Tip Of The Day #033

Tip Of The Day #033

So what do you do when your lights don’t work right. This is clearly a complex question and depending on symptoms you can jump to certain problem areas quickly but let me give some general advice.

1. Always start with the controllers test mode. If you can’t get your lights working using your controllers test mode then there is no way it is going to work in xlights/xschedule/fpp. Use the rgbw option if it is available. On white you should not be getting flicker. If you are you have brightness/power/signalling issues you need to work out.
2. Now move to xlights test mode selecting output universes. Start with something simple like background and turn it up to 50%. Is your controller seeing network packets (assuming it tells you). If no then you have a networking issue to solve. If it is then you have a port configuration issue to solve. Networking issues may be wrong ip addresses or data going out the wrong adapter. I won’t go into details here.
3. Now move to models in test mode. Are the right models lighting up. If not then you have port config issues or model start channel issues.
4. Now move to a-b-c mode. Are you seeing the right colours? If not then you need to play with the colour order in xlights or the controller.
5. Now try playing a sequence in xlights. Does it work. By now it should.
6. Now you can move to your player. In xschedule make sure it is pointing to the same show directory. If you have added output processors this may also be going wrong adapter so you need to check that as well. Fpp has similar possible issues which I won’t go into here.

Some tools for troubleshooting:
Ping is great for checking controllers are reachable
Don’t forget check sequence and check schedule. They can highlight some issues
I also love Fing on my iPhone for scanning devices.
When all else fails I like wireshark … not for the faint hearted but I use this to prove the data is leaving your pc correctly.