Hello to all the joyful people!! Sorry for the long text, I tried to have as much info as possible.
I am having a very ego shattering problem. I have been trying to troubleshoot for about 10 hours and I simply cannot find my mistake. My knowledge of Christmas light sequencing and controller setup is pretty limited as this is my third season but I am obviously still learning. Last two years I had 0 problems so it's quite a punch in the face to have trouble right now before a new season. I just figured that maybe someone has had a similar problem to mine and that I simply overlooked something. I'm hoping anyways...
Previously I was using Vixen to sequence my lights. I spent about 40 hours to make a 9 minute show. I made two others for Halloween and covid lockdown cheerfulness. Everything has run great so far. This year, after an unfortunate problem upgrading Vixen, I decided to try xLights. After sequencing for just an hour, I was able to make something more satisfying then my 40 hour vixen sequence. I absolutely love this program and feel bad I did not start with it. I was under the impression that it was more complicated but for my way of thinking it seems so much easier. Needless to say, I really want to keep using xLights.
THE PROBLEM: When playing the fseq file on my controller, it only plays it for a few seconds, then restarts. I have made a few other test sequences and they all do the same. The actual light output is a bunch of random flashing colored lights with about half a second of the actual sequence playing.
I have also realized that my fseq file is smaller then anticipated. For a 90 second sequence, the file is 743kb. I made a similar sequence in Vixen using the same effects and only 30 seconds long and it was 3mb. Not sure what's the difference in how both programs make fseq files but that did seem odd.
My setup uses the Falcon F16 controller. I have 11 ports used with about 600 WS2811 pixels. I'm powering all from the controller which is why the high count of ports used. I'm simply not ready to learn power injecting. I am using the controller in standalone mode which makes it annoying to troubleshoot, removing all pigtails, bring the falcon inside, remove sd card, connect to ethernet... I do not own a house so making holes in walls for networking seemed like a bad idea. Next year I will invest in a RPI with FPP.
To setup xLights, I followed a 9 part YT video from channel "Learn Christmas Lighting". It did not go into great detail but enough to have everything setup and working. It said to use ZCPP as controller to get started. Would this have any impact on my problem since I'm using the controller in standalone mode? I have tried with E131 and same problem. In Vixen, it is set it up as using E131. A am not sure if changing anything here could be the source of my issue. The only difference this year is I added about 200 more pixels. I have not played with universes yet as I assumed those were only for ethernet connected devices, I might be wrong though.
In my "layout" tab, I have 11 lines (with groups) and I have taken all the start and stop channel info from here and they all match what the Falcon is showing. Also, in the layout tab, I have assigned all the proper port channels for my lights to match the controller. At this point, with my limited knowledge, I cannot find a single problem with my setup. I originally thought the Falcon was the problem but everything works with Vixen. I really want to only use xLights from now on so I hope someone could guide me in the right direction to fix this annoying sleep-depriving problem. Thank you for reading if you made it this far.
