DiyLightAnimation

Wow... this is kind of depressing.  I built my first display (on my parent's house) in 2008 as a freshman in college (RJ helped me troubleshoot a burned-out SSR4 while I was on the roof as a snowstorm rolled in).  I just finished graduate school, bought a house of my own, and came back here to see about upgrading my system to include some pixel elements for next year.  I had visited a few times annually to see where the technology was going, but with school it was hard to keep up and I didn't notice how slow things had gotten until tonight.  Back when I started, the Lynx system was one of the only ways to get the blinky-flashy going. Now as I look around the internet, the options are a bit overwhelming, especially given the added complexities of RGB/Pixels.  I wonder if too much diversification in the hobby and the rise of major social media platforms had a hand in the decline of the community here.  It's certainly not lack of interest--when I started my display, I was one of maybe a dozen synchronized light shows in the county.  Last year there were 5 in my small town, and dozens more in the neighboring city.

At any rate, I hope that, whatever RJ is doing these days, he knows how much joy his work here brought to us and all our "audiences" through the years. We had a mostly blind neighbor boy who would come over to my display as soon as it got dark to dance with the lights.  It was one of the only times he could see the world around him.

Thanks, guys!  I got it going.  It was indeed the pic (and wouldn't you know it, the day I fixed the LE, the Dongle died so I had to repair that in order to see if the LE worked).  It's been a nightmare but you guy's helped me through!

Thank you and have a very Merry Christmas!

Are the Dongle pic and the LE pics interchangeable assuming you program them correctly?  I know very little about how the pics actually work.  If I have my LE, can I use a PicKit3 to reprogram the

I'm considering buying half the BOM for the dongle and ordering faster shipping to get it here before the whole season is over.  Other than the three chips, the USB card and the triac, should I order anything else?

This has got to be the most frustrating problem ever... I have to replace the majority of my dongle in order to test to see IF the express works so I can maybe get my show going this year...

I also tried doing a system restore, but that didn't do anything.  Rebooting either computer has no effect.  I've tried 2 different USB cables.  I have a multimeter, but I don't know what else to test.

So is there anything I can measure to make sure I don't fry my next pic?  Is there a chance I still have something wrong on my board that's frying it?  I ordered 2 new PICs, but I don't have time to waste frying another (assuming I did the frying in the first place instead of receiving a defective PIC).

Yeah, that's the one.  It was backwards the entire time, but for whatever reason it just barely started affecting anything.  Up until I was troubleshooting yesterday it read 60hz, but as soon as I noticed the LED2 not turning on, it showed 50hz.  When I corrected the chip orientation it returned to normal and now displays 60hz. 

Alright, I tested the standalone software.  Now we're back to erratic responses to DMX from vixen (slightly synchronized to the music).

Well, I resoldered most of the pre-pic components (including the pic socket itself) and now the test program runs fine until the end, where LED2 no longer lights up and now there is no response from the express AT ALL from the computer end (whereas previously it had some erratic responses).  I tried re-flashing the pic again and this time it said there was an error:

"Address: 000015f2 Expected Value: 00ffffff Received Value: 00fffffe"

I then tried it again with the same result, and a third time and it programmed correctly, but with the same result (test works, but LED 2 does not remain lit and there is no communication with the computer).  The DMX light does remain lit.

I'm lost.