8 Channel Dimmer board by Jon Williams... Anyone built one?
BTL24
Posts: 54
I am looking for anyone who has built an 8 Channel Dimmer board as featured in the November 2007 Nuts & Volts magazine (article by Jon Williams), "Diming the Lights Fantastic". Curious if they have had any problems getting it to work with Vixen.· I posted same request on DIY Christmas lighting website.
I have built one up and cannot get it to work properly with Vixen's "Jon Williams Lighting Controller" as found in the plugin section. Lights are sporadic as if the addressing is incorrect. With 4 DIP switches you select the board's address (0 to 15).... total of 128 channels (8 channels per board).
I am running XP on a Dell desktop, Vixen 2.0.9.0 Beta, with RS232 interface (and convertor to TTL) at Baud rate of 38.4K.
Dimmer board has been checked out with diagnostic controller (SX based). Dimmer Board can turn lamps on and off as well as dim them appropriately.· I am running dimmer board with a 50 Mhz cermaic resonator on the dimmer board.
I just confirmed (viewing on O-Scope) that Vixen is sending 16 channels, channel 0 first and channel 15 last in the serial stream with Jon Williams Lighting Controller driver plug in.
RS232 converted TTL signal is strong and clean going into "Sin" pin (Serial input from RS232). Start and Stop bits are present and bit time is 26 uSec (38.4K Baud rate). Idle period is logic high (5 Vdc) - that is time between message streams. Update rate for message streams is ~ 94ms or around 10 Hz.
In theory the dimmer board is supposed to dismiss any channels not destined for that address (8 channels per board or 8 bytes per board). Problem is when I select various addresses (4 position DIP switches on dimmer board), the lights sometimes come on when they are not supposed to. Since Vixen only is sending 16 channels (as programmed), I expect them to be the first 2 or last two addressed boards. Not working out that way.
It appears that when I set up on on / off sequence it plays it back at half the speed on the dimmer board.
Any advice / experience with this board would be appreciated.
Regards,
Brian
I have built one up and cannot get it to work properly with Vixen's "Jon Williams Lighting Controller" as found in the plugin section. Lights are sporadic as if the addressing is incorrect. With 4 DIP switches you select the board's address (0 to 15).... total of 128 channels (8 channels per board).
I am running XP on a Dell desktop, Vixen 2.0.9.0 Beta, with RS232 interface (and convertor to TTL) at Baud rate of 38.4K.
Dimmer board has been checked out with diagnostic controller (SX based). Dimmer Board can turn lamps on and off as well as dim them appropriately.· I am running dimmer board with a 50 Mhz cermaic resonator on the dimmer board.
I just confirmed (viewing on O-Scope) that Vixen is sending 16 channels, channel 0 first and channel 15 last in the serial stream with Jon Williams Lighting Controller driver plug in.
RS232 converted TTL signal is strong and clean going into "Sin" pin (Serial input from RS232). Start and Stop bits are present and bit time is 26 uSec (38.4K Baud rate). Idle period is logic high (5 Vdc) - that is time between message streams. Update rate for message streams is ~ 94ms or around 10 Hz.
In theory the dimmer board is supposed to dismiss any channels not destined for that address (8 channels per board or 8 bytes per board). Problem is when I select various addresses (4 position DIP switches on dimmer board), the lights sometimes come on when they are not supposed to. Since Vixen only is sending 16 channels (as programmed), I expect them to be the first 2 or last two addressed boards. Not working out that way.
It appears that when I set up on on / off sequence it plays it back at half the speed on the dimmer board.
Any advice / experience with this board would be appreciated.
Regards,
Brian
Comments
Thanks for the info (and the call yesterday).·
I found out that there is another version of the Dimmer Board SX/B SW (ID=JWLC-8) that fixed the problem.· I was running the version posted in the Nuts & Volts Nov 2007 article download (ID=lamps_8x).· The newer SW version was found as an attachment to one of your older posts on DYI Christmas forum.
Addressing of boards is now working and the lights are responding to Vixen commands.· Not sure if KC updated the drivers yesterday, but they appear to be working as of last night with Vixen's Version 2.0 Beta for 16 channels.
Regards,
Brian