Help! Beaglebone with HE123 flashing all lights

JCooper

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Jul 1, 2019
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Hi legends.

I have a Hanson HE123 with a Beaglebone black. Everything was running smoothly until yesterday, when all the lights went flashing (glitchy flashing).

The only thing i had done differently was let it run all day as the BBB has a issue booting sometimes. I thought it might have been a bit hot in the box so I turned it off and let it cool for a few hours.
I have tried rebooting, different power supplies to BBB, cleaning BBB, running in test mode.
One side is 5V and the other is 12V and both sides have are flashing.

Any other ideas? Would love to go live tonight! Thanks in advance.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Can you still access the BBB via the FPP webui?
 

JCooper

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yes. fully functional just flashing all pixels with a glitchy flash
 

JCooper

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i have tested the lights in 'display testing' page in fpp.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Can you give more insight into when they are flashing
-are they flashing at all times even when no sequence is running?
-are they flashing when running a sequence but not display testing?
-is the flashing the whole strings or specific pixels?
A video of the problem may help.
 

JCooper

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hey Al.
they are not flashing when no sequence is running. they flash when on sequence AND when display testing. So when a pixel is suppose to be 'ón' for sequence or testing it flashes on and off. This applies to all pixels in the display as they run off this board. basically the whole house flashes randomly on and off about 3 times a second and will give someone with epilepsy an epileptic fit. Thanks for your help Al. I will definatly get a video tonight if the problemis not resolved. Do you think it could be the HE123 board or BBB?
 

Kimbo3000

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Aug 9, 2016
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hey..
From my experience flashing pixels can happen due to several reasons, one of which being data from multiple sources at the same time. I still do this occassionally. When testing lights from xlights I forget to turn off the testing mode on the controller, or vice-versa.
Another can be due to cabling issues ie cable distances too long from the controller to the pixels.

Have you tested some spare pixels (ie an off cut from your display, or a new roll of strip) plugged directly into the controller, running on test mode?

Kimbo
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Without seeing what it looks like I'm not sure where to look. A couple things that I would try are to put it into display testing mode and then unplug the ethernet from the BBB to rule out the multiple source issue that Kimbo mentioned. Next I would also do some display testing and only turn on an element or so at a time and see if there is a link between any specific props and when the problem is occurring. As a final thing which you possibly should do first go and check that the channel, universe, output settings etc are correct and possibly do a re-save on them. It's possible that if things got too hot and there was a shutdown that something in the FPP config may have gotten corrupted.
 

JCooper

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Jul 1, 2019
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Thanks guys for the input. will test soon. I did have everything working 2 days ago. To add to the story, I have a Raspberry Pi 4 (with FPP) running as a primary and beaglebone in bridge mode. I tested the beaglebone in 'display testing' and it still happened so i was thinking the Pi 4 was not the issue.
I am going to try and screenshot the inputs and outputs and re do everything. I did have both running in master slave at one stage. maybe the issue.
 

JCooper

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I have some multi sync going on in the Raspberry Pi for the slave and master in FPP. Maybe that could be causing me issues.
 

JCooper

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Ok. so removing the raspberry Pi from the network and resetting the BBB has stopped the lights from 'flashing'. Could you guys please explain how to set up the raspberry pi to be the master and the BBB as a slave device? should the BBB be a slave or bridge? Also i am running xlights on the same laptop as the controllers. thanks guys for the support. Wife was stressing that peeps were coming for the viewing and lights would not be working!
 

JCooper

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Jul 1, 2019
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SO LIGHTS ARE WORKING AGAIN. Lesson learnt! make sure xlights is closed when running lights from the board. Im sure I had multi data sources. Laptop/Pi/BBB. Thanks heaps for the support you guys have given me again. I would be running around circles, pulling hair out or pulling christmas lights down! I will add a video of my first pixel setup tonight
 
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