One of my elements would not work this year. First pixel lit up, but no more. Ah! Elementary dear Watson, the element is defective! Plugged in a brand new strip, same thing. Hmm maybe the Pixlite Long Range board is dodgy. Replaced it with one of uncertain provenance, no change. Found a new one I'd cunningly hidden where it wouldn't get lost. Very cunningly, as it turned out. Alas, no joy. Maybe it's the network cable. Three network cables later, no change. Perhaps it's the Pixlite itself. Swapping to other ports known to work didn't help. The brain was befuddled, then I remembered, I changed the pigtail on the element, but I KNEW I hadn't stuffed that up - Brown = Postive, Blue = Signal, Green = Negative ........... alright, alright pipe down I know NOW!
My leaping arches also behaved strangely. As soon as powered on they'd flicker with a mind of their own. You could see what was supposed to happen, but with what looked like another crappy effect layered over the top of it. Much head scratching, poring through Vixen, changing signal cables, LR boards etc. Eventually, I got smart enough to plug a new strip in to test, and behold! Things did what they should. I think the very first pixel in the loop went crazy and would just transmit whatever the hell it wanted to.
Onto my DMX stuff. The first year I used a Ray Wu 27 channel DMX board, with those very handy DIP switches. No need to set anything, Universe 33, SA = 1. Can't stuff that up. A couple of years later I got one of AAH's DMX2-18. Bloody brilliant board, but for love or money, I could not set the start address. After much angst, I put the damn thing on Universe 34 - problem solved. Last year I got a second DMX2-18 AND the dongle to set the SA over USB - problem solved! This year, I have a third DMX2-18, and I happily daisy chained them all together, completely forgetting that I had the Ray Wu and the DMX2x18's, or more to the point, the elements connected to them, on different universes. Now why the hell are the blossom trees not lighting up? Why are they lighting up with the ball lights in the tree?
It's crook getting old, but not as crook as the only known alternative ....
My leaping arches also behaved strangely. As soon as powered on they'd flicker with a mind of their own. You could see what was supposed to happen, but with what looked like another crappy effect layered over the top of it. Much head scratching, poring through Vixen, changing signal cables, LR boards etc. Eventually, I got smart enough to plug a new strip in to test, and behold! Things did what they should. I think the very first pixel in the loop went crazy and would just transmit whatever the hell it wanted to.
Onto my DMX stuff. The first year I used a Ray Wu 27 channel DMX board, with those very handy DIP switches. No need to set anything, Universe 33, SA = 1. Can't stuff that up. A couple of years later I got one of AAH's DMX2-18. Bloody brilliant board, but for love or money, I could not set the start address. After much angst, I put the damn thing on Universe 34 - problem solved. Last year I got a second DMX2-18 AND the dongle to set the SA over USB - problem solved! This year, I have a third DMX2-18, and I happily daisy chained them all together, completely forgetting that I had the Ray Wu and the DMX2x18's, or more to the point, the elements connected to them, on different universes. Now why the hell are the blossom trees not lighting up? Why are they lighting up with the ball lights in the tree?
It's crook getting old, but not as crook as the only known alternative ....
