Octostrip II questions...

My 1st questions is how exactly do you want to use them?
When you say 7 controllers?? do you mean 7 Pixel Drive 80's or 7 control consoles?
you have 51 strips in the cieling and 18 unused, so is that a total of 69? strips?
5 unused pixel drive 80's.. were those in the closet somewhere or installed in the cieling with no strips plugged into them.
Help me out with some of these questions? Thanks,

ok, i have went back through and tried a few things, with moderate success. but first, i'll answer some of your questions:

i am using martin lightjockey to control all of the moving heads & led fixtures. there are 7 pixel drive 60's operating a total of 51 lights. i am using a generic led profile on lightjockey to control the packs, and i have rgb control of every fixture individually. after doing some rummaging around, i can only locate an additional 10 octo strips & 3 pixel drive 60's.

tonight was slow at the club, so i played around with the pixel drive units & octostrips for a while, and got some weird results. when not hooked up to dmx, they work fine. so, i ran dmx through them, making them the first fixture in my chain, and tried to get them to work. for some reason, when hooked up to dmx they go into music trigger. after some experimenting i found that if i disconnect the dmx out (making the pixel drive 60 the only unit connected to lightjockey), they work fine. i have full rgb control, and the modes work correctly. but as soon as i plug in the rest of the lights, they go back to music trigger. i have never seen a fixture react this way, i am stumped. if it helps, every other fixture in the dmx chain is an elation product. any ideas??

Are you using any sort of dmx splitter? ot help boost the signal? like a opto branch 4? How long is your cable run?
Sincerely,

Stiffler,

It could be DMX cable issue. if your using Mic cable which i've seen on many installs, you could be getting something throught the data.

Another thing, it sounds like you need a lighting professional go in and help you with your set up to get things working right.
Where are you located?

First, I am a lighting professional. Second, there is a splitter towards the end of the chain. Regardless, my experiments have been conducted with in 5 feet of my controller. I simply unplugged my rig from my lightjockey dongle, ran a 5 foot dmx cable from my dongle to the pixel drive, and reconnected the rest of my rig to the pixel drive. So all I did was add the pixel drive to the beginning of the chain. As I said, it works fine as long as it is the only fixture in the chain. As soon as I hook up the rest of the lights, it goes into music trigger. It seems like something further down the chain is affecting its operation, which does not make a lot of sense. Is something sending data backwards?? Is that even possible?? I should also mention that the pixel drive units are the only fixtures that have given me these strange results.

Sounds like a bad cable. Is the line/s terminated as well? It could be reflections back down the DMX line which a terminator is there to prevent.

You say the split is at the end of the chain. That is not good, your splitters should always be home runs either back to a console or another splitter. This eliminates issues and helps with trouble shooting.

Other products in the chain as well, exactly how many? DMX has a limit to how much can run down one cable before issues arise. With movers, it is generally around 32 units after a splitter or console. Mixing and matching can cause for some interesting results, like you are experiencing. General rule of thumb I use, each fixture type gets its own home run to a console or line off a splitter.

Lastly, I know for a fact that when you leave something in standalone mode, it will send that signal down a data line. For example, plug in a regular LED after a set of Octo Strips and it will chase amber/green (default for Octo Strips without data) with the Octo Strips depending on channel configuration. Movers can do all kinds of weird things since their channel counts are higher and more complex then LEDs.