Q Light Controller+

Hello, I just received a cheap anyma usb dmx dongle and the and performance is very bad. It seems to be dropping a information. Using the simple desk top it can take a couple of seconds before any of the lights change. Running a simple chaser with a fade is very jumpy. Pretty much unusable

Is there anything special that needs to done to get it working smoothly?
I am using ubuntu 15.10 and running dmesg give the following errors

[ 7393.983672] usb 1-1: new low-speed USB device number 12 using xhci_hcd
[ 7399.185495] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=16c0, idProduct=05dc
[ 7399.185501] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 7399.185504] usb 1-1: Product: uDMX
[ 7399.185507] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: www.anyma.ch
[ 7399.185510] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: ilLUTZminator001
[ 7425.886630] usb 1-1: usbfs: USBDEVFS_CONTROL failed cmd UDMXDevice rqt 64 rq 2 len 512 ret -71

The last error is repeated alot


any idea to fix this? or it this just a crap controller?

I'm not a big linux head so I can't speak to any software fixes that you may be able to try, but I have experienced the hardware issue you're having, and I took a different direction to find my solution.

The second or so of latency is apparently an issue with some of these adapters. It's awesome that anyma is an open source project and all that, but it opens the door for anyone to manufacture these adapters with little to no quality control. You may get one that works flawlessly, you may get one that doesn't (this is even true for the home-built models). The same thing happens in many of the enttec clones on ebay and amazon. I was there once way back, bought a $30 adapter off amazon, fiddled with it for a week trying to sort out crazy latency issues (when it worked at all), ended up returning it and got a real enttec adapter from sweetwater.

I'm never one to turn down a low-cost alternative to something that costs $150, but unless it has a near-spotless track record I lump it in the "get what you pay for" camp.

well changing the frequency rate to 25hz fixed the dmesg errors and has made it work much better, however the steps are still kind of jumpy....

Thanks for the input, I was kind of thinking that this was just a crap usb dongle. I guess I should fork over the money for something good. Any recommendations with good linux support?

From what I've read the main issue comes down to the reported clock speed being drastically different from he actual clock speed of the adapter. QLC sees it as being at 30Hz, but in actuality it's much lower...

I personally use an Enttec DMXUSB Pro. I've lent it to a friend who runs an ubuntu setup and it works fine for him. I think he just had to make a couple small tweaks to get it working correctly (the same ones in the QLC user docs) but has been solid ever since.

fooschnickens wrote:From what I've read the main issue comes down to the reported clock speed being drastically different from he actual clock speed of the adapter. QLC sees it as being at 30Hz, but in actuality it's much lower...

Thanks that was really helpful, I changed the clock speed to 16 hertz and now it works perfectly!