ORB XF totally freeze

[Sven76]

Hi,

 

at our venue, we recently received a new ORB XF (previously we ran a Leap Frog 96).

Yesterday we had our first event with it. It was a very tiny event with just a couple of dimmer channels on some submasters - so no really "hard work" for any console.

 

But in the middle of the event, I clicked the "help" button to look after some topics, scrolled a bit up and down in the index and suddenly the whole desk was completely frozen!

 

I wasn't able to do anything with the Desk. Everything "looked" fine, so all screens were still there and (thank God) all DMX were still given out, but I couldn't do anything with it. I couldn't click on anything (either with touchscreen nor with trackball), fader movements on the submasters didn't change anything on the DMX output, and even the clock stopped ticking.

I tried to reach the desk from outside with iphone and ipad, but there was no connection possible anymore.

 

At the end of the show I switched the desk off and on again and everything worked completely fine again.

Unfortunately I was not able to reproduce the issue.

 

Does anybody have an idea for that?

In near future we ill have a series of large events and I'm really afraid for them, now.

 

regarding to "System info", I'm running OS Version 7.8.1.2 28/3/2014 LNX and Software Version 7.8.2.4

 

Best regards

Sven

[Jon Hole]

Hi Sven,

 

What else was plugged into your console?

 

- How many universes of DMX

- What USB devices?

- Were you connected to a network?

- Any other I/O devices?

 

Thanks

 

Jon

[Sven76]

Hi Jon,

 

that was the configuration:

1 DMX Universe

1 USB Keyboard

2 Elo 1915l Touchscreens

Ethernet Connection for remote control (iphone)

No additional devices beside those

 

Best regards

Sven

[Ovidijus]

First of all you should settup your dimmers to "Hold" on signal lost, so you can restart console on the show had situation like this few times with solution desk, but that was on 7.x.x

[Jon Hole]

Ethernet Connection for remote control (iphone)

 

Have you tried recreating the issue whilst the phone is still connected? What was the IP address of your router, console and phone?

[Sven76]

Hi Jon,

 

No, I didn't try to recreate the issue with connected iphone, because there wasn't one connected while the desk stopped working.

But this is the network configuration:

Desk: 192.168.178.37/24 (static IP)

Router: 192.168.178.1/24 (static IP)

iPhone: can't tell because of DHCP

 

But I can tell, that in all our test before we never faced an issue with remote- control.

 

Best regards

Sven

[Jon Hole]

Hi Sven,

 

Have you had any problems since the ones you reported?

 

Did ZerOS ofter to save a debug file after it froze?

 

On the iPhone, it should still display the IP address it's received via DHCP when you press the blue i in a circle.

 

That said, we'd usually suggest using a static IP address anyway, for you of 192.168.178.x

 

Is there anything else on this network, or is it specifically for lighting?

 

Lastly, what's the make / model of the keyboard you're using?

[Sven76]

Hi Jon,

 

I didn't have an event since then, so no: No problems so far.

Since the desk was completely frozen (meaning really nothing was reacting on anything), I guess ZerOS wasn't able to offer me something at this point in time. After reboot it also didn't offer something, but worked completely normal.

The iPhone IP I really can't tell. I didn't note in as the freeze happened and if I will connect now, I'm pretty sure it won't receive the same Address again, because we have quite short lease- times configured.

 

So you really suggest to use a static IP for your iPhones (or whatever remote- unit)? Seems quite unusual for a client- device to me (consoles are always static at our site).

 

The network is not dedicated to the lighting stuff. It's also used for Sound remote control (not Sound data!) and some venue- stuff (like "crestron" or "gira").

But from my point of view, I can't see why this should have been caused by network.

a ) there was no remote unit connected to the desk and

b ) the very same network worked for years now without any issue. Only difference was switching from Leapfrog to ORB XF.

 

Is there running any "logging" on the console that maybe could be exported manually, that could help investigate (since the core is a linux- derivative, maybe some dmesg, messages or something like that)?

 

Since I'm coming from IT- world, I know it's hard to investigate an issue without data but unfortunately I can't deliver anything more :-(

 

Best regards

Sven

[Jon Hole]

Hi Sven,

 

No problem.

 

Along with most companies in our industry, we always suggest that static IP addresses are preferential as it means you know exactly what's going on and it's the same every time. We support DHCP as we know some users aren't as confident with networking.

 

We have various logs available through ZerOS within "system info" (startup text tab) but the ones from the crash will have been reset.

 

There will be a new release of ZerOS for ORB XF being released in the next couple of days which might help with general stability, so I suggest you update to that once it's released.

[Sven76]

Ok - I'm looking forward for it and will keep cross fingers for the next events 😉

And I will baish the "help" button from the desk 😜

 

Best regards

Sven