RGB Lights Stop Working After One Song Using S3

djohnson1810

Apprentice elf
Joined
Mar 30, 2011
Messages
66
I have been running Halloween for about 3 weeks now. I am using 5 LOR units and 1 Pixlite 4 with Ray Wu's Techicolor pixels. Everything has been running great for 3 weeks now. The only thing I did different today was to reboot the computer.


Tonight I noticed the RGB lights were not working. I rebooted the computer and the RGB lights started working... for one song. Then it stopped working again.


Using the Advatek software I tried to search for the Pixlite but it could not find it. After another reboot the Advatek did find the Pixliete controller and everything looked okay. I used xlights to test the RGB lights and everything worked great. I started S3's Control panel and played a song. It worked great for one song and then did not work for the second song. I have tried playing different two songs with the same result.


I also noticed that after playing one song using S3 I could not shut down S3;s control panel (the dos box that opens up). I would have to do a hard reboot of the computer.


Thus, I believe I have drilled down to a problem with S3's control panel. I don't know why it is giving me this problem after 3 weeks. I occasionally will add a song or change something in the scheduler but that is about it.


Thoughts? Should I try re-installing S3?


I am using Windows 7.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
Community project designer
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Dec 27, 2010
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Eaglehawk
The comm listener dos box that pops up when you are using dmx and/or e1.31 is possibly showing messages that you need to have a look at to see if they are saying anything important. Also at times during the S3 development there has been issues where if a lor board or dongle hasn't been found during a sequence LOR will crack the HoHoHos, take its bat and ball and go home. There's a verifier program as part of lor. It might be worth running that over your sequences.
 

djohnson1810

Apprentice elf
Joined
Mar 30, 2011
Messages
66
There are not error messages in the DOS box. If finds and opens the ports and is in listening Mode. I will check out the verifier. The irritating part is nothing has changed.
 

bretheron

Been bitten by the bug.
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Jan 6, 2014
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Location
Townsville
I know I had issues with LOR holding on to files and information. If I had opened one sequence file then closed and opened another on a different type of network it would still be looking at the first file parameters.

The limited suggestion that I will make is to shut down everything then start it up again. I still have issues with the order I have to turn things on, from the network to the devices and controllers so that they are all seen.
 

djohnson1810

Apprentice elf
Joined
Mar 30, 2011
Messages
66
I agree that S3 is sensitive to how things are started up. That is one of the first things I tried.


It appears that the comm listener initially finds the Pixlite. When I try and close out S3 the comm listener can't seem to close the connection. It just keeps repeating a "time out" error.
 

djohnson1810

Apprentice elf
Joined
Mar 30, 2011
Messages
66
Update:


Still no joy. I tried a second pixlite controller I have and it made no difference.


I have taken the Enttec completely out of the S3 network preferances and disconnected it to make sure that was not the problem.


I updated the firmware of the Pixlite to the latest.


Still working flawlessly with xLights.


Note that the DMX 1,2, and 3 is timing out. That is my Pixlite.
IMG_1031.JPG


Basically, it will work for one song (sometimes 1/2 song) and then stop working until I do a hard reboot.
 

djohnson1810

Apprentice elf
Joined
Mar 30, 2011
Messages
66
Resolution... kind of.


I tried deleting S3 from my desktop and re-installing. No change.


I tried running the program off of an old laptop. Bingo! Worked great. Unfortunately I need one with a dual video card to run the projector.


Out came my other desktop. After setting everything up on that it is now working!


So either there is a hardware issue with my computer or a corrupt driver. I will have time to look more into it after Halloween.
 
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