DMX off of Active Smart Hub got confused

[Steve Gase]

Something to look out for...

I have an EtD connected to a smart hub, the smart hub is connected to a bunch of SSCv4 controllers.  The same hub is connected DMX to a DMX wireless TX transmitter.

I have floods connected to an RX, I have LEs connected over the same channel to a separate RX, and another set of controllers using one more RX -- all the same channel.

Everything has been working fine for a couple weeks.

Tonight none of the DMX attached controllers worked -- no floods, no mini-trees, etc. 
Yes, the pixelnet controllers worked.

I looked at the LEDs on the TX -- red power = ON, green DMX activity = FLASHING,
I looked at the LEDs on each RX -- red power = ON, green DMX activity = FLASHING,

so, apparently enough DMX activity existed to drive the wireless activity LEDs.

I power-cycled the TX and each RX with no success.

I powered-cycled the smart hub, and the DMX started to work.

So... it seems that the PIC and the DMX-generation can get out of sorts... a power-cycle fixes it.

[tbone321]

I wonder if something is leaking a dim value of 170 into one of your sequences. 

[bakerlights]

Not sure if this is similar, but DMX on one of my Active hubs quit working also and will not come back now even with a power cycle of the hub.   I had chalked it up to heavy rains and some DMX floods that got wet and shorted out the cat5 connections, I am thinking that 12v sorted to the data line.  I figure I blew a 485 chip, so I swapped the hub with one I did not need DMX from all is working now.   I will be diagnosing the hub with DMX issues after the holiday season, unless I have more issues with the new hub.

[hicksjo]

I had similar problem
Not sure what the cause was

I also had to reset the first express after the hub that dmx was feeding

Before resetting the express other dmx devices later in the chain were functioning properly

So not sure if the problem originated with the hub or express, but possibly related to your issue described

[chrisatpsu]

bakerlights, try checking the checksum on the pic's firmware.

the active hubs still output pixelnet without a pic, but need the pic for DMX

[tbone321]

Not sure if this is similar, but DMX on one of my Active hubs quit working also and will not come back now even with a power cycle of the hub.   I had chalked it up to heavy rains and some DMX floods that got wet and shorted out the cat5 connections, I am thinking that 12v sorted to the data line.  I figure I blew a 485 chip, so I swapped the hub with one I did not need DMX from all is working now.   I will be diagnosing the hub with DMX issues after the holiday season, unless I have more issues with the new hub.

I doubt that you shorted 12V to the data line because unless you made some modficaions to the wiring, there is no 12V on the DMX line.  A short due to weather could possibly damage th 485.  I would also do as Chris suggeted and look at the checksum on the PIC.

[tbone321]

Hey Steve, when you created your dimming utility for those worthless new nodes, did you make sure that any 170 values that it created were changed to 171?  If not, then this could be a posible cause of some of these issues. 

[Steve Gase]

Hey Steve, when you created your dimming utility for those worthless new nodes, did you make sure that any 170 values that it created were changed to 171?  If not, then this could be a posible cause of some of these issues.

When I decided not to use the "worthless new nodes"  I regenerated all of the sequences and skipped the dimming step. 

In any case...  I'd expect the translation of 171 to be done at the transmission layer and not at the sequencing step...  since the channels in an .xseq file might be transmitted over LOR, E1.31 or any other protocol, it wouldn't make sense (to me) for the DMX/Pixelnet artifact to be introduced at this point.

[bakerlights]

Thank you Chris and tbone321 for the suggestions, I will be looking at that after the season ends.

Steve.