correctly. Only a power off and on would correct the issue. I just moved it and in doing so removed the power injection so was running it with less power than normal. Put the power back like it was and all is good again.
 

fasteddy

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Try connecting this to another output to confirm that the output is good. Try to see if you can make the fault move, if you cant make the fault move and its always with these lights then a good chance is that you have a dodgy pixel or bad solder joint
 

Giles1

Giles
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Try connecting this to another output to confirm that the output is good. Try to see if you can make the fault move, if you cant make the fault move and its always with these lights then a good chance is that you have a dodgy pixel or bad solder joint
I checked to see if the 12V was running properly from that port and it seemed to be good. I had to replace the plug on these lights, as the original one had a problem, but I then hooked it up to my tester and it all seemed to run OK. I then plugged in another old set of lights into that port and that same issue happened with these lights as well, so it seems to be only on this port.
 

Giles1

Giles
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Thanks all for your help.
As usual, I'm also having some issues with the addressing, so I have attached some screenshots. So if you can see if something is causing this issue with this string of lights or my addressing issue, that would be great.
While I'm on this topic, how should I show a Spare port on the Falcon Controller? It seems to want something shown, but just allocating one null node to it doesn't look right.
Falcon Setup-2018.jpg xLight Setup2-2018.jpg xLight Setup-2018.jpg
 

Boof63

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Nov 7, 2011
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hi it looks like your universes are out of wack, the F3 has universe 20, while xlights has univ21 underlined, and in xl univ 20 is your icicles-m tree. does this help.cheers Boof63
 

Giles1

Giles
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Thanks Boof63 for spotting that. :)
Hopefully I've now sorted out my channel & Universe numbers (at least my xLights "Check Sequence" now isn't reporting any more Errors), so I'll keep my fingers crossed it all works next time I power it up.

However, can anyone advise how I should now show my spare ports on the Controller? In the Port Configuration page of my F16v3, I’ve currently shown the spare ports on Universe-1, but showed the Pixel count as “0” and in xLights I've shown Universe-1 as Deactivated. My show now starts on Universe-2, just to keep them separate?

Is that how I should be showing it?

Last year I only had a 4 port controller, so I didn’t have any spare ports to warry about.
 
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