Conductor Wont Accept Commands From Control Panel? Seems to be working now...

[dearvbguru]

So far anything I have done, I cant get the control panel to actually do anything other then read the conductor.

I had a working etherdongle.
Built and installed conductor (with fixed soldering pins on CF socket)
Flashed to conductor firmware.
Created a test animation sequence in LSP and exported to conductor format.
I inserted CF card in computer.
I used control panel and selected flash card set password 12345.
Dragged conductor export sequence to card through windows explorer.
Set up a show with layout of the test sequence and none for the music.
Saved the show.
Created a schedule to play the show saved the schedule.
Properly ejected card before taking card out.
Insert card into conductor.
Exit control panel.
Started control panel and typed in password 12345
Control panel finds the conductor, finds the card, finds the next scheduled show properly, displays the show on card, etc.

So I know I have communication with conductor but if I try to sync the time, disable schedule, or play selected the conductor doesnt do anything.  It still says waiting on next scheduled show and the time is showing the Day of Monday, hour zero, minute, 42, seconds keep going up , and time is time since powered up the conductor.

Its behaving like the password is not good or if you dont type a password.

I have tried quick formatting the card, repeating process same result. 
I have tried quick format, copying sequence over to card then setting password, same result.
I have tried setting password again on card, same result.  Nothing I seem to do with passwords actually takes or the encryption is off or something.  I see the password dat file on the card and opened in notepad and it shows 12345 as expected.

I even tried changing passwords and repeating process, same result.

Any thoughts?

[peteandvanessa]

try without entering a passwork. Initially mine wouldnt sync clocks until I didnt enter a password

[rdebolt]

8 character names on seq file and audio files?

[dearvbguru]

Yes sequence is edtest show is test1 so under the 8 chars.

Now for an update I finally got it to sync times but I didn't do anything different. It finally took after clicking the button about 10 times waiting a second or so between clicks.

So I started looking for other causes and the only other thing I can think of is network traffic. The lights on my network switch are constantly flashing really fast for the two ports computer and ether dongle while control panel running. Is this normal? When cp shut down lights stop flashing so fast. Other ports on switch blink on and off randomly with activity but not near as fast as when cp on

[rrowan]

Do you have all the required files on the CF?

The control panel will not recognize the Conductor until you have created:

1) at least one *.seq and/or *.mp3 file on the compact flash (CF) card,
2) created a password, which will create a password.dat file on the CF card,
3) create at least one show, which will create a file *.sho on the CF card, and
4) schedule a show to run, which will create a playlist.dat file on the CF card.

All four of these must be met before the control panel will see the Conductor.

Thanks Denny aka dcwehw99

Rick R.

[dearvbguru]

Do you have all the required files on the CF?

The control panel will not recognize the Conductor until you have created:

1) at least one *.seq and/or *.mp3 file on the compact flash (CF) card,
2) created a password, which will create a password.dat file on the CF card,
3) create at least one show, which will create a file *.sho on the CF card, and
4) schedule a show to run, which will create a playlist.dat file on the CF card.

All four of these must be met before the control panel will see the Conductor.

Thanks Denny aka dcwehw99

Rick R.

Yes, I mentioned that in post, all the files are there under eight characters.  The CP was seeing the conductor and was reporting the conductor time, the shows on the card and the next scheduled show and when it was supposed to start etc.  If I took card out it would say card error, if I put it back in it would recognize it.

I have multiple network cards in the computer I was using but only one was connected through a switch to the conductor.  I made sure to disable the other two and made sure nothing else was running that should be sending out network traffic. I also changed password to single character for testing.  This morning when I tried again, I was able to play the sequence (10 seconds long) reliably from the conductor, however there is a delay (1 to 2 seconds) from the time you push the play selected show until the time the conductor starts playing the show and reporting it on screen.  Maybe I just need to be patient. 


A bit of info that might help others though from my experiments. When I eject the card from the conductor and insert it into computer to write stuff to it, the control panel shows card error as expected.  I noticed that after a period of time with card error showing on control panel the switch I have (basic 8 port netgear gigabit switch), it shuts down the port that the conductor is plugged into and stays shut down even after you insert a card again.  I can tell this on the conductor (no yellow light) as well as on the switch.  If I move ports on the switch that the conductor is plugged into then it immediately works and the green lights start flashing  or if I reset the power on the switch and don't move ports it works again and activity lights flashing.  There appears to be something going on that the switch doesn't like when the card is not in the conductor.  So if you don't have activity you might try cycling the power on your switch or etherdongle or both and see if that helps...

[rmp2917]

Have you tried connecting the EtherDongle directly to the computer to see if this gets rid of the delay. There may be conflicts on your network that are causing the issues.

[dearvbguru]

Have you tried connecting the EtherDongle directly to the computer to see if this gets rid of the delay. There may be conflicts on your network that are causing the issues.

I have not yet but I will try that this evening to see if that might be part of the issue.