Skipped Channel?

[ematson5897]

Setup:
I have a setup of 56 RGB leds hooked up to 21 Shift Registers which are hooked up to an Arduino. I am using the Renard Add-in with the attached code. The code is using the ShiftPWM library to control the LEDs. I know the setup is correct because it works on a standalone demo. I made a profile for the LEDs and made a basic test program (both attached).

Problem:
A peculiar thing happens. The LED that should be channel 99 (RGB LED #33 blue) stays on and the channel numbering skips it. Vixen is acting like it doesnt exist. So The channels go like this: RGB RG RGB whent it should be: RGB RGB RGB. I have enough power and I'm electronically literate. I have tried pretty much everything.


Any help is appreciated,
ematson5897

[budude]

I believe the Renard plug-in tosses out a pad character every 100th byte to allow for receiver re-syncing. There's a post around somewhere describing it.

Here is one discussion about it - http://doityourselfchristmas.com/for...y-coder-issues-)

[ematson5897]

I believe the Renard plug-in tosses out a pad character every 100th byte to allow for receiver re-syncing. There's a post around somewhere describing it.

Here is one discussion about it - http://doityourselfchristmas.com/for...y-coder-issues-)

So how would I go about setting vixen up to get around this?

[budude]

There is no way to do this in Vixen short of rewriting the Renard Plug-in since there are no settings for this. You would probably have an easier chance of changing the code on your side and looking for the pad characters and dealing with them.

[ematson5897]

Or would it be easier to just switch to generic serial?

[budude]

Or would it be easier to just switch to generic serial?

Does it support dimming? I've never used it personally so not 100% sure... It doesn't seem too difficult to filter out the pad characters from the Renard stream though - I'd suggest you go that route if you have access to the serial stream in your code.

btw - missed it was your first post - - Welcome to DIYC!

[ematson5897]

Does it support dimming? I've never used it personally so not 100% sure... It doesn't seem too difficult to filter out the pad characters from the Renard stream though - I'd suggest you go that route if you have access to the serial stream in your code.

btw - missed it was your first post - - Welcome to DIYC!

Thanks. So If I just ignore the 100th one what else needs to happen?

[dirknerkle]

So how would I go about setting vixen up to get around this?

You can't. You set up the receiving firmware to allow for it.

[budude]

Thanks. So If I just ignore the 100th one what else needs to happen?

Well - more correctly you need to look for the padding character pattern as outlined in one of the links in the thread. Simply counting to a hundred my get off at some point and your code will get lost on where it is.

[Materdaddy]

I have some arduino code to read vixen's renard data here:
https://gist.github.com/24df7703e06846567635

It reads the escape characters properly and I used it for the entire 2011 Christmas show without problem.