lights a little too blinky

[sydkahn]

First year newbie - My wife lost her teaching job - so I had to scale back what i wanted to do for the first year light show.

One of the "cheap cheats" was to use a FTDI serial cable hooked up to a 485 chip I got from TI as a sample.  It worked fine in the basement shop and the Lynx driving 8 light strings, using a different shorter cat5 cable.   I finally found a cheap enough RJ45 crimper at Lowes and stuck a couple of ends on a piece of 110' cat5 i had laying around.  I took an old laptop, set it up in the front hall and hooked up everything.  The lights continuously blink (more like stuttering) at random levels - it makes no difference what channel.  I turned on all the channels in Vixen and used the check button and ran the slider up and down. The stuttering of the lights kept up but they seemed to dim alright.  I could see the Channel LEDS and all 16 were blinking at the same rate.

Strange thing i observed  - I set a channel for "all events on" in Vixen on the only channel hooked to the lights - ran it a few times in loop mode, every once in a while when I hit stop on the play back the lights would go 100% and stay that way until I hit play again. Weird?

Now I am stuck - is it the FTDI/485 - the really,really old laptop - the length of the new cable - or something else.  I was going to bring everything back into the shop to troubleshoot - but it rained all over everything and I am not up to playing with a wet high voltage toy.  More later after it all dries out.

Suggestions? Troubleshooting tips?  Admonishments? 

Thanks in advance.....

[RJ]

So you are not using a dongle but instead using a usb to serial cable as a enttec open instead?

If I understood then I would look at this before going any farther. Even a real enttec open does not work well on all computers and is why I do not recommend or support them on the lynx equipment. It could be other issues if it worked ok on the bench so you will just have to try it with different cable, ect.

RJ 

[sydkahn]

Thank you for your quick reply, I expected the missing dongle had something to do with it.

However I carted all the stuff back inside and down to the shop - tried it with two different computers and the same cables as outside - everything worked perfectly.  It has to be temperature related, or somehow tied to the weather.   I hooked everything back up outside and it worked great for the first few minutes then it started stuttering again - I think i will be putting a low wattage bulb inside the case to try and even the temp to some constant. (it isn't the regulator - both voltage good leds are constant and bright.  The 5v heat sink is warm to the touch - the 3v is somewhat cool. 

I'll give myself a Christmas present of the parts to build the dongle and this will all go away.....

Thanks for the help