{"id":121,"date":"2019-03-04T02:16:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T02:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ethan.757.org\/?p=121"},"modified":"2019-03-04T02:16:47","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T02:16:47","slug":"elation-ar-32rm-dmx-512-show-playback-controller-repair-and-software-driver-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/2019\/03\/04\/elation-ar-32rm-dmx-512-show-playback-controller-repair-and-software-driver-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Elation AR-32RM DMX-512 show playback controller, repair and software driver issues"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"imgur-embed-pub\" lang=\"en\" data-id=\"a\/CSvS5M1\"><p><a href=\"\/\/imgur.com\/CSvS5M1\">Elation AR-32RM repair, software<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/s.imgur.com\/min\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Story time&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>So a friend and myself volunteered to do lasers, sound and lighting for an upcoming IT security conference. Seems cool. We get up balls early to drive to Towsen MD to do a walk through on the hotel and try to get the ability for fire watch and haze for the lasers (denied by hotel. Sigh.)<\/p>\n<p>On the way back we stopped by the MAGFest warehouse, another event we volunteer with. Right near the warehouse is this music store (drums\/guitar\/keyboard\/perc\/pa) that has a lot of new and used music equipment. I always like to peek at the keyboards and Rob wanted to check out the PA subs. I see this unit in the racks of random bits, an Elation AR-32RM. Maybe Rob spotted the DMX connectors. Not sure. I had been thinking about looking at the OLA software on Linux or Pi\/Arduino for instant playback to some RGB LED wash lights I got from a deal back in the Norfolk VA days. <\/p>\n<p>This thing is pretty broken. The welds that hold the front on were broken off, so someone used thin strips of gaffers tape to hold it together. No way, I think. Last time I was in this store drooling over some old Roland analog rack synth they quoted eBay fully working prices, but it was worth a shot. &#8220;Hey man, would you take $20 for this thing? It&#8217;s pretty broken but I might have a use.&#8221; &#8220;$20 if I never see it again, no warranty&#8221; &#8220;Oh yea, deal man.&#8221; $20 in the hand, $20 in his drawer, the next step we were out the door.<\/p>\n<p>Two nice black cap head screws and nuts, some time on the drill press and some luck&#8230;. good to go! Looks pro! Getting the stupid gaff tape gum off was more work then fixing the damage, goo gone was no match. Magic eraser seemed to work best.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Last step&#8230;. the software!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The software is BROKEN! <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, after downloading the software distro and digging out some old laptops I found that the Windows 32bit drivers&#8230; are broken. Off to the 64bit drivers&#8230; which are&#8230; broken. After all the work to get the thing looking good, and with the DC Dive Show around the corner (where I plan to use it) the clock was ticking. I emailed Elation but didn&#8217;t catch a response. I decided to dig a bit.<\/p>\n<p>The drivers portion of the software contain a FTDI driver, which is pretty common. But the vendor ID from the unit doesn&#8217;t match the driver ID in the INF files from the FTDI driver. By changing the vendor IDs in the driver files to match, it made it work. I was able to get the software to work on both 32bit Windows running on a physical laptop, and Windows 10 64bit running in a VM. The thing is, it might have broken FTDI support for other things, I&#8217;m not really sure about that part. I will try to post the driver bundles soon but WARNING &#8230; I fudged it to make it work, no idea how proper things are or what will happen to other hardware that uses FTDI. A friend thinks you can edit the device ID and vendor ID with some tool and just make the thing use a normal FTDI driver but not sure on that. <\/p>\n<p>Overall I was able to overcome limitations and get the unit recording some DMX sequences from Freestyler\/Entec OpenDMX. The unit works pretty well, but there is a timer that is global not per sequence which is really annoying. But happy with the unit, and it will come in handy in driving Color Kinetics lights without a sexy City Theatrical power supply but with the PDS-500e supplies that I have.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s possible that some of these units have a different set of IDs? I tried archive.org and got some earlier revisions of the software and the drivers from those failed to work also. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elation AR-32RM repair, software Story time&#8230;. So a friend and myself volunteered to do lasers, sound and lighting for an upcoming IT security conference. Seems cool. We get up balls early to drive to Towsen MD to do a walk through on the hotel and try to get the ability for fire watch and haze [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ethan.757.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}