Kulp and Falcon controllers not in sync

[mammy]

Hi all,
My show has 2 Kulp K8s driving 4 140 nodes 3D sphere props. I also have a Falcon F16v3 with 2 expansion boards (48 ports) driving a mega tree with about 5,600 nodes on 48 strings plus a star. I have a Pi/FPP inside as the master driving the show with the 2 Kulps and the Falcon in remote mode connected via wifi.

The sequence is simple. I have 20 effects back to back for a total show time of about 6 minutes. All 5 props have the same effects with the same duration and position on the timeline so in xLights all props are in perfect sync. The problem I'm having is in the show the mega tree is not in sync with the 4 spheres on the 2 kulps. The 4 spheres are in perfect sync with each other but the mega tree is about 8 seconds behind the kulps.

Any clues?

TIA
Michael

 

[KiwiPhil]

wifi will be the issue. cable them into your switch with the pi

 

[mammy]

Ugh. That would be a pain. I went with the Kulp controllers to just be able to add more controllers w/o having to worry about managing a network of CAT6 cables. I'm not sure how that would even work. I will eventually have 7 controllers all over the yard, some 200' away from each other and some across the driveway. How do people manage that? Do they put a run one CAT6 from the router to a centrally located switch outside in an enclosure and branch from there?

The F16v3 is pretty far from my router (furthest controller from the router) and sometimes reports as "Status: unreachable" but that status goes away quickly and one of the Kulp K8s is also pretty close to the same distance away as well but that controller is in perfect sync with the other K8 closer to the router. That doesn't seem to be a problem, I would think, or the K8 would also have problems unless the K8 receiver is stronger than the Falcon.

The one thing that's different with the F16v3 which may or may not be an issue is that it's the only controller that's running on a show network (192.168.3.x) rather than the primary network (192.168.1.x) whereas all Kulp controllers are just on the primary network. Could that be producing a problem?

Michael