I finished assembling 4 MR16 boards; and setting the starting channel numbers definitely turned out to be the hardest part. I wanted the start channels to be 301, 317, 333, and 349.
I started out by using the LE utility (as suggested in a recent post). This got one of the boards set correctly. Then I tried using the Vixen method as suggested in the Wiki documentation. This got 2 more set. But I could not get the final board set to 301. It got set to channel 1 many times and I got it set to 201 once. I even tried reprogramming the PIC. Finally, while verifying that all 4 PIC's were programmed correctly, I noticed that after the address was set, program memory at location A00 changed. Even though the value at that location didn't equal the start address value, I did notice a pattern:
Start Addr | A00 Value |
317 | 3FFF |
333 | 4FFF |
349 | 5FFF |
So I manually edited program memory location A00 for my "301" PIC to "2FFF" (since this fit the pattern), and clicked the Write button. Plugged the PIC into the board, applied power, and voila! It responded to start channel 301 ! Neither the LE utility nor Vixen were required.
Matt