Quickshow DMX-In Bug

B

Battery556

Member
Hi everyone,

When i'm using DMX-in with my Enttec box in quickshow, everything works great - however any Cues that I have fired over DMX, randomly turn off after a random amount of time. Sometimes its after 4 seconds, sometimes its after 2 minutes.

I don't receive any of the "DMX Signal Lost" warnings and nothing changes in the DMX State Monitor.

Irregardless of what "Release" channel DMX Setting i'm sending to quickshow, this issue still happens.

I have updated my enttec box to the most recent firmware, update my control software to the most recent version and updated quickshow to the most recent version.

Nothing else in my DMX Chain has any issues, so i know the DMX signal isn't failing.

This issue happens irregardless of what access level has been set via dmx.

If i try to re-fire the cue or any others, it works absolutely fine.... until it turns its self off again.

Any ideas? Im all out

Im running Chamsys on the first PC with magicq dongle to output dmx - running quickshow on a laptop with enttec to receive DMX signal. Ive now plugged both of my dongles straight in to each other now for testing - no dmx splitter and no other dmx units that could be causing issues.

Additionally, if i leave DMX-in running, so i can control colours etc via chamsys - but fire the quickshow cues on the local machine with the mouse or keyboard.... they dont stop at all. they keep on playing until the end of time.
 
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UPDATE: Replicated this exact same issues on another computer with a clean install of windows and quickshow installed. Quickshow V4 Build 1122.
 
How do you execute these cues? From your workspace as cues or timeline?

Normally only latest takes precedence.
When you jump between cues, the chance is that you cancel out your previous DMX frame.

Could this be the case here?
 
Cue are activated in the workspace.

Send DMX Data to the "page" channel to set the page and then send DMX data to the "cue" channel to activate the cue.

The cue that is activated at the time (Any of them) eventually deactivates without changing or altering anything at all. I simply send the data then don't touch a thing, and the cue stops at a random time. Sometimes it stops after 5 seconds, other times it stops after 2 minutes. Not once had a cue active for more than 4 minutes. Its random every time.

If i activate any cue using my mouse or keyboard on the machine running quickshow, it works perfectly fine.
 
Just as a test I've done the following.

Quickshow is set to receive DMX address 200 and on-wards.

I've created an FX on my lighting software (Chamsys) to take the "Fade" Channel of quickshow (DMX Channel 204) from 0 to 255 and back to 0 then to 255... and so on so fourth (In a continuous loop) - Ive done this so I can see the Brightness slider in quickshow moving up and down continoulsy - if there was any DMX drop out, I would then be able to see this as the slider would stop moving.

In quickshow ive clicked View -> Show DMX Monitor. (So i can see even more about whats going on with the DMX In)
In quickshow ive clicked Settings -> DMX IN State Monitor. (So i can even even see more about whats going on with the DMX In)

I've then set the page channel (DMX Channel 201) to 000 (Page 1).

Then set the cue channel (DMX Channel 202) to 079 (Activates cue 12, 'w') and havn't changed or touched anything until the cue stops its self.....

Ive done this 3 times now.

First time - cue stays active for 5 Second.
Second time- cue stays active for 3 Second.
Third time - cue stays active for 2 minutes 46.
Fourth time - cue stays active for 27 Seconds.
Fifth time - cue stays active for 2 minutes 22 second.

Each time the cue stops working, the brightness slider is still moving up and down and the DMX Monitors are still displaying the information thats being sent to the.
 
Just to give you a better idea of whats going on, ive recorded my screen and uploaded it here:

Cue turns its self off around 30 seconds in to the video.
 
After watching that video back a few times, ive noticed in the DMX Monitor at the bottom the Quickshow channels all flicker off then back on again. Channels 1, 2, 3 etc all stay on..... so ive just ran another test and send dmx to pretty much every channel to see what happens..... the results have been interesting....

Channels 1 to (aroudn) 192 all seem stable....

Is it time for a new enttec box or do we think this could be a quickshow problem? hmmmmm :confused:o_O
 
Just did some more testing to answer that question...... I set quickshow and everything to above channel 200 (I've got a moving head here) - Set the moving head to do a circle - now in theory if the enttec box dropped out above channel 200, the moving head would stop moving for a second then start again.

Ran a cue in quickshow over dmx, set the moving head moving in a circle.

When the cue stopped in quickshow, the moving head carried on, didn't stutter, didnt stop, absolutely nothing (I even had my hand on it to feel any split second stops)

As a work around I will put quickshow and channel 1 as it doesnt seem to have any problems then put everything else above that and now i can stop worrying about my show tomorrow.

Would be interesting to see if anyone else can replicate this problem.
 
OK, lets add some diagnostic, it will tell what is really going on. In build 1123 you will see new tab in DMX State window. Second tab has a list of generated commands caused by data change. When Access, Page, or Cue channel will change, and it will initiate cue start/stop command, QS will add log ,message. Up to 30K messages. Logging start after opening the window. if no messages, but "something" stop the cue, then I will tell what to do next.
Log also has 16 data bytes of DMX IN, used for command generation. It should give pretty complete information - data and reaction.

New build will be available over Update menu in a day or two.

My opinion - most possibly it related to DMX signal, and how EntTec recognize the data. You might consider to change DMX signal timing parameters. During testing I found that EntTec USB DMX PRO cannot catch up with QM2000 DMX stream with default parameters. Your DMX source should allow you to change timing.
 
I’m all up for some data logs! Looking forward to the update.

In the meantime I will look in to the DMX timings parameters and have a play around.

Thanks
 
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