I thought I'd share some minor challenges from the weekend's outdoor carols. It's a clear case of my not preparing enough ahead of time....
By 10am we have the FOH speakers plugged into the amps and up in the air on lifts. The PLM's are set for a previous, different, show so I go to load the carols show from last year and the Lake Controller Win7 tablet won't boot. The BIOS doesn't even come up and it looks terminally dead!
After 5 mins of trying, I boot a 2nd Win7 laptop and start the Lake Controller (6.4.5). It says the PLM's firmware is incompatible. I hotspot the laptop to my phone and download (what appears to be) the latest 6.5.0 Lake Controller. After installing and running 6.5.0, it says the PLM's firmware is incompatible, which is odd because I was sure I had set them up with 6.5.0 from the (now dead) Win7 tablet. I reflash the firmware on the PLM then restart the Lake Controller. Now the controller can't see any modules on the network!!!
After another 5 mins of headscratching I take the laptop to the amp rack and plug the network cable directly into the gigabit switch feeding the PLM's. Still no modules appear. I plug the laptop directly into the first PLM and suddenly the Lake Controller can see the modules. Very odd. Then I remember that when a PLM starts with fresh firmware, the primary and secondary network ports are bridged. If they are connected to separate physical networks, the two networks get flooded with cross traffic, chaos ensues and nothing works.
After yet another 5 mins with the Lake Controller (and a phone call to my friend Steve) I find the Dante redundancy setting and enable it. I do the same for all the other PLM's, reboot them, and plug them back onto the primary and secondary networks. Now I can control the PA. We're getting somewhere.
But then.... I realise all my speaker Lake modules are on the dead tablet. After still another 5 mins of searching, I find old copies of the Clair R4 3-way modules on the 2nd laptop, load them into the PLM's and confirm the channel polarities by ear.... Phew... the PA is running and the sound is ok.
Now I figure I'll try the Win7 tablet PC again.... Low and behold... it boots...aaaaargh. I run it's Lake Controller and it says the PLM's firmware is incompatible. It turns out the tablet is running 6.5.1 - hence the original firmware incompatibility with 6.5.0.
To check I'm not crazy, I go back to the Lake download page and it has both 6.5.0 and 6.5.1, but 6.5.0 is higher up the page....
Now I'm calming down and thinking maybe these computer-controlled PA's are getting too complicated!
The carols show went pretty well.
By 10am we have the FOH speakers plugged into the amps and up in the air on lifts. The PLM's are set for a previous, different, show so I go to load the carols show from last year and the Lake Controller Win7 tablet won't boot. The BIOS doesn't even come up and it looks terminally dead!
After 5 mins of trying, I boot a 2nd Win7 laptop and start the Lake Controller (6.4.5). It says the PLM's firmware is incompatible. I hotspot the laptop to my phone and download (what appears to be) the latest 6.5.0 Lake Controller. After installing and running 6.5.0, it says the PLM's firmware is incompatible, which is odd because I was sure I had set them up with 6.5.0 from the (now dead) Win7 tablet. I reflash the firmware on the PLM then restart the Lake Controller. Now the controller can't see any modules on the network!!!
After another 5 mins of headscratching I take the laptop to the amp rack and plug the network cable directly into the gigabit switch feeding the PLM's. Still no modules appear. I plug the laptop directly into the first PLM and suddenly the Lake Controller can see the modules. Very odd. Then I remember that when a PLM starts with fresh firmware, the primary and secondary network ports are bridged. If they are connected to separate physical networks, the two networks get flooded with cross traffic, chaos ensues and nothing works.
After yet another 5 mins with the Lake Controller (and a phone call to my friend Steve) I find the Dante redundancy setting and enable it. I do the same for all the other PLM's, reboot them, and plug them back onto the primary and secondary networks. Now I can control the PA. We're getting somewhere.
But then.... I realise all my speaker Lake modules are on the dead tablet. After still another 5 mins of searching, I find old copies of the Clair R4 3-way modules on the 2nd laptop, load them into the PLM's and confirm the channel polarities by ear.... Phew... the PA is running and the sound is ok.
Now I figure I'll try the Win7 tablet PC again.... Low and behold... it boots...aaaaargh. I run it's Lake Controller and it says the PLM's firmware is incompatible. It turns out the tablet is running 6.5.1 - hence the original firmware incompatibility with 6.5.0.
To check I'm not crazy, I go back to the Lake download page and it has both 6.5.0 and 6.5.1, but 6.5.0 is higher up the page....
Now I'm calming down and thinking maybe these computer-controlled PA's are getting too complicated!
The carols show went pretty well.
