How to program SSC on the roof? - RESOLVED

[drlucas]

I'm stuck. I built a lovely roof framed with lights this weekend. Programmed all my SSCs in the basement before I took the battery box and 4 SSCs and headed to the roof. Plugged everything in and with the exception of two nodes working on each string I was in business. Then something hit me...ah crap, null nodes. I had set 2 null nodes on my string when I programmed all these SSCs because of my test string with some bad nodes...SO....I jump on the roof and jump the program jumper, back down the ladder get transmitting and back up the ladder and nothing. no white flashing light.

My setup is like this... PC to Network switch to etherdongle to pixelnet output (about 30 feet away) to my active hub sitting on pixelnet universe 1...then that is where the majority of my mega tree is, but not the roof frame...so add another 60' of cat5e and up to the roof to another pixelnet box - this guy sitting on universe 2. everything looks fine. I take the SSC down to the basement, reflash it...then back to the first active hub and try to program from there. no luck.

Anyone see anything glaringly wrong (I've been up and down the ladder the last 3 days non-stop building this roof so there could be some exhaustion hitting now).


Was really hoping to get a video of the roof, but looks like that will need to wait another day.  And - Dang! 7pm and it's getting dark.

[dearvbguru]

Try temporarily switching your hub that your roof frame is on to pixelnet universe 1 and try your programming and see if that works.  If so then you can switch back to universe 2 when you are done.

[drlucas]

I'll give that a try tomorrow after work (so long as it's not raining out). Question then - when going into programming mode will the ssc only listen on one of the multicast addresses that come out of universe 1? I'll do a quick network capture and see what I can see....

[drlucas]

I see 4 packets over and over again...looks like one per universe - guessing just because of the last octect in the multicast address. I will put everything on universe 1 though and try it.

[RJ]

It should be sending the same data on all pixelnet universe. Since it does not know what universe the SSC you are programming is on. The Channel does not tell me this. So I send it to all of them.

RJ

[zwiller]

Seems like every time I ran into a problem like this it was hardware related: didn't remove jumper, blown hub fuse, bad cat5, didn't fully tighten 3 wire connector, cat 5 not plugged in hub.  Easy to do during long day...  I start troubleshooting using a dedicated SSC with test firmware on it.  Lights up, hardware for the most part is good. 

[rrowan]

I am sorry but I need to ask this

Did you see the fiddler on the roof while you were programming the SSCs?
Or at the very least have that music playing??

like I say I am sorry 

Rick R.

[tbone321]

You seem to hve WAAAAAAAAY to much free time on your hands, LOL 

[rrowan]

You seem to hve WAAAAAAAAY to much free time on your hands, LOL 

More like not enough sleep (pretending to be a programmer)

Rick R.

[rrowan]

You know every time I am on the roof I think of the fiddler and "sing" to myself
If I was a Rich Man I would pay someone else to be up here in the cold…….

ok, back to my python reading.

Rick R.

[chrisatpsu]

back to OP.

he mentioned that the lights all work except that the first two nodes don't light up.

That tells me that his hardware should be setup correctly, since it's lighting.

are you powering off the hub, when you switch the program jumpers?

[zwiller]

I like Chris' power cycle idea AND it's easy to try. 

[drlucas]

OK - this is fixed!

Thanks to all for confirming a few things for me on the basics of how it's supposed to work. That allowed me to focus my troubleshooting and within an hour tonight I had all 5 SSCs firing!!

In the end what I did was first recrimp a new cat5 cable. Second was resolder a small test string of nodes. Third was reflash the PIC (a few actually showed the wrong checksum - need to figure out why sometimes the pic is loosing the firmware but that is a different topic for another post).

After those three things I was able to program the SSCs again and i'm in business impressing the neighbours with my testing tonight!

THANK YOU AGAIN!!
Ryan

[combustionmark]

When you use the config utility it changes memory in the pic, so you get a diferent check sum.

[drlucas]

AH!!!! Thank you for the simple explanation. I will no longer be worried about X-ray scanners at customs for used devices with different firmware checksums in the future

Learning something new every day!