DiyLightAnimation

Kit 1 - 12
Kit 2 - 12
Kit 3 - 12

I think the issue I am having is a little different than what I read from others posting here.

Using Zeus V1 for 2nd year with no prior issues.  Using 6 outputs with 80 nodes per output.

Tested fine with a couple strings in the garage.  Worked fine during testing once installed in yard.  During the last test before shutting down for the evening, the first string was dark and the rest were green and purple (green node, purple node, green node, etc.).  No response to any pixelnet commands.  Disconnected and brought it inside for troubleshooting.  Reviewed everything posted here but didn't help with my issue much.  I did eventually figure out that the PIC for output 1 had a problem (maybe dead).  Replacing it with a PIC from a spare output channel fixed the issue.  I think the PIC was taking down communication to all of the PICs and they defaulted to green/purple.

Everything work fine for 2 weeks until yesterday.  Dead mega tree.  We had a ton of rain but GFCI was not tripped.  Opened the box and power LED was out. Unplugged AC power and plugged back in now 3 of the 6 strings are dark (strings 2, 5, 6) and other 3 are green/purple.  Based on my history I will try removing those 3 PICs and replacing with spares to see if functionality comes back.

If that is the issue again - what is taking out the PICs?  Is it cycling of the power supply?  Normally my power is on all of the time but somehow this particular Zeus lost power this particular day.  Now that I say that I remember we had quick power outage during the night (clocks were flashing on the morning).

Others have said their Zeus works then on later tries doesn't (sounds like they cycled power but not sure) and they say their PICs are corrupted.  But I think the symptoms I have are slightly different (i.e. strings don't go all dark or all white).

I have not tried reprogramming any of the PICs at this point.

Anyone seen anything simiar?

Thanks!

When I decided to line the roofline of the house with Smart Strings a few years ago, they were new and there weren't a lot of shared ideas of how best to install them.  So this is what I did and it has worked very well and saved a ton of time at installation and tear down.

I bought a bunch of 1x2 lumber, drilled a hole about every 3 inches to stick the LED through and painted the wood to match the gutters and soffits of the house.  I next added a screw-in hook near each end of the wood and installed eye-hooks into the soffits at matching spacing.  I siliconed each LED into place from the rear and soldered waterproof connectors at the end of each wood section.

This allows me to hang each strip up separately (the longest are 8' and the shortest is about 3') then make the connection between each section once they are up on the house.  This same system works for the gable ends of the house also.  It took almost all of the 4 128 LED strings I ordered from Ray (and 4 controllers) to do the front of the house.  I just zip tied the controllers (in PVC pipe) to the back of the 1x2 near the beginning of each string.  You can also hide the Cat5 cable by zip tying it behind the 1x2s.

Attached are some photos showing how the system is not very obvious during the day and a couple of close photos showing the details.

Lessons learned - spring for the waterproof connectors like Ray sells.  I tried male/female 1/4" push connectors and they were horrible.  The only other thought I have had that would be easier is to buy the more expensive strips and just leave them mounted all year up against the house under the soffits.  I think they might blend in enough to not be noticeable from the road.

Don't know what it means if anything but I just noticed the "final" sequences I had done that won't open with the profile I was using are pretty huge - about 100MB each.  Whereas one with the new profile (and just filled with random sequencing to try to fill it up) is about 45MB for the same song and number of active channels.  Of course the old profile had 4096 instead of 1660 channels so maybe that explains the size difference.

I've still got a ton of work to do and have been trying to make some sequencing progress this week then started running into this problem last night.

Most of my sequences (the ones I care to use anyway) won't open.  I get this error:
"Unhandled exception has occurred...blah, blah, blah.
Index was out of range.  Must be non-negative and less than size of the collection.
Parameter name: index."
[Continue]    [Quit]

Actually this seems to be happening to the sequences using a new profile I created using Vixen Sequence Builder - although sequences with an older profile built with VSB seem to open fine.

One sequence I just spent most of the day working on and saved often worked fine until I closed and tried to re-open it this evening.

Any help?

My profile is 4096 channels (although I am not actively  using that many).

Received my co-op shipment today.  What a great job organizing and packaging!  Let me know the next time you are running a co-op, I'll order no matter what it is. 

I've assembled 2 RX/TX modules this week (among other bits and pieces) and have an issue getting them into transmit mode.

I've programmed the PICs on both and when I power them up the green LED always flashes 2 times (for RX mode) even if the jumper is set to TX mode.  I've reflashed the PICs a couple of times and same results.  I checked the center pin of the 3 pin header and it is indeed being pulled high (5v) when set for RX mode and low (0v) when set for TX mode.

After it flashes 2 times it will pause and then flash the appropriate number of times for the Unit setting (1, 2 or 3).  So it appears the code is running correctly.

I don't have enough of a system together yet to test whether it might actually be transmitting but I did connect the Lynx dongle to it running a Vixen test sequence and the dongle LED flashes but the green LED on the wireless module set to TX does not.

Any ideas?