Hi Keith,
Thank you for being able to comment, Yes I think you just may know a little about xLights :-)
The Renards I am using require an RS485 input, hence the adaptor. From my understanding of the Renard system, it accepts serial data into the first Pic in a chain. This Pic, a PIC16F688, "gobbles" the first 8 bits of data, then passes the rest on to the next one, which does the same, and so on right down the chain, in this case 64 Pic's. The Baud rate I am using is 115200 so that the delay between the first and last Pic is only "minimally" visible as far as timing is concerned. It is because of this that I am running a second chain, this time only 448 channels because I didn't have enough of the Ren64XC boards at the time to go to the maximum. Each Pic in the chain then decodes the data and outputs these eight channels on eight of it's output pins as pulse width modulated 5 volt outputs which then go to a standard dimmable optocoupler coupled Triac switch, of which I have about 1,200, all in groups of eight.
I posted this description on the Brian's site last night to describe the mixup's I am seeing when using the Xlights test utility to check the setup :-
"I don't know enough to figure out what is wrong, my addressing, the hardware, or......... The results are weird, I can "talk" to some individual lights from the xlights test tab, for example Ch169 - 174 work fine, but what should be Ch175 to 200 I find at Ch 255 to 280 and in between virtually nothing!"
Any observations will be more than welcome complimentary or "otherwise" as I am totally stumped, a display all setup, but not operational!!!
Terry
Addendum, the Renard protocol etc is in the Wiki at :- http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com/wiki/index.php?title=Renard, if you can make sense of it :-(