**SOLVED**ED troubleshooting

[Penfold]

Hello all,

When I hooked up the ETD on my Laptop that I got for Christmas I had no problems programming the SSC with the utility that RJ setup.  I tried to hook it up to my show computer and that is when I ran into problems.  No lights came up.  I researched here in the forum and made up a crossover cable and test the cable with a cable tester.  I then plugged in the cable and noticed that there is a green light on the mag jack now, but there is no yellow light blinking whatsoever.  I am trying to use the ED in Vixen 2.1 and I imported the DLL file in the plug-ins folder of vixen.  I check the Lynx dongle plugin in my profile but when I tried to run a test sequence I got an error message saying something about a router problem.

Am I supposed to have the DMX 1.31 plug-in check as well?  I am using XP Pro and I have been trying to look for the NIC setting, but can't seem to locate it.  I found the modem setting, but that was for dial up, then I went to an area where you can setup a network, but ever option I came across in there didn't look like anything remotely close to fixes suggest in the forum.  I have my firewalls disabled and there isn't an antivirus program on this computer.  I hear about people setting IP addresses to static, but I can't seem to find that setting. 

Please help.

Mike

[MrChristmas2000]

To configure TCP/IP for static addressing
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Now if you are using a notebook you must disable your wireless adapter as well.

[Penfold]

I think my problem lies in the fact that I don't have a local area connection option.  I think I will do a search in XP and see if I can't find it so I can follow the a for mentioned steps.

[rrowan]

The etherdongle will never show up as local network connection. It only receives data from your computer

Rick R.


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[Penfold]

Maybe I don't understand.....what I was getting at is if I have to change the IP address don't I have to manually setup a connection and then edit it to get the IP address sought after or am I over analyzing this?

[rrowan]

the etherdongle (and all e1.31 devices) have a set address that has nothing to do with your computer or network address

There is nothing to setup at the computer level/hardware. In fact you computer won't even know its there.

In the software (it should be automatic, but normally its not) you might have to config it.
Software would be Vixen, LSP, xLights, LOR, etc

Rick R.

[keitha43]

In fact you computer won't even know its there.

Rick R.

My Win7 laptop knows it is there. It is listed as an "Unidentified network with No network access". Just to clarify if someone with Win7 comes across this thread.

[Penfold]

Then maybe the disconnect is in my understanding of vixen plugins.  I thought you only needed to put in the lynx ED dll.  Do I need to add the DMX 1.31 plugin as well?  Please bare with me here as this is new to me.

[MrChristmas2000]

You do however have to have an active ethernet port to operate the e1.31 protocol.

The only way to have an active ethernet port is for the ethernet port to be configured with an address.
This usually takes place when it is hooked to a router so it can automatically obtain it's address info, this is the default configuration of an ethernet port.
If it is not hooked to any external equipment it will go inactive because it doesn't have any address configuration information. This requires you to manually configure the port with an ethernet address. A simple address setup would be to set the IP address to 192.168.0.1,  mask 255.255.255.0 and gateway address to 192.168.0.1. Nothing else is really required for this basic setup.

The addressing used for the E1.31 is recognized by ALL addressing configurations as a general broadcasting address no matter what the port is manually or automatically programmed to be.

The ethernet port just has to have it's basic addressing scheme to be used by the Operating System i.e. Windows.

Most laptops today have a wireless ethernet adapter built in. Even with this wireless adapter connected to a network doesn't gurantee that the broadcast will be sent out the 'unidentified' network unless it has been configured with an ethernet address.

Hope that helps.

[Penfold]

Thanks for the quick replies.  I will be looking into the link and hopefully it will bring me favorable results tonight when I try it.  Thanks again for all the information.  I will let you know how it goes tomorrow morning after and try to fiddle with it tonight.

[Penfold]

A couple of years ago I scored my show computer from work, but I had to scrub the hard drive in the process.  When I was installing drivers I didn't worry about the network drivers because I figured I would never need them with this hobby.  BOY WAS I WRONG!  I installed the drivers yesterday and was able to change the IP addresses to the IPs mentioned here and VIOLA the ED is blinking away!

Thanks all for your input and troubleshooting ideas and fixes.

I appreciate it

Now I just have to worry about figuring out why Vixen won't trigger the lights.  I see the ED blinking furiously when I have a ramp on several channels so I know the ED is transmitting.  I think I am missing a DMX plugin or something.  I will research and see what I can find. 

THANK YOU ALL 

[rrowan]

In Vixen

Make sure in the Add-ins menu that they are ALL unChecked.
In the attached plugins and or the profile make sure you have the Lynx_EtherDongle plugin checked and it has the correct start and end channels listed.

Note: Vixen 2.1.x only
If you are using DMX for the EtherDongle make sure you are using the older EtherDongle plugin that works with DMX. There is a bug in the newer version and it doesn't work

Rick R.