HELP! Hansen USB-DMX DONGLE with FPP

[bngoofy]

I really need a second set of eyes on this as I seam to be missing something and I have been struggling with this issue for a good time.

I have 3 snow blowers with 3 channels each. ID 11, 22, 33

I purchased a Hasen DMX-USB Dongle and it works perfectly on my PC.

I plugged it into the Pi and in the FPP UI Output/Other I added it as shown below. No output to the snow blowers.

I read in a post that I needed to add a controller in xLights as FPP and upload it. Tried this and no change.

What a I missing?

 

[AAH]

Having a dongle on a Pi in FPP is actually not that easy a process in Xlights. I think that the main problem that you have is that in FPP you have the dongle starting on channel 1 and not channel 7142.
I would probably have the "dongle" setup set as an ethernet controller with DPP on the FPP IP of 192.168.2.207. Uploading the channels to the Pi would then kind of work and you would still have the dongle setup on the "other" tab.
You may be better off with the Pi configured as an FPP player only.
I have a dongle on my master player and have a fake e1.31 controller setup for it. This allows the FPP connect to upload channels to my Pi and in FPP I assign an opendmx dongle similar to what you have done. I manually turn off the e1.31 output to the controller that doesn't exist.
I'd love a better option but this is how I've managed to get it working.

 

[Juddge]

RPI-28D+ get one of these and a PI and then you have 4 DPI outputs and DMX out without the hassle - hansonelectronics sells these, they are far more superior to the usb dmx dongle

 

[AAH]

I actually use a usb dmx dongle (which is no longer available) that has electrical isolation and I'll probably continue using that despite the fact that I have access to a few rpi-28d+'s and PLENTY of other boards with dmx outputs.

 

[Skymaster]

For DMX, I do something simple - it's an ESPixelStick with RS485 output. It's defined to receive 1 universe of E1.31, and map it to the DMX output.
You could exactly the same with FPP, whether it be with a USB DMX, a PiHat, or any other custom solution.
E1.31 (no DDP) is important here, because of channel numbers; you dont need to be concerned with it.
It's a manual configure within the controller (which is really easy), and then set-and-forget.

In xLights, you just use the 'serial' output for the E1.31 controller.
'You NEVER need to push from xLights. Because who cares. You dont need the models on the controller, and it's a 1 universe in to 1 universe out, the entire block of 512 channels is always allocated and sent.


xLights config - note I am using universe 1, and the full 512ch universe is sent.



Visualiser config - my dumb string lights



FPP Show Player - This gets its output config with the channel map from FPP Connect.



ESPixelStick config - Maps the single universe across to the physical output

 

[bngoofy]

Having a dongle on a Pi in FPP is actually not that easy a process in Xlights. I think that the main problem that you have is that in FPP you have the dongle starting on channel 1 and not channel 7142.
I would probably have the "dongle" setup set as an ethernet controller with DPP on the FPP IP of 192.168.2.207. Uploading the channels to the Pi would then kind of work and you would still have the dongle setup on the "other" tab.
You may be better off with the Pi configured as an FPP player only.
I have a dongle on my master player and have a fake e1.31 controller setup for it. This allows the FPP connect to upload channels to my Pi and in FPP I assign an opendmx dongle similar to what you have done. I manually turn off the e1.31 output to the controller that doesn't exist.
I'd love a better option but this is how I've managed to get it working.
View attachment 30545

Tried this with channel 7142 as the start, nothing.

Having a dongle on a Pi in FPP is actually not that easy a process in Xlights. I think that the main problem that you have is that in FPP you have the dongle starting on channel 1 and not channel 7142.
I would probably have the "dongle" setup set as an ethernet controller with DPP on the FPP IP of 192.168.2.207. Uploading the channels to the Pi would then kind of work and you would still have the dongle setup on the "other" tab.
You may be better off with the Pi configured as an FPP player only.
I have a dongle on my master player and have a fake e1.31 controller setup for it. This allows the FPP connect to upload channels to my Pi and in FPP I assign an opendmx dongle similar to what you have done. I manually turn off the e1.31 output to the controller that doesn't exist.
I'd love a better option but this is how I've managed to get it working.
View attachment 30545

Tried setting the start channel to 7142, Nope!
Tried setting up Pi configured as an FPP player only using your example. Not sure what Fake E1.31 refers to. Is it the USBDongle? Can you elaborate?

 

[AAH]

Tried setting up Pi configured as an FPP player only using your example. Not sure what Fake E1.31 refers to. Is it the USBDongle? Can you elaborate?

On my Xlights screenshot above I have a rpi-28D+ configured on 10.0.0.190 and labeled as usb dongle. I assign all my dmx props to the serial port on the controller. When xlights pushes the data to FPP it creates an output to an E1.31 controller on that IP and has all the right channel data. In FPP I have an open dmx dongle with that same channel range. I use universe 1 and channels 1-512 for ease of not confusing me. When running FPP will output to the open dmx dongle as well as trying to output to my fake 10.0.0.190 rpi-28d+. You can go into fpp outputs and turn off the enable to that E1.31 output if you want. Each time you do a FPP upload it will turn it back on again. If you don't disable it all that happens is that FPP will pop up a warning that it can't reach the controller.

 

[Skymaster]

You can go into fpp outputs and turn off the enable to that E1.31 output if you want. Each time you do a FPP upload it will turn it back on again. If you don't disable it all that happens is that FPP will pop up a warning that it can't reach the controller.

If you change the controller definition of the fake one to "xLights Only" rather than "Active" it'll set the E1.31 output to disabled by default

 

[bngoofy]

Ereka!! I got this.

Thanks for the help it really narrowed down the issue foe me.

Got this working with a Hybrid of your help. (Keep in mind that I as using the Hansen USB Dongle and not the PI Hat)

I created a USB controller (see below) that does not upload to the FPP as it's a place holder as you suggested but making sure that "Not Connected" was selected on the port. That preserves the port settings but omits it when uploading to the FPP. I then created a controller on the FPP in "Other" and plugged in the dongle into the PI USB0 and selected it on the controller.

Works perfectly without the need to toggle off the placeholder or its protocol.

Thank AGAIN!!