Aether II ignoring DMX signel or another issue? (SOLVED)

[arw01]

When I built the two aethers II over the weekend I used my normal active hub and was able to get them to cycle completely with xlights and to respond in lsp to a sequence.

I picked up a second active hub from the buy sell and happen to be driving the aethers off the dmx out of there.  The pixelnet portion is working perfectly and I suspect the dmx out is working also, but have not tested it as moving the aethers won't work due to the power cords back to the transformer.

Tomorrow I will swap the active hubs to rule out some soldering issue or something on the acquired unit.

Can anyone think of any other reason a DMX signal would be ignored.

I have checked that both units have the jumper on dmx universe one.

I did power cycle the aether II's also, one came back on as blue, the other one changed from all white to red, and stayed red after the next power cycle.

Thanks
Alan

[twooly]

I would flash the pic on the hub, being on all the time is saying they don't have a dmx signal

[arw01]

Jim suggested reflowing the solder on the cat 5 jacks too, so will do that as well.  I found a passive hub I did that the solder stuck to a pin only.  Going to bring out a long cat 5 cable and run the dmx over from the first hub that I know worked fine to check it today also.

[arw01]

Ran a 50' cable from my known good smart hub to the aether II's.  They started cycling with nutcracker.  That leaves either a prior bad cable from the factory or the need to reflow some solder on the acquired smart hub.

Alan

[keitha43]

Or flashing the PIC. I read yesterday if the PIC is not flashed the pixelnet will still work but DMX will not.

[arw01]

Or flashing the PIC. I read yesterday if the PIC is not flashed the pixelnet will still work but DMX will not.

Thanks to both of you for the pic suggestion, I happened to do that shortly ago after wasting a couple of hours reflowing solder, checking cables and such.  It may have never been programmed, don't know, as the pixelnet definetely worked great.  When I checked the checksum before doing any writing it was not correct for the latest pickit 3, so figured something wasn't right.

I will keep it in mind going forward, that some devices can seem to function with a blank pic.

Thank you
Alan

[jnealand]

There is no firmware required on the active hub for pixelnet.  Look at the passive hub, it does not even have a PIC.  Pixelnet come out of a pixelnet dongle.  The hub basically splits the signal and injects power.  The pic on the active hub is ONLY for converting to DMX.  If you burn that one into your mind that will help for the future.  Took me awhile to get my feeble old brain around lots of this stuff.  Try getting thru the difference in hardware addresses vs programming channels vs multiunivers addressing.  LOL

[keitha43]

There is no firmware required on the active hub for pixelnet.  Look at the passive hub, it does not even have a PIC.  Pixelnet come out of a pixelnet dongle.  The hub basically splits the signal and injects power.  The pic on the active hub is ONLY for converting to DMX.  If you burn that one into your mind that will help for the future.  Took me awhile to get my feeble old brain around lots of this stuff.  Try getting thru the difference in hardware addresses vs programming channels vs multiunivers addressing.  LOL

I believe yours was the post I read the other day. I never had a passive hub. Only active ones so I wasn't aware it didn't have a PIC. Makes sense though.

[drlucas]

This type of fundamental info is great to know. Thanks. I now know that the pic and other issues I was having with my hub and flex strips can not be related that way. Starting to make sense my issue is rooted with a bad cable.