Has anyon used more than two Arduinos with vixen 3 using pixels?

wm5e said:
Yes, I've hooked everything up to my non-powered hub,...
Click to expand...

Some thoughts -

Does your computer have more than 1 USB available? Try multiple USBs on computer, not through the hub.

You could have a bad HUB. Try a powered hub. Maybe your USB can't provide enough power for the NON powered hub.

Are you powering the Arduinos from a separate power supply? Again, the USB probably can not provide enough power to run them all.

Please show us the graphical channel mapping screens with the elements and the controller channels they are mapped to.
 
I'm not following why you need to have the serial monitor active at the same time as you're uploading a sketch? Definitely don't have the IDE open at the same time as Vixen since the IDE will lock the ports. You don't need the IDE running when running the arduinos on USB since the sketch/ccode lives on them.

From the free software I sent the link for, the demo mode does everything you need.
https://www.eltima.com/products/serial-port-monitor/

Select 'new session' from the 'session' menu while Vixen is outputting values. Pick one of the serial ports. It doesn't matter what sketch is on the Arduinos, you are monitoring the bytes which are being sent to the port you select. In the 'old' days when dedicated serial ports were built into the PC, you wouldn't have needed anything connected. It's just monitoring the Tx data being sent to that port. You can only monitor one at a time but you can check they're containing the correct data. if the monitor isn't working for you this suggests a problem with your PC / USB ports.

IMO you should be okay powering a few arduinos from ports, as others are saying if you're using a hub you may hit power limits though. Assume you're using a separate PSU for the pixels? And you have the PSU ground linked up to the arduino ground? IIRC each Arudino uses about 40mA.

Hope that helps?
 
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I don't have the IDE open when I'm running vixen. I thought I was referring to the port monitor that was suggested that I use for troubleshooting. I will give your link a shot and see how that works. I have separate power supplies for the leds, and only powering the Arduinos from the USB. I have the single data wire (pin 6) going to the data line on the strings, and the 5 volts is coming from a separate 5 Volt, 40 Amp power supply. I do have my Arduino grounds all tied together and also to the power supply ground.
 
It always seems like it's some tiny little detail. When I looked at my data on the data stream, my header was >>50<<. I guess seeing that and knowing the header needs to be a three digit number pointed me in the right direction quickly. Apparently I had set up the first output in Vixen when I was thinking, and later when I added the other two, I wasn't thinking as much! Anyway, I've just now seen three arduinos running three strings, and I'm thrilled. I've gotten a lot of input that I'll use going forward (3 is not nearly enough) so I've ordered a powered hub, and now I'm looking into a 10 or 15 port powered hub. Thank you to all of you guys that made suggestions and hung in there with me. It's a long time till December, but I'm headed in the right direction now.
 
Glad to hear it's sorted - the screen grab you shared did show 050 but sounds like it was wrong on the others from what you're saying. Yes the sketch is expecting three digits here so one missing would cause it to fail.
 
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