Randomly going dark

[hukt]

Consistently at least once per show, my entire lighting rig goes dark. I can refresh my browser and immediately have control again.

I'm running a Pi Zero W2. I'll have to check the specific version next time I have it running but it's version 4. It is connected via WiFi and I'm controlling with an iPad also via wifi. I have to reload the browser to regain control. I don't think the program is crashed because I can reload immediately and have control again.

I searched to try and find this issue, and all I found was another thread where someone was asking where to find log files, but had no replies. This should be easy to find on the documentation but from what I can tell there's no page for troubleshooting?

[GGGss]

You might lose the connection to the data stream on your Pi. Network issues should be the first thing you look at.

But an insight into how your Wi-Fi network is set up might also bring in new arguments.
Are you also using Wi-Fi to send DMX signals (Artnet f.i.) to your fixtures? Wi-Fi access points have a storm control mechanism that prevents broadcast packets from being propagated, temporarily disconnecting the source of the broadcast packets (your Artnet sender) and, hence, the connection to your iPad.

A free app can do the Wi-Fi analysis for you...

[edit] If we say 'we are in the dark,' it means there are no lights at the stage... that is not 'we are out of control of the lights'. Total blackout is the most fearsome scenario an LD can face.

[markzvo]

It might be crashing... QLC+ will restart itself automatically after a crash after 3 seconds now. I suspect that might be happening. You might be able to detect this with a startup function linked to a unique scene that only runs at startup.

[hukt]

Sorry I haven't had any gigs with my lighting rig since this post so I've sort of let it drop until I can pull the rig out and get it going for testing. I'm only using the built-in html server for controlling qlc+ from my iPad via Safari. One of the symptoms I've noticed is that I start to loose all visual feedback on the iPad, like it won't highlight the last scene that I've pressed, but it will still react to pressing new scenes. I can reload the browser page and get that functionality back. And then when the whole stage goes dark, it does take a few seconds to be able to get lights back on, so it could possibly be an application crash. I could maybe monitor with journalctl? Are there crash logs with the pi build?

[Dave71]

Following this as I had some issues on my first outing with a Pi based setup, including all lights going off twice but were back on in about 5 seconds after a VC button press. I was just running a collection at the time so had hands off the iPad. Set up one of my lights at home and left the same collection running but So far haven’t seen any blackouts.

I have updated to the latest image which has brought other issues but will keep monitoring.

My Pi is hardwired to a small router so I’m hoping it’s one less thing that could cause problems.