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Network fre.........ezing
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LightsOnLogan View Drop Down
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Joined: 11 Oct 2007
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Posts: 3187 		  Quote LightsOnLogan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Network fre.........ezing
    Posted: 14 Dec 2009 at 11:46am
So I'm not the only one?

Certainly a big savings!  I'm strange though...  I use (or is it misuse) Neutrik Speakon connectors (the touring grade waterproof ones in the metal shell with a 240V 50A rating) for daisy-chaining power to the controllers. 

I found them cheaper than the locking connectors made for the purpose, smaller, and with better current rating.  A plus is that anybody snooping in the yard would have no clue what they were looking at.
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Posts: 551 		  Quote Pony_God Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Dec 2009 at 10:13am
Originally posted by LightsOnLogan

It might help that I'm running 240V cords to the yard so the two polarities may be cancelling in the cord when the load is balanced.  I wire the controllers with red on one bank and black on the other bank.  It gets me 40A capability on a single modified 12 gauge extension cord.
Gota love pushing 220 out! Saves on so many extra cables.
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Posts: 3187 		  Quote LightsOnLogan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Dec 2009 at 9:21am

The "choke point" in my display is on hooks across the garage ceiling, down the garage wall, and under the porch step.  Network cables share this path with the power distro trunk cords (155A at full strike, and yes, I dim down from full strike).  Total distance: ~40 feet shared path.  Do I recommend it: No  Have I had problems: Not yet.

It might help that I'm running 240V cords to the yard so the two polarities may be cancelling in the cord when the load is balanced.  I wire the controllers with red on one bank and black on the other bank.  It gets me 40A capability on a single modified 12 gauge extension cord.


Edited by LightsOnLogan - 14 Dec 2009 at 9:23am
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Posts: 674 		  Quote deweycooter Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Dec 2009 at 8:32am
Hmm... this has got me thinking.  I cross 6 driveways (all 2 lanes wide) with cat5 running right next to SPT, I think my drive has 6 or 8 cords going across with 2 network cables.  I've been looking for a better solution to running across drives anyway - my current solution is to anchor a pair of 1x2 boards side-by-side on the drive with an inch or two gap between them, then simply lay the SPT/cat5 bundle in between.  Yes, bundled.

Not saying that there's no effect, but I probably have somewhere between 700 and 1000 ft of cat5 in one of my networks and I'm not seeing anything really bad.  Next year - yes, I'm separating data from power.  I'm considering laying some conduit across the drives and running the cat5 through it??
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Posts: 163 		  Quote Comporder1 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Dec 2009 at 8:49pm
I am thinking I have it fixed. It has run for 5 hours now, where for the last two nights it has lost it's ID within 1 hour. I am almost sure that it was noise that termination has resolved. I have pics! I will update this post once I get them posted.
Carey
 
Edit: Here is my terminiation post over at d-light - http://www.d-light.us/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1738

Edited by Comporder1 - 13 Dec 2009 at 10:00pm
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Posts: 551 		  Quote Pony_God Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Dec 2009 at 5:37pm
I'll note that for 2009 all data lines were bundled with the AC input to the controllers, since all the wires could stay togeather that way.
When buring in the new controllers this year, I has 20' or so of data coiled up on the 5' of inputs and 8 or so outputs and there was very clearly data corruption. As soon as I moved the data cable everythig worked perfectly.
Now, that's also clearly an extreme case though that is not likely to happen in use.
We take as many precausions (within reason) to reduce as many variables so that hopefully we will have as few errors/issues as possible.
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Posts: 3187 		  Quote LightsOnLogan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Dec 2009 at 5:14pm
While MrChristmas2000 has had reasonable success running his UTP cable near AC lines, I do not recommend this for any distance.  Here's why:
 
While the twists in the UTP (Cat5) cable are designed to prevent crosstalk among the pairs, they are not adequate for preventing AC current from being induced on the cable.
 
Note:
True extension cords are less of a problem than SPT wire.  This is because the wires inside the extension cord usually have some twist to them helping cancel some of their field.  Still, I wouldn't recommend it for any significant distance, especially with dimming/ramping in use (lots of harmonic noise on the line). 
 
I'd recommend a separation of at least 2' from AC cords and perpinduclar crossings.  We've all done much worse (myself included) and gotten away with it, but that doesn't make it proper.
 


Edited by LightsOnLogan - 13 Dec 2009 at 5:15pm
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Posts: 344 		  Quote MrChristmas2000 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Dec 2009 at 12:21pm
I have data cables running through the same pipe as 6 15A AC cords without any problems. My d-light data cables also run parallel with the power around the front of the house. If running data cables with power I should have trouble all over the place but everything is running superbly.

I think that sometimes d-light controllers get their firmware badly loaded and can cause you nightmares. Reloading the firmware sometimes correct that problems.

Running 11 d-light controllers with mostly loaded with 1.17 without any problems.


Holding breath for DMX.
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Posts: 551 		  Quote Pony_God Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Dec 2009 at 11:34am
Here's a few things that I saw on our controllers that lost thier IDs.
A few things to check would be:
1. data near AC
2. bad data cable
Interesting a network terminator clearly showed me that the two controllers that lost IDs did actualy NOT have lock.
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Posts: 163 		  Quote Comporder1 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Dec 2009 at 11:08pm

The machines are very different, with the main difference being 64bit vs 32bit OS. One is a dell inspiron 1000 celeron laptop. The desktop is an AMD 64 x2. I was having issues on my laptop with scheduler crashing. The error referenced pointed toward a VB file. Michael had me reset the VB files and scheduler no longer crashes and for the past two nights, I have not seen a lag! I also ran WU and it updated .net v1 to sp1, so I'm not real sure what fixed it.... OR IF it is even fixed. Now I am tracing down a controller that has lost it's ID 2 nights in a row!

 
Carey
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