Adding Generic Artnet Device

[sackboy]

HI There,

Just up front (so I can avoid the passive agressive slamming now) I have made the horrible mistake of buying a Generic ArnNet device from AliExpress.

Aside from needing special software from the supplier to change the I.P address, it has been a hell of a terrible experience to setup.

I have tried to set this device up in Xlights, but from what I can tell I must have something wrong becuase after I upload my show to my FPP (Raspberry Pi 4) I get the following errors -
"Cannot Ping ArtNet Channel Data Target 192.168.0.12 Ethernet_ " (I know the I.P is correct and pings).

Can someone please tell me if this device should work with Xlights, and if so what is the correct configuration?

12CH Artnet TTL SPI LED Controller MADRIX Online SD Card Offline

12CH Artnet Pixel LED Controller Support MADRIX Online and SD Card Offline For DMX512 TTL SPI Addressasble LED Lights.

www.superlightingled.com

https://www.superlightingled.com/PDF/ARTNET%20Controller/GC-6612pro-EN.pdf

Thanks in Advance.

 

[MikeKrebs]

When you say it pings, can you ping it from FPP?

 

[sackboy]

When you say it pings, can you ping it from FPP?

I am pinging from Windows 10. Where do I find the ping option in FPP?

 

[Skymaster]

It's entirely possible that the device does not respond to ICMP and therefore the "Monitor" checkbox on the ArtNet output within FPP needs to be unticked.
That'll force it "always online" and the IP will be sent the ArtNet data whether it's detected as online or not.

 

[Skymaster]

Can someone please tell me if this device should work with Xlights, and if so what is the correct configuration?

Anything that supports DMX, ArtNet, E1.31/SACN, DDP should have no issues to work with xLights/FPP.
The question is "can I use the automatic configuration" which the answer is likely no. You'll need to manually configure your endpoints, IP addresses, universes/channels etc

 

[MikeKrebs]

What is the IP of FPP? How are FPP and the Artnet device connected?

There are two ways to manually ping. One, on the output config page, far right of the controllers, click the ping button. The other is via the Help/SSH_Shell menu option. Once in the shell login in using fpp and falcon. then ping just like on windows.

 

[Notenoughlights]

It looks like one of those devices designed to play back files from an SD card, presumably the network port is for configuration only or uploading files to the card. I could be wrong here.

Edit: Yes I am wrong, these are similar in function to this type of controller https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006093208899.html? H807SA
I had an issue when trying to work out someone elses setting on these, universes started at 0 with artnet and not 1 like sACN/e1.31, just make sure you keep that in mind.

 

[sackboy]

HI All, Thanks for chiming in.

There were a lot of questions, so I will try to answer one by one as best I can.

1. What is the IP of FPP? How are FPP and the Artnet device connected?
Anwers - The FPP has a eth0 address of 192.168.0.10. these are connected via Hardwired ethernet.
The Artnet Device has an Ip address of 192.168.0.8.

After a LOT of mucking around, I am convinced that this POS controller has an extremely limited sub net mask.
What it is, I do not know!

I had to keep lowering the last octet on the FPP and Artnet Controller until the FPP could finally ping it from the GUI!

I am still getting similur errors, but it is progress. I have let the supplier know that their POS hardware should not have hardware limitations when configuring I.P addresses.

Any device I have ever worked with allows the I.P, Subnet mask and Gateway to be changed. This only allows for the I.P address only to be changed after I was begging for a solution to do this.

I can also view this device in Madrix 5 and the Arnnet Channels do appear.

Not there yet!
*Update before posting, lost the damn ping from FPP to Artnet again!

I hate being the Guinea Pig, but hopefully this helps other people in the future. More testing to come.

 

[sackboy]

Forgot to mention, I turned off the monitoring option. Made no difference at this point.

I'm annoyed that the only LAN communication I get is when this POS is hardwired to my PC directly.

 

[Skymaster]

The device may only have a very small arp cache as well. So once accessed from IPx, which gets cached, IPy and IPz may not be able to communicate.

Any device I have ever worked with allows the I.P, Subnet mask and Gateway to be changed. This only allows for the I.P address only to be changed after I was begging for a solution to do this.

Not all devices support routed communication, for example Advatek controllers require everything to be local; they have no concept of a gateway.
Subnet mask may be assumed from the deprecated class based addressing standards- ie first octet 1-127 = /8, 128-191 = /16, 192-223 = /24
The subnet mask, however, shouldnt matter for ArtNet communication to work. It would only be used if the device needed to communicate back to the network/source; and given ArtNet is UDP, and a unidirectional protocol, that shouldn't happen. So the ping may be a red-herring.

Try disabling the ping/monitor in FPP, and sending Artnet data from both xLights and FPP independently.
Check that the source interface is set correctly in FPP.
I notice you have this set in xLights; this is unnecessary unless you have multiple NICs, and it can be specified in the xLights preferences to take effect for all controllers.

An unrelated issue is that your channels per universe setting in xLights is set to 170. The device supports 170 pixels per universe, which at 3 channels each, equals 510 channels.

 

[sackboy]

It looks like one of those devices designed to play back files from an SD card, presumably the network port is for configuration only or uploading files to the card. I could be wrong here.

Edit: Yes I am wrong, these are similar in function to this type of controller https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006093208899.html? H807SA
I had an issue when trying to work out someone elses setting on these, universes started at 0 with artnet and not 1 like sACN/e1.31, just make sure you keep that in mind.

Thanks for that, how did this device workout for you in the end? The device I purchased has major restrictions with IP addressing. Did you get yours working correctly?

 

[Notenoughlights]

Thanks for that, how did this device workout for you in the end? The device I purchased has major restrictions with IP addressing. Did you get yours working correctly?

I was sending data to I think 12 of them without issue straight from xlights.

 

[sackboy]

I was sending data to I think 12 of them without issue straight from xlights.

Is this device worth trialling for the price? Do you have a snap shot of your Xlights configuration for it?

 

[Notenoughlights]

Is this device worth trialling for the price? Do you have a snap shot of your Xlights configuration for it?

I didn't buy it, the customer never collected it from us so it was going to get dumped, and got given to me. I wouldn't buy one personally and would stick to the known controllers.

Here is the xlights setup for this particular controller I used.
512 channels per universe as the leds were RGBW

 

[sackboy]

The device may only have a very small arp cache as well. So once accessed from IPx, which gets cached, IPy and IPz may not be able to communicate.


Not all devices support routed communication, for example Advatek controllers require everything to be local; they have no concept of a gateway.
Subnet mask may be assumed from the deprecated class based addressing standards- ie first octet 1-127 = /8, 128-191 = /16, 192-223 = /24
The subnet mask, however, shouldnt matter for ArtNet communication to work. It would only be used if the device needed to communicate back to the network/source; and given ArtNet is UDP, and a unidirectional protocol, that shouldn't happen. So the ping may be a red-herring.

Try disabling the ping/monitor in FPP, and sending Artnet data from both xLights and FPP independently.
Check that the source interface is set correctly in FPP.
I notice you have this set in xLights; this is unnecessary unless you have multiple NICs, and it can be specified in the xLights preferences to take effect for all controllers.

An unrelated issue is that your channels per universe setting in xLights is set to 170. The device supports 170 pixels per universe, which at 3 channels each, equals 510 channels.

Hi Skymaster.

Turning off Monitoring was the big clue. I forget to mention that my Pixel lights have not arrived yet, so I am testing a bit blindly.

I have setup this controllor as a slave, and now when I run a Playlist on FPP, can I see the LED Indicator flashing on the front of the unit, stopping the sequence stops the flashing.

This device is useless at being pinged, and for whatever reason can't be configured outside of a direct cable connection.

I have asked the manufacturer for details on ICMP. Not having it seems to cause issue.

This unit must be receiving some extremely Raw data as there are no open ports when I ran advanced port scanner.