LOR CBT16PC not working with xlights (SOLVED)

[everettdale]

I have 2 CBT16PC controllers. They are configured as controller 1 and 2.
I'm using the LOR USB185 dongle to connect to my laptop.
The LOR hardware configure software see both controllers and I can turn the strings on and off with this software.

When I open Xlights I can add a LOR controller(s) but can' get it to run the lights. I can't even tell if Xlights is seeing the controllers.
The only thing I see that looks wrong is in the Layout tab when I select a model it has !LOR-controller listed in the Start Channel box. It;s greyed out and I can't select it or change it.

I've been going through YouTube videos, and making changes and starting over from scratch for an entire day, and I just can't get this to work. I feel like I'm missing one small piece of this puzzle. Is there a way to check to see if Xlights is even seeing my controllers? What am I missing?

Edit: I figured it out. In the ICON bar across the top there is a Light Bulb that is labeled "output to lights" When I clicked on it it would give me an error that was confusing. It was thinking there was a conflict with the com port. I dug into my com setting in windows and set the baud rate to the same as it was set in the controller setup in Xlights. The real trick here is if the little dongle you have is black (not red) 115200 is the highest setting you can use apparently. And these numbers need to match I guess.

Anyway this worked for me. Thanks to anyone who tried to help.

 

[merryoncherry]

Yeah, this is a process with little visibility into how it's going, which makes it frustrating sometimes. You can't really tell if xLights is "seeing" the controllers as it doesn't have the bidirectional smarts that the LoR utilities have. You can, however, usually tell if the controller is hearing from xLights, as it has a status LED for that.

Gotta say, I had this working in 2021, wasn't 100% solid though, then I learned that it was a bug and "optimized LoR" was just too optimized and the controllers were falling asleep and that's why they sometimes missed their cues. Things have gotten much better for me now that I run them over DMX. No need to have a separate LoR network, you can put the LoR boxes near to any controller with a serial port, which is most of mine, and the xLights support is simpler and better-tested.

But I digress. If you post your show folder I'll give it a quick look and see if there's anything obvious wrong... or sometimes people in zoom can work through these quickly.

 

[David_AVD]

Another gotcha is the LOR serial port service (for the USB dongle) may be still running in the background. It's been a while since I had to deal with this so can't recall the exact details. It may be called the "listener" and could be hogging the port even though the main LOR application is not active?