Author Topic: Conductor Updates  (Read 17029 times)

Offline RJ

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Conductor Updates
« on: January 08, 2014, »
Ok I am aware of a few things but lets try to get them all in one place for me to work on, those that ran conductors this year what was your experience? issues that I need to look at?

RJ
Innovation beats imitation - and it's more satisfying

Offline duane.mosley

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #1 on: January 08, 2014, »
1. the ability to restart a timer after the start time as passed would be great!

2. have the conductor recognize the correct show according to time. example, I had a couple of show times and days and I would have to go in and set the conductor to run the correct show. if I forgot, I had to set up another schedule(hence first suggestion)

3. I still had some time sync issues that weren't present when I ran threw vixen. I had to edit the song or the sequence to match. all files were ogg at 192kbs


other than that, the conductor ran rock solid for me all season. I appreciate everything you have done for this hobby.


duane
Florence, KY


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Offline twooly

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #2 on: January 08, 2014, »
I had the random light output stopping, maybe related to the network connection being active while running.  Ill be happy to provide the sequence files to test with and or Ill be happy to test it out since I saw this issue on my setup.
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Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #3 on: January 08, 2014, »
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I had the random light output stopping, maybe related to the network connection being active while running.  Ill be happy to provide the sequence files to test with and or Ill be happy to test it out since I saw this issue on my setup.

We have found that it is related to being connected to the network on some network. Unplugging the conductor fromt the network resolved it for all who reported back to me. We will be looking for the cause to rectify this issue.

RJ
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Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2014, »
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1. the ability to restart a timer after the start time as passed would be great!
Thinking of giving the ablity to manual start a show instead of a single sequence as a why to handle this for everyone.

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2. have the conductor recognize the correct show according to time. example, I had a couple of show times and days and I would have to go in and set the conductor to run the correct show. if I forgot, I had to set up another schedule(hence first suggestion)
Not sure I understand cause you can do this now?

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3. I still had some time sync issues that weren't present when I ran threw vixen. I had to edit the song or the sequence to match. all files were ogg at 192kbs

Yeah this seems weird but you were not the only one. Unless I get told different here most were not having this, so something we will need to isolate down and fix.

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other than that, the conductor ran rock solid for me all season. I appreciate everything you have done for this hobby.

duane

Glad it worked, and happy to be able to make things for people to use.

RJ
Innovation beats imitation - and it's more satisfying

Offline fyb2000

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2014, »
Hi RJ,
So yes, the blackout of the lights when the conductor is hooked to the network (regardless of if the conductor panel is running or not, I reproduced it with and without the panel running).
The second issue I had to take care every day was the volume resetting itself at 214, no matter what. 214 was too low for my mp3 board, and I had to crank it up to 254. It would play one schedule at that volume and the next time around would be reset at 214.
Thanks for looking into those,
-FYB

Offline duane.mosley

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2014, »
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1. the ability to restart a timer after the start time as passed would be great!
Thinking of giving the ablity to manual start a show instead of a single sequence as a why to handle this for everyone.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
2. have the conductor recognize the correct show according to time. example, I had a couple of show times and days and I would have to go in and set the conductor to run the correct show. if I forgot, I had to set up another schedule(hence first suggestion)
Not sure I understand cause you can do this now?

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3. I still had some time sync issues that weren't present when I ran threw vixen. I had to edit the song or the sequence to match. all files were ogg at 192kbs

Yeah this seems weird but you were not the only one. Unless I get told different here most were not having this, so something we will need to isolate down and fix.

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other than that, the conductor ran rock solid for me all season. I appreciate everything you have done for this hobby.

duane

Glad it worked, and happy to be able to make things for people to use.

RJ



thanks RJ. i had a few shows set up and if i didn't make sure the correct show was set in the control panel, it wouldn't recognize the correct show and would not start on time. but as long as the correct show was showing as next. it ran without a hiccup  i also had the volume issue that fyb2000 had as well.
Florence, KY


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Offline lonewolf41

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2014, »
I posted in the beta forum as well, but my only issue was the music not in sync with the lights for the first 20-30 seconds of each song/sequence after the first one in a show.  Rock solid other than that.

Thanks,
-Keith

Offline egenoup

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #8 on: January 09, 2014, »
Conductor ran without any issues or hiccups for the entire Xmas season.  The only problem I had was with the scheduler.  I have one show I run from 6PM to 10PM.  The show just repeats over and over.  My problem is when for whatever reason the conductor misses the start of the schedule, it does not run the show.  Once that happens, I have to get the CF card out of the conductor, fire-up the computer and add a new schedule with a few minutes of lead time to allow me to run an put the CF card back into the conductor before the start of the schedule.

The solution would be for the conductor (at boot up) to not only check for the start time, but also the end time of a scheduled show.  So if the show start time is less than current time (schedule start time has passed) and the show end time is greater than the current time (schedule end time has not passed yet) then it runs the show.

The other item I would like to see for the conductor is an updated app, so I can use my phone to run test show/sequences.

I greatly appreciate all your hard work and efforts to allow us DIYers to create amazing displays. 

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Thanks,

Charles 

Offline tomwb301

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2014, »
Conductor ran 3792 channels LE's & SSC's from Nov. 29th through Dec. 31. Program was easy and worked great.

One issue was every once in a while it would skip the lighting portion of a sequence. The music played fine. When the next sequence started everything was fine. This happen once every 4th or 5th day. Also the volume defaults to a set setting, if I adjusted it then went back a day later, it would default back.

This system beats having to dedicate a computer for the Christmas lights for a month. I had it tied into a Cisco access point unit and could see it at any time.
Tom
Humble, Texas

Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #10 on: January 14, 2014, »
Is this the only ones to comment?  I would hope to have some more input on the conductor so if you used it, weither you had no issues or had issues let me know what your experience was like with it so I can improve it.

RJ
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Offline einstein2883

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2014, »
I had a seq not play audio and sometimes lockup the conductor this season.  In my case it was always a seq after one seq (I don’t remember the names). So for example say I had seq1, seq2, seq3 and seq4 in a show.  In this example the seq3 would play but seq4 would have no audio.  If I reordered then 3,1,2,4 then seq1 would have no audio.
If I put each seq in their own show they would play fine.  I tried a full reform of the card and also tried adding a 2nd copy of the files to the CF card and both copies had the problem.

Offline RJ

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #12 on: January 14, 2014, »
Was your conductor plugged into a network?

RJ
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Offline einstein2883

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #13 on: January 14, 2014, »
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Was your conductor plugged into a network?

RJ

I run it disconnected normally. But when I started seeing the problem I connected it directly to my laptop so that I could see where the problem song was.

Offline fyb2000

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Re: Conductor Updates
« Reply #14 on: January 14, 2014, »
Personally, outside of the volume bug, I had no 'unworkable' problems. The issue with the random blackout of the lights when connected to the network, was easily worked around once I found the correlation. Of course, I had to reconnect it everyday to get the volume back up, but from there it was just a matter of disconnecting it every time after setting the volume back to its correct value. On that subject of blacking out while being connected to the network, I would like to know if it was only the few of us (I counted 5) that experienced it, and if all the others were running their show with the conductor unplugged from the network, or plugged but without seeing the issue.
A few things that might be important:
-my conductor was built using parts from mouser and spark fun(?) (i.e. not coming from a coop)
-my router is (and that might be the source of the problem) an integrated router/modem. It is a motorola sbg6580, giving me 110Mbps down and 20Mbps up (I won't be touching this for a while)

I think  I know that, like several other people, I will be (way) above 16K channel in 2014. I know that there is a slave solution that would/should allow me to play a show with that many channels, but this is a limitation that will make people look around for other solutions. The sequencing part is a lot more time consuming than the building time of those boards, and if there are solutions that allows for an easy way to test any given sequence, while they are sequencing, they will definitely 'explore' those solutions. Especially if the rest of the network can remain the same.

Software wise, the current control panel is adequate. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that it could, might be a little confusing for people who are not spending 12 hours a day behind a computer, but once you get the hang of it, it does its job (except for the default sound volume) perfectly well. With spare cycles, of course it could be enhanced but to me, the main priority should be to break the 16K channels barrier. I might be in the minority, I have absolutely no idea, but reading around I know I am not the lone guy out there.