Contours
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16. Troubleshooting

Contours cannot find any motors

  • Confirm every motor is powered and physically connected.

  • Open Connections › Manage and click Find motors, or choose Connections › Find motors. Wait for Searching for motors… to leave the status bar.

  • For Ethernet motors, confirm they are on the same subnet as your PC.

  • Confirm each Ethernet motor has an IP address: a static one, or one from a DHCP server on the network. A motor never gives itself an automatic (169.254) address.

  • For serial motors, confirm the correct COM port is available and not being held by another program.

A motor cabled straight to the PC, or on a second network port, is not found

  • A motor cabled straight to the PC has no DHCP server to give it an address. Give the motor a static IP address, and give the PC's network port a static address on the same subnet. The automatic (169.254) address Windows gives that port can't reach the motor.

  • Contours searches every network adapter by itself, so there is no adapter to choose. If you move a motor's cable to another port or adapter, click Find motors before you connect it.

  • Give every motor its own IP address, even when they are on separate network ports.

A search for motors doesn't finish

A search normally finishes within a few seconds. Contours skips Bluetooth serial ports, such as those added by wireless earbuds or headsets, and gives every other COM port about 3 seconds to answer, so one unresponsive port can't hold up the search. A port that is still busy from an earlier search is skipped until it answers.

If Searching for motors… stays in the status bar for more than a minute, contact support with the log file (see Finding the log file below).

An axis will not connect

When a connection fails, a message says that the axis could not connect to its motor.

  • Confirm a motor is actually linked to the axis — check the Motor and State on the axis's General tab, or the axis's Serial No in the Connections panel.

  • Confirm nothing else is connected to the motor, such as Control Room on this or another PC. A motor accepts one connection at a time.

  • Try Disconnect then Connect again, waiting a few seconds in between (see the next section).

  • If the motor appeared before but no longer does, cycle power on the motor and click Find motors.

A motor stops responding after a quick disconnect and reconnect

A motor that is disconnected and reconnected in quick succession can stop responding: its status LED stops updating, and no program can connect to it.

  • Switch the motor off and on again. Nothing else brings it back.

  • Click Find motors, then connect the axis again.

  • To avoid it, wait a few seconds after disconnecting a motor before you connect it again.

Contours says "Lost the connection to …"

A motor's connection dropped: a network cable was pulled, a serial motor's USB adapter was unplugged, the network failed, or the motor lost power or reset. Contours has closed that connection and shows the axis as not connected.

  • Check the motor's power and its cable or USB adapter, then connect the axis again. If a network cable was pulled, see the next section.

  • If you were recording with that axis, the take stopped. Save keeps the new take on the axes still connected; the lost axis keeps the take it had before.

  • A motor that resets, or a USB adapter that is unplugged, is noticed within about a second, and a pulled network cable within about 5 seconds.

Note. Contours can't yet tell when it loses an Ethernet motor set up for UDP, or a serial motor that is switched off while its USB adapter stays plugged in. Its axis still shows as connected, and a test run waits for it until you click Stop.

A motor won't connect after its cable is plugged back in

After a network cable is pulled and plugged back in, the motor can refuse a new connection for 30 to 50 seconds, because it is still holding the old one. Control Room behaves the same way.

  • Wait, then connect the axis again. If it still fails, wait a little longer and try again.

  • If the motor isn't in the Connections panel's Motors list, click Find motors first.

A button on the Axis Setup window is greyed out

  • Enabled, Find home, Go home, Read from motor and Write to motor need the axis connected. Click Connect in the controls bar.

  • Find home and Write to motor also stay greyed out while a homing field shows an error in red. Correct the value first.

  • Load motor needs the selected axis connected, and Load all motors needs at least one connected axis.

Load motor says the shows don't fit

Load motor checks that each motor's memory can hold all of the project's shows before it writes anything. If one can't, nothing is loaded, and the message lists each axis that doesn't fit and how much of its motor's memory its shows need.

  • With the current motor firmware, a motor holds about 24 minutes of shows at 100 ms, or about 4.8 minutes at 20 ms, for all of the shows together.

  • Shorten the shows, or delete those you don't need, then load again. A take recorded or imported at a longer interval needs less memory.

  • A show that doesn't fit can still run from the Test tab in Stream mode.

A tab or the Connections panel is unavailable

  • The Axes and Test tabs are unavailable while the Record screen or the point editor is open. Save or cancel there first.

  • The Connections panel can't be opened on the Test tab or while the Record screen is open, and the status bar's Connect All box is unavailable while the Record screen is open.

  • Find motors is unavailable while a search is already running.

  • While a show runs on the Test tab, including between Loop Show runs, the Shows and Axes tabs, New, Open, Save and Options are unavailable. Click Stop first.

Start stays greyed out on the Test tab

  • In a Stream run, Start waits until every ticked motor is enabled and at its start. The line above the bar names any axis that isn't: click Go to start and wait for the axes to arrive.

  • An axis can be ticked only when its motor is connected and it has a take in the show.

My recording looks noisy or jagged

  • Open the point editor (see chapter 11) and use Smoothing on its Adjust card. Start with a value around 0.1.

  • Re-record with a larger interval if the noise is genuinely sample-to-sample jitter.

  • If you recorded with a game controller, try a lower Responsiveness Gain on the axis's Controller tab.

Playback is too fast or too slow

Open the point editor and change Point Interval on its Adjust card. Larger intervals play the same data back more slowly; smaller intervals speed things up.

Next or Import stays greyed out when importing

  • Read the message on the Time card. The time must step by the same amount on every row; if a row is missing or repeated, the message names it.

  • If the file has no time column, choose None: enter the interval and type the time between rows.

  • On the Axes card, the Check column names any row with a missing value, or text where a number should be. Correct the file, or set that column's axis to Skip.

  • Choose an axis for at least one column (see chapter 12).

The game controller is not being detected

  • Unplug it and plug it back in; Contours picks it up within a few seconds.

  • Choose it on the Controller card of Project › Options, or on the axis's Controller tab.

  • Confirm the status bar shows Controller (<name>), not No controller.

The show video says "Media file not found"

The show's media file has been moved, renamed, or deleted, or the project was copied without it.

  • Copy the media file back to its original location relative to the project file, then reopen the project (see chapter 9).

  • Or put the file in the same folder as the project file and reopen the project — Contours looks there for a file with the same name.

  • Or select the show and use Add media to choose the file again, then save the project.

The show video doesn't play or shows no picture

  • Confirm Windows can play the file — open it in a Windows media player. Contours can only play formats that Windows supports.

  • An audio-only file plays sound and shows the time, but has no picture.

  • If the video is popped out, the panels in the main window show only the controls. Look for the pop-out window, or click the pop-out button again to dock the video.

  • During a test run, the video starts only once the motors report movement. If a motor isn't responding, the video stays paused.

The video Play and Pause buttons are greyed out

  • The selected show has no media — add it on the show's Media card (see chapter 9).

  • A recording or test run is in progress. The video follows the recording or run controls until it ends.

Finding the log file

Contours keeps a log of what it does, including every motor search, connection and lost connection. Support may ask you for it. It is here:

%ProgramData%\Myostat\SplinalTap\SplinalTap.log

To open the folder, paste %ProgramData%\Myostat\SplinalTap into the address bar of File Explorer. (%ProgramData% is usually C:\ProgramData, a hidden folder.) As the log grows, older entries move to SplinalTap.log.1, SplinalTap.log.2 and so on; if the problem happened a while ago, send those too.