DMX dongle issues

[Warlock]

I was using RPM's design of the dmx dongle for halloween and it kept locking up,freezing and shutting down Vixen about every 5 minutes...I used it earlier (about a month) with no issues but last night nothing but issues...It got so bad I had to reboot my computer each time so it would start working again...Not sure what happened but all the error messages related to the dmx dongle not working correctly...Any help would be greatly appreciated..
Thanks again as always
Joe..

[RPM]

I was using RPM's design of the dmx dongle for halloween and it kept locking up,freezing and shutting down Vixen about every 5 minutes...I used it earlier (about a month) with no issues but last night nothing but issues...It got so bad I had to reboot my computer each time so it would start working again...Not sure what happened but all the error messages related to the dmx dongle not working correctly...Any help would be greatly appreciated..
Thanks again as always
Joe..

Make sure that you don't have the DMX add-in enabled.
This can be found by looking under the "Add-ins" tab on the top of the Vixen screen, and then look for the "DMX" add-in. It should be unchecked.
This option is only used for the DMX OPEN design and it will cause problems if used with a DMX PRO or clone design.

Robert

[Warlock]

Nope not checked...What else might it be ???

[dmcole]

While not with an RPM dongle, in the early days of using another dongle things got so bad I thought I was going to give up: lockups, reboots, all sorts of crazy stuff.

I finally had the notion to download a new version of Vixen -- cured all my ills. I think sometimes bad stuff migrates back up the wire (just kidding).

YMMV.

\dmc

[RPM]

Nope not checked...What else might it be ???

Are you using a USB2.0 cable, and are you plugging it into a USB2.0 port on your computer?
How long of a USB cable are you using?
Have you tried another cable?

Have you tried another USB port on your computer? If you at one time installed the driver on one port and then plugged the dongle into another port it will reinstall the driver for the new port and sometimes cause problems.

Have you tried removing the device driver and reinstalling it? You should be using the FTDI VCP drivers (for the dongle interface module) for your computer, which can be downloaded here:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm

You can also find the detailed FTDI installation instructions here:
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/InstallGuides.htm


What Com port are you assigning it to? Sometimes, depending on the computer, if you use Com 1 through 4 it will do strange things.
I usually use Com 5 and above to avoid this kind of problems.

What specific error messages did you get? Were they Windows errors, or Vixen errors? What Windows OS are you running, and what version of Vixen?

Robert

[Warlock]

Latest version of Vixen for use on Windows 7...Latest drivers,com port 3 is all it would find...This machine is only 5 months old so it has all 2.0 usb ports...They were vixen errors related to the dongle...That is what it said anyway...

[RPM]

Latest version of Vixen for use on Windows 7...Latest drivers,com port 3 is all it would find...This machine is only 5 months old so it has all 2.0 usb ports...They were vixen errors related to the dongle...That is what it said anyway...

Are you running Windows 7 32 or 64 bit?

If all else fails, try reinstalling the driver according to the FTDI instructions here
http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/AppNotes/AN_119_FTDI_Drivers_Installation_Guide_for_Windows 7.pdf

[Warlock]

With windows 7 it doesn't matter with the X86 dll library..It can run anything that worked under windows xp...So that I'm positive wasn't the issue...I just find it really weird that all went down hill this time...