Sean Meighan

Welcome => Do You Need Help? Post it here => Topic started by: TCB402 on September 29, 2021, 06:51:58 AM

Title: DMX addresses assigned in xLights, but not used as assigned
Post by: TCB402 on September 29, 2021, 06:51:58 AM

We have 3 LOR boards for DMX in use for powering on "standard" Holiday lighting (Blow-molds etc) (along with a Falcon F4v 3 and remotes).  I assign DMX addresses in xLights according to which controller wil run them (Controller 1 is addresses 1-16, Controller 2 is 17-20, controller 3 is 21-24).  Depending on the holiday I may need 1 controller, 2 controllers or all 3.  These controllers are used in different areas of the yard separated by sidewalks, driveways and fences and are permanent installs.

Here's my issue.  When I assign DMX addresses in xLights, (example DMX addresses 1, 17, and 24 (so one address in each of the three LOR controllers) they show up in xLights in the Visualizer as addresses 1, 17, and 24, but when they're output, the actually get sent out as addresses 1, 2, and 3.

It's not an LOR issue, we tested with theatrical DMX portable dimmers and had the same result.  We've been using DMX protocol for theatre shows since DMX was accepted as "the standard protocol" but this is the first time we've encountered this issue.  As a work-around, I've created "dummy props" to use up otherwise unused DMX addresses, but this seems like the wrong solution.   Ideas?

Title: Re: DMX addresses assigned in xLights, but not used as assigned
Post by: Gilrock on September 29, 2021, 07:13:44 AM

I don't know the in's and out's of the Visualizer so there may be an issue with regards to that.

How does xLights connect to the LOR boards?  Its not clear because you mention a Falcon board.  I use a Falcon board in my show to send the DMX output to my LOR boxes.  In that scenario you actually send all the data in E1.31 packets to the Falcon and then configure the Falcon to parse that data and send it out the DMX outputs.  DMX outputs are going to send a chunk of data bytes.  There is no address information so if you want address 17 to fire there must be 16 bytes in front of it.  Its probably just easier to use the dummy channels if that's working.  I had to do the same thing last time I remember because I wanted xLights to use up an entire universe even though I was only using a few channels on the DMX output.