No com2

[Santa Don]

Newbie here, as if you couldn't tell. I was following the "how to" videos for setting up my profiles for Renard controllers and when I tried to set my com ports 1 & 2, only com 1 and com 3 were in the drop down box. Any ideas as to why that might be? I have two Renard 16 boards.

[rstehle]

Santa Don - Welcome!!

Not a problem, use the ones your computer gives you. Same thing happened to me. Your computer is using Com 2 for something else (maybe a modem).

[Santa Don]

Ah, makes sense. Thanks a bunch for the welcome and the info. I just got hooked a couple of weeks ago and can't wait to get started actually building a show.

[rstehle]

Santa Don, you are welcome! You are going to have tons of questions, many of which have been asked before. There is tons of info in the Christmas Wiki (link at top of this page). Once there, start HERE (http://www.christmasinshirley.com/wiki/index.php?title=Beginners_Guide) and it will help you get pointed in the right direction! Enjoy!
(You WILL get addicted...........:cool:)

[Santa Don]

You are so right RST... I do have questions. I have also read the Wiki cover to cover. One question that keeps haunting me is how can you have so many controllers (channels), but only have X number of computer ports for data? This won't affect me for awhile since I am only going to start with two 16 channel boards, but someday...... See, I told you I was a newbie.

[deplanche]

You can hook up multiple controllers to each Com port. For example you can have 4 - Ren16's on a single com port. The first one would be channels 1-16, the next one would be channels 17-32, and so on.

You CAN put each of these on their own COM port, but it is not necessary.

The com ports don't need to be in any special order. I use COM5 to COM8 for Vixen since modem and other devices tend to use the lower numbers.

[Sloanhaus]

If you look at the boards you have, you have a place to put in your cat5, and you have a place that says out next to the cat 5 connector. You run cat 5 from your computer to the in, and than run cat 5 from the out to your 2nd renard 16. The first controller will be 1-16, the second renard will be channels 17-32. Make sure you setup your profile right in vixen and put 32 channels, set the adjustable outputs, and I recommend taking a picture of your house and loading that so that you can put the lights onto the picture so you can see what its going to look like. If you look through my posts, I have posted my profile and sequences. If you download the profile and sequence, you can watch one of my sequences and get an idea of how to set up your profile. You are going to have to do alot of research and studying before it all makes since. Hang in there, and next year at christmas when the lights turn on, you will see that their are some things in life that compare to sex.

Brad