Icycle light wiring

Daemon

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Hi all


I just hauled out all my lights again and am looking at my icycles and thinking, "wow, I cant remember any of this stuff"
Serves me right for not labelling everything.

Modified:
I just tested these lights and the 2 channels are the v- so with only 1 v- wire how do I wire the 2 channels into the Tiger 48dmx board? When I connect the 2 channel wires to channels 1 and 2 and touch the pos to the pos screw terminal of channel 1 they come on without me enabling the channel in vixen
From the wiki I believe they are actually in sets of 3 so you can run rgb lights from the board easily.
 

David_AVD

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It sounds like you have them hooked up correctly. The constantly on issue could either be blown (shorted) channel MOSFETs or bad firmware.

To check for shorted MOSFETs, disconnect the lights and power from the board. Then measure (using a multimeter set to Ohms) between the suspect channel terminal and the -ve power terminal. It should measure open circuit. If damaged, it will usually measure below 100 Ohms.

The ACL wiki has a page about this too.
 

Daemon

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Okay now I am really confused. Possibly trying to make too many changes at once.

I disconnected the power and used my multimeter from the mosfet to the v+ channel but all of my mosfets seem to be reading approx .5 on them. They cannot all be blown.

As I am looking at the board, which is set up to go in a pvc tube by the way the mosfet output would be top left correct? as that looks like where the trace is heading.

I did the worlds fastest vixen 3 setup because I thought it would be easier until I realised there wasnt the same test facility. I entered my ip adress etc but keep getting a cannot connect page.

So to recap
I programmed the tiger board as dmx start address ch1
I am using an rpm dmx dongle with the usb pro plugin
I connected the v+ to the positive of channel 2 on the tiger board
I connected the V- wires to co 2 and co 3
When I start vixen 3 and run a sequence I imported and mapped no lights come on at all. I can only assume I have patched the elements correctly
When I start vixen 2.1.1.0 an use the test facility, the lights both come on but as channels 3 and 4 instead of 2 and 3

Man, do I have issues.

Perhaps we should start at the beginning and confirm the mosfet is okay again. Was I testing that correctly?
 

David_AVD

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Testing a MOSFET output involves measuring from the channel terminal to the -ve (negative) power terminal. The +ve terminal(s) don't come into it at all.
 

Daemon

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Okay
Sorry about that. My error.

I have now tested the mosfets and found the one on channel 1 is blown but the rest seem fine.
Moving on from there as I dont think that the problem is blown mosfets because they are switching okay what is the next step?

I have the icicles connected to channels 2 and 3 anyway.



Both Vixen 2.1.1 and Vixen 3 appear to be outputting dmx data okay. The dmx input light on the board is flashing away happily.
In Vixen 2.1.1 I toggle outputs, turn on channel 2 and 3 and only 1 comes on. I then turn on channels 3 and 4 and they both come on
In Vixen 3 nothing comes on when I play a sequence that uses both these channels and they are patched to channel 2 and 3
 

Daemon

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Okay. Does that output the same data on all channels?
So I just run it and power everything on and set the intensity correct? As I am not using rgb
 

ryanschristmaslights

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Okay. I put the software on a usb drive and took it to the show computer in the garage.
I ran it and went into settings. When I select DMX pro which was always the plugin to be used with the RPM dongle it found nothing. I clicked rescan and it still didint find anything.
When I select DMX open it comes up with UM245R and FTCV1HD4
Using DMX open with the port open, nothing happens when I change the intensity. I was watching the universe data and the numbers were changing but the lights remained off.
The whole time the dmx rec led was flashing on the tigerdmx48hc
 

David_AVD

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I don't know anything about the RPM dongles sorry, or if they will work with da_DMX.

It *sounds* like the Tiger48 is receiving data. Maybe it's faulty.
unsure.gif
 

Daemon

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Okay David
Thanks for the assistance. I will keep plugging away at it.
 

Daemon

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Somehow I made this work. Was just a combination of setting the com port in vixen 3 which I had already done previously and starting vixen 2.1 and then starting vixen 3 and suddenly it started working.
Now I am just struggling with passing the dmx data to the second controller which is a dmx grinch dimming adapter. I think I programmed it successfully using vixen 2.1 but it is receiving no data also like the previous board.
Still struggling onward!
 

zeplin

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Thanks everyone for posting these great tips. I have been having a similar problem with my lights and thought that I would never figure it out. Make me want to sing a christmas like american idol :) hahah
 
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