Flickering with interface "Cable"

[DaveK]

Greetings,

I posted a question as to whether this issue had been resolved over the weekend against an old thread. That thread is locked from additional posts, so I've started a new thread.

This application is for a school. They have eight Chauvet Colorbank LED's that I want to use as part of a show. These banks are set to have solid RGB mixed outputs for the show, but "flicker" every 30-60 seconds. I believe the flicker is simultaneous across all 8 fixtures, but I would need to confirm that. I'm controlling them with the latest version of ShowXpress using a very new Dell Latitude laptop interfaced with an Xpress 100 USB/DMX device. I've validated that the laptop is not performing any other tasks and CPU utilization does not exceed 10-20% when the issue occurs. The OS is Windows 7, but I've duplicated the problem on two other Windows 7 computers (one laptop and one desktop system) and one Windows XP system (laptop).

We've limited budget and start our competition schedule on February 12th, so my need to resolve this issue is urgent. I'm considering other hardware/software solutions at this time.

I've seen posts about "not having the current software or drivers", Chinese lights, and/or computers that hit 100% CPU utlization. None of those items are relevant to my situation.

Thanks.

--Dave

[support]

I've seen posts about... Chinese lights ... None of those items are relevant to my situation.

Please double check this with your lights supplier.

[DaveK]

Sorry if I'm confused, but the lights are Chauvet lights purchased 3 years ago, so isn't Chauvet the supplier? And is this not the support forum for their products?

Also, we have a legacy controller (with slide controls) and when it is used with these lights, there is no flicker. This seems to be clearly a problem with the Xpress 100 or the software, and not an issue with the lights.

Thanks in advance,

--Dave

[support]

This forum is exclusively for the software lighting controller (software & interfaces), and for nothing else.

It is normal that the Chinese lights work well with a dmx lighting desk which generates the dmx signal (because most of them have slow dmx timing). The problem come exclusively with usb to dmx converters (ours and also those of our competitors).

If you use our interfaces which generate dmx signal (D512 and Remote), with recent firmware "slow dmx timing for Chinese lights", the Chinese lights will works well to.

The dmx signal from the usb to dmx converters is 100% dmx compliant, but it is too fast for Chinese lights.

For some months, the new Chinese lights do not have anymore this problem. If you have the opportunity to use a recent Chinese light (same as yours), you will see that it will work perfectly, with interface Cable.

We know very well this problem, because the interfaces D512 and Remote with old firmware had same problem with Chinese lights. And we spent a lot of time: first to understand why the Chinese lights were flickering, and then to make a new firmware with "slow dmx timing for Chinese lights".

[DaveK]

Good stuff in the last post. "Chinese" lights meant nothing to a newbie like me, especially when they were branded "Chauvet". Bottom line: the USB interfaces are too fast for these fixtures and there is/will be no fix for this issue.

Thanks.

[support]

there is/will be no fix for this issue

Yes, just because we can not do anything.
- our software send the channels infos, via the computer usb port
- the interface Cable converts the usb data into dmx data
- it is unfortunately not possible to force a basic converter to slow down the timing

Again, the dmx signal of interface Cable is 100% dmx compliant, and it works well with all other dmx lights.

Our interfaces (not converters) D512 and Remote are able to drive correctly the Chinese lights.