Dongle help needed....

[Mangrove]

Recently I finished building my first Lynx Dongle. I plan to use it with Renard controllers. I’ve been through the Wiki and read the dongle manual several times but I still can’t get the dongle to work with my current setup.

The first question I have is which FTDI drivers should I choose? When I go to the FTDI site I have the choice of “Virtual com port” or “D2XX Direct Drivers” I’m using a PC that’s about 6 years old with Win XP.

I plan on using CAT5 wire. I assume I use the pin out configuration for the Renard boards; is that correct? Where can I find a wiring diagram on the Wiki that has the pin out configuration for the Lynx controllers? (I have two LEs in addition to my Renards)

Finally, are there any threads that deal with Lynx and Rernard setups? I haven’t found any but I’m told they play nice as both run DMX. By the way, I’m using Vixen for sequencing.

Any help for these questions and those I haven’t thought to ask is greatly appreciated!

[RJ]

First lets start simple,

 You use the Virtual com port drivers you can find the link to them in the wiki under FTDI drivers here.
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 Then hook the dongle to one of your LE's with a standard Cat5 patch cable not a cross over cable and get this setup working. Once you have this working so you know the dongle is working then you will need to setup for the renard controllers.

First make sure you have the DMX firmware loaded as the normal Renard firmware will not work on DMX.
The renards are not designed to be DMX controllers so because of this their pin out is not correct for standard DMX cabling so you will need to make a modifed cable to hook them up. I do not have Renards so I do not know the correct pin outs but there are a number of members that still use them in their shows here and one of them will post with the info I am sure. 

RJ 

[bcstuff]

After making sure your dongle works as RJ stated, you can make an adapter as I describe below.

I made my adapter using Keystone jacks (wired normally) to a rj45 wired for Renard.

Another way as suggested by budude on DIYC, cut a short pre-built cat5 cable in half and re-solder the wires.
DMX side -------- Renard side
Pin 1  ------------ pin 5
pin 2  ------------ pin 4
pin 7  ------------ pin 2
pin 8  ------------ pin 1

Make sure you label the ends for Renard and DMX.
I also attached a picture below for you on the DMX to Renard pin out.
Then all you need is a cheap cat5 inline coupler to connect it to your longer cat5 data line.
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In case your interested, this is how I got Lynx wireless EX/RX to connect to a Renard controller
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Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Brian

[Mangrove]

Got it fixed!

With the help of Smartcontrols, we figured out I reversed the RS485 and optocoupler chips when I assembled the dongle. Once these chips were put in the correct places, the lights came to life!

As RJ said, start simple and make sure the dongle works! The lesson for me is a tried and true one… when assembling any components, make sure everything is installed correctly! Check it, then recheck, have someone else check, then check it again…

Thanks for the help and a special thank you to Smartcontols for taking the time to help me figure out this issue!

Mike