Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

David,

I am impressed by your level of documentation. Good job! That has to be of value to someone in the debugging.

The way I have been able to get my CC to lock up the CSRB+s is to be too fast on the "test" button. I can pretty consistently lock up two of the three CSRB+s by making a power adjustment and then hitting the right hand button too quickly. PCB says you should wait 250 ms for every light in the system (for my 3 light setup, I should wait 750 ms). If I get too anxious and hit the test button after making an adjustment, I can force two of my CSRB's to go into la-la land. Pulling the batteries out and putting them back in resets everything.

PCB support is aware of this after my call with them today. Waiting to see what they learn by looking at the firmware code. For the meantime, I just need to slow down on the test button.

We tried changing frequencies to look at the router interference issue, but the problem tracked with the frequency change so I am not sure that is a cause, but could it be a contributor? Dunno. Not convinced we don't have more than one problem in play, so keep up the circumstance tracking.

Mike

Thanks for the info on inSSIDer David as its a bit update compared to netsumbler which has been a bit buggy for me on win 7 64bit.

Hopefully your detective work and change in setting will work for you :)

Unfortunately for me, Ive already checked the local wifi traffic and its not that full so I cant blame my problems on interference. And checking wifi channels and resetting everything on location is a bit over the top.

Fairfield-

"Final symptom was that one of my CSRB+'s causes a light to run the modeling light at low power and flicker. Despite going into the CC and saying turn the modeling light off for that B800, it remained on, low, and increased/decreased intensity in a random pattern. "

Ive had this on a CSRB+ and CSR+ from time to time. This happens on 1 of my 800's all the time, no matter which reciver is attached (the button on the back still works). This last time the modeling light was suppose to be off on a CSR+ but it came back on during a session. I didnt notice until I smelled a weird odor and found my CSR+ had melted against the bulb. (I hang some lights upside down and the wire must have gotten close when moving the light around). The CSR+ still works! It just has a huge melted hole in it.

Thanks for the inssider tool tip David.

I loaded it into a Windows 7 64-bit laptop and I see channels (if that is what they are at the bottom of the 2.4 GHz tab) are active here from 1-12 with 13 & 14 nothing at all. There are a couple that really blast high in the lower section for a few seconds. Don't know what that is.

I'll try and move everything up the scale and try again. Still, it is one CSR+ remote that is doing all the locking up on me so I don't know. Seems it should affect the other one at times as well, but it seems faultless and immune from lockups for some reason.

Maddening to say the least.

Mack

My understanding is that 13 & 14 are only used outside of the US. That's probably why you aren't seeing anything there.

Let me reiterate for everyone: I'm not trying to suggest that frequency conflicts with wifi devices are causing these issues for everybody. For that matter, I can't conclusively say that it was the cause of my problems. Just that it appears that it may have been related, or perhaps a contributing factor to some other condition that is the ultimate cause.

This is simply one more data point to add to the mix of troubleshooting a cause and subsequent fix.

For example: if the ultimate cause of receivers becoming unresponsive in the manner described was that they "crash" when trying to decode a particular kind of malformed message, then the trigger for that sort of thing could come from lots of different sources. A bug in the transmitter, a weak receiver, RFI, even multiple receivers "stepping on" each other in an attempt to handshake come to mind. I'm not saying this is the problem, mind you, just using it as an example of why keeping an open mind is prudent.

The timing issues mentioned are also interesting to me (250 msec wait per receiver when doing certain things with the CC). Since it appears that scrolling through light selections on the CC causes some amount of communication between the CC and the receivers, does that imply that I should wait approx. a second when scrolling the selection from light to light (with 3-4 active lights in operation)? I did seem to see these lockups happening more often when scrolling between light selections. And I'm quite sure that I didn't wait a second for each step when switching the selection from one light to the next. Hmmm....

Followup:

I moved my frequencies way up to Channel 13 which is quiet in my area and not in use per the inSSIDer frequency usage program David mentioned above.

No joy. CSR+ froze up and locked in about 15 minutes of usage. The CSR+ unit that hasn't froze yet still was working fine, but the "questionable one" still freezes up after a brief warm up period of 15+ minutes. Cannot adjust the power up or down either for the modeling light nor the flash. It's stuck.

Only way to get it to behave is too pull the batteries out and re-try only to have it freeze again shortly thereafter. It appears to be getting the "fire" command via the internal strobe's slave unit from the other strobe unit and not the "defective (?)" CSR+ plugged into it.

Guess it's time to get an RMA and send the defective CSR+ back?

Mack

Hey Mack, it may not be all that important here, but just wanting to make sure that you're not confusing the channels as reported by inSSIDer with the frequency numbers of the CC/CSRB+. They are NOT the same. PCB frequencies (numbered 1-16) start at 2.427 GHz and step up by 0.002 GHz per "number". 802.11b WiFi "channels" start at 2.412 GHz for channel 1 and step up by 0.005 GHz per number. And as I mentioned in another post, the WiFi channels actually aren't discrete; they are the center of a range of frequencies used.

For example:

WiFi Channel 4 = PCB Frequency 1 (2.427 GHz)
WiFi Channel 6 = PCB Frequency 6 (2.437 GHz -- the only one that actually matches)
WiFi Channel 8 = PCB Frequency 11 (2.447 GHz)
WiFi Channel 10 = PCB Frequency 16 (2.457 GHz)

But again, the WiFi Channel actually indicates the center of a range. WiFi Channel 6 alone covers the range 2.426 - 2.448 GHz (which encapsulates all of Frequencies 1 - 11 on the CC). In contrast, I believe the PCB frequency is discrete -- someone please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

The repeatability of the problems you are seeing (both how often and that it's always the same unit) sure makes it sound like something else is going on, though. I'd definitely suggest a call to PCB customer service to discuss it with them.

A few questions for anyone experiencing this problem:
1- Are any remote recievers in repeater mode (i.e. the green LED blinks 3 times rapidly every few seconds)?

2-Does the receiver LED remain red when locked up?

Regarding the questions from T.S:
1. Not on repeater mode here. Just the simple slow 1 green flash. Units (all incl. CC) are no more than 12' from each other.
2. I need to pay attention for that one. I thought it was just blinking the normal green when I unattached it from the strobe head, but will pay more attention the next time I pull it off and remove the batteries.

Today I saw the red LOW BATT come on in the CC so I changed those AAA batteries out (3 days of operation and still in a trial learning mode.). One of the original AAA batteries was far lower than the other one on the battery tester so two new ones went in.

Everything today seemed to be working fine up on frequency #13 in channels 1&2. Flashmeter, the one in the CC, seemed a bit buggy in that REFRESH doesn't do anything until the button is pressed UP (Refresh) and then IN and then the strobes fire (usually at full power until the 1st shot is bled off) which indicate some high value until repeated and they are bled off. I would have thought just pushing the toggle UP would REFRESH and it should go to f<0 or something and not require two actions with the strobes firing in REFRESH mode (??). The CC seems odd in operation with regards to "Refresh" and having the strobes fire, but I usually use a hand-held flashmeter anyway.

Aside, today I did notice one of the Ultra 1200 heads did not dim the modeling lamp once the strobe had fired on Tracking mode. It used to turn off and then come back up once the strobe had fired with the white button in on the head. No more, with or without the CSR+ attached now. It was the one with the "good" CSR+ attached too after I had moved my "questionable" CSR+ one off it. Don't know what is up with that. Seems unrelated for the time being and acts like the white modeling switch may not be not working correctly (my summation).

Mack

Thanks for the information given, it does help. As for the REFRESH command, its job is to send out the configuration signal again. This is incase a reciever could not "hear" a command due to no power, out of range, or an adjustment made manually on an Einstein. This brings the receivers "up to speed" on what they should be doing. REFRESH has no direct impact on the light meter.

First, for TS:

- No repeater mode for any of my CSR+ units.
- LED status when locked up: see below.

For what it's worth, I tried changing my wifi router back to its channel 8, and I experienced another CSR+ locking up within 30 minutes of use. Seems like more than a coincidence to me, but I realize that I'm just one data point to consider.

While it was locked up, I took a closer look at it and observed the following:

- The status LED is flashing green approx. once per second, just like the others that are responding appropriately.
- The attached light will fire if I press the "test" button, but the CSR+ will not respond to any wireless communication.
- I thought it might be useful to see if the CSR+ would respond to the "Open" command from the CC... so I tried both "Open from Studio" as well as "Open" with the specific channel selected. Neither attempt resulted in the CC discovering the locked-up CSR+, but the other two lights in operation at the time showed up as normal. For what it's worth, I tried the "open" commands from lots of different places in the room, everywhere from within a couple feet to maybe about 20 feet away. The results were the same every time.

It really looks to me like something is happening to randomly cause my CSR+ units to simply stop responding to any wireless communications. Once they are in this state, they won't function properly until reset with a power disconnect/reconnect.

Please let me know if there's anything else you'd like for me to try.

Thanks!